Last month, I talked about the value of financial professionals taking on the role of an educator. I have learned a lot over the years meeting with top financial professionals throughout the nation.
This month, I'd like to share some best practices from some of those professionals about attorneys, preparing for major financial events, Social Security and financial environmental changes.
I believe clients should have a written holistic financial plan that includes a focused perspective and evolves over time with the right type of insurance products and investments.
• Long-term care insurance (LTCI) helps transfer the risk of long-term care, can help protect other assets and relieves the financial burden on their own portfolio, children and society.
• Life insurance is not just for the young. Older Americans may enjoy a second home or want to leave money for a charity when they pass. With proper beneficiary set up, a life insurance policy allows money to go exactly where the client wants it to go as part of the plan.
• Annuities are an important insurance product to consider. There are so many different kinds and in this rate environment fixed index annuities may be beneficial for your clients' situation.
Preparing for major financial events
Do your clients have six months of money in an account set aside just to cover expenses after losing a job?
Best Practice: Suggest that your clients talk with you before the financial event occurs. You may have suggestions they didn't know were options.
My husband Bernie needed to have his second hip replaced. We consulted our financial professional before and throughout this time. He provided various scenarios to consider and prepared us should we need to pay more than the original budget.
Surgery ranged from $64,000 to $133,000; our responsibility could be from $4,000 to $24,000.
We knew where that money would be coming from and, if we had to take money out of our stocks, how the landscape of our finances would have changed.
One month after the surgery, we had gone through: A staph infection, a second emergency surgery, and six weeks of using PICC line infusion four times a day. We both had to decrease focus on our independent businesses.
But a lot of anxiety was averted because of our relationship and planning with our financial professional.
