We’ve all heard the idiom: failing to plan is planning to fail. I personally prefer the other side of that truth: plans are not critical, planning is. Obviously, the plans need to be solid, but the process tends to be more valuable than the outcome. Why? The plan is dated the moment it is “done” while planning is an ongoing process.
Let’s check in with oft-cited CPA Kurt Supe from X who provides this useful framework:
- What happens when things do not go as planned?
- Which account should I pull from first?
- What do my taxes look like for the next 20 years?
- What happens the year one of us dies?
- What pays for long term care?
- What do my kids get after tax?
- When does this get looked at again?
I also recently listened to a Mel Robbins podcast with The Home Edit titled Organize Your Life & Home: The Simple System That Gives You More Time, Energy, & Control. While organizing your home is obviously different from organizing your estate, there are larger, process insights to glean.
What struck me so profoundly was how we need to remove the guilt, shame, and/or trepidation around organizing our life. By letting those emotions go, we can focus on the task at hand: How to eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
And that being organized is not a “one and done” event. It is a process. A regular, recurring habit that simply becomes part of our routines. How to start? Just start. Get a will. Plan a family meeting. Start gathering the list of helpers (lawyers, accountants, wealth managers, doctors, nurses, etc). Just start.
Planning and organizing is an act of love. For yourself. For your parents. For the Next Generation. For your family. We can use Mr Supe’s list above as the agenda for the first family meeting, where we can agree these are the questions to answer. And then, we can chip away at getting organized, together, and move our families forward…