Get juiced about your estate planning, yeah!!!

Hello my MumboJumboites:

Hungry for knowledge today?  My guess would be yes!  I hope your day is going excellently and I thank you for signing in!

Did you know that people generally spend more time planning their annual vacation than planning their estate?  Thought provoking huh?  So my commentary today is going to drift a bit into the editorial side.

As a society, I believe we are drifting away from one that emphasizes disipline and character and toward one that emphasizes momentary enjoyment, star power, and/or immediate gratification. Heavy stuff I know but worth considering?  When talking to people about estate planning, I often begin to feel the energy draining out of the room and it is always frustrating because this should be a topic of tremendous interest and engagement.  Consider the fact that the average person spends thousands upon thousands of hours during his/her lifetime productively working in order to provide for those that he/she loves the most.  Further, consider the fact that a random life event could virtually wipe out that lifetime of hard effort and leave those loved ones in a serious predicament.  I've seen firsthand the results of good planning as well as poor planning and there is a tangible different in the stress level experienced by loved ones.

So to re-frame the issue, when approached with the topic of estate planning, one should rightfully engage the discussion with gusto, as the wealthy often do, because it involves protecting everything that one has worked so long and hard to achieve.  The most engaging of these topics involve trusts and estates, wills, powers of attorney, business succession planning, living wills a/k/a medical directives and designations of healthcare surrogate, irrevocable trusts, family limited liability companies, corporations, limited liability companies, avoiding probate . . . etc, etc.  Juiced up yet? 

So the message is:  before you plan your next vaca . . . get charged up about  your estate planning!

Thanks for taking in some mumbo jumbo today.