Build Your Legacy
One of the most rewarding aspects of substantial wealth is being able to share it with others. Your Retirewell financial adviser, working with your legal and tax professionals, can help develop a plan that enables you to maintain the lifestyle you deserve now while also building a financial legacy.
Estate Planning
A carefully crafted estate plan allows you to control your assets while passing your wealth on to your beneficiaries tax-efficiently and in a manner that reflects your personal values and objectives.
Retirewell can refer you to an estate planning specialist lawyer to provide you with customised Wills (which typically would include Testamentary Trusts) and Enduring Powers of Attorney. Your estate plan would be designed to take into account your superannuation death benefit instructions.
Few things give investors more peace of mind than knowing that the assets they have worked so hard to accumulate over the years are protected and preserved for their heirs. They are entitled to know that they have control over what happens to their estates when they die. Whether it’s providing income for a spouse, educating children or grandchildren, or leaving money to a favorite charity, we all want to know that the proceeds from our estates will be used to fulfill our wishes.
Education Funding
Funding a child’s or grandchild's private secondary or tertiary education may be a personally rewarding use of your wealth. Your Retirewell financial adviser can provide you with options for helping those you cherish that include trustee accounts for minors, savings plans into managed funds and tax-paid insurance or friendly society bonds. Your Retirewell adviser also can advise you how to help your children or grandchildren buy their first home or even give them an early boost to their retirement savings, with government assistance to boot.
Our clients tell us that one of their greatest joys is helping to finance a child’s education. But saving for private schools or university has become more challenging as the cost of education continues to rise. Look to Retirewell for sound solutions that can make education planning a reality for you and your family.
Our expertise with a number of funding alternatives helps parents and grandparents provide higher education for the ones they love.
Charitable Giving
You may determine that your legacy to your children is to teach them the value of service to community, church or fellow man, giving away part of your estate to charity rather than to them. In other words, the children are expected to make it on their own for the most part, and you're OK with that. In most families, the children are OK with it, too. You might agree with the world's greatest investor Warren Buffett, who has said that he wants to leave his children "enough that they feel they can do anything, but not so much that they feel they can do nothing."
When it's strategically executed, charitable giving can not only help the organisations you choose, but can also generate personal tax benefits. Your Retirewell financial adviser can help you accomplish these goals with solutions that may include setting up a Private Ancillary Fund (PAF), if you are inclined to direct some of your wealth to charitable causes in line with your family values.
A PAF is a zero-taxed fund, managed with the input of a financial planner, accountant and, in the establishment process, a lawyer. It is a trust vehicle approved by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), where funds are invested and the returns are distributed to the charities of your choice. The beneficiaries of a PAF can only be qualifying charities with a deductible gift recipient (DGR) status from the ATO. All contributions to the fund are tax-deductible and the deductions can be spread over five years. It is recommended that the minimum initial contribution is at least $500,000.
The advantage of establishing such a philanthropic legacy in your lifetime is that, as directors of the fund's trustee company, you can decide what worthy causes to support and also determine how the assets of the PAF are invested in order to generate the returns you seek. In other words, you can be actively involved in giving something back to the community instead of just making bequests in your Wills. If you decide to donate to an existing DGR-approved PAF through your Will, capital gains tax on the assets donated is waived.
You may wish to draw up a Family Mission Statement to guide you in your charitable giving strategy. A Family Mission Statement is a great way to create a framework for sharing your feelings with your family about the meaning of charity, community and philanthropy.
One of the most valuable assets you can pass down to your heirs is the set of ideals and traditions you've built throughout a lifetime. Bequeathing such a legacy requires just as much careful planning as the transfer of material wealth, and those who involve the whole family in the endeavor are often rewarded with a plan that perpetuates important moral, community and philanthropic values.
When we consider the term mission statement, most of us think of such statements created for business enterprises. This mission statement can be a written explanation of the values and beliefs that have led the business to its current success; it can be a plan for organising the financial and human assets of the business to ensure its future success. The family mission statement works in much the same way. It is a statement of family identity: who you are, what you believe in and what you will do in the future.
You can start by stating your goals and discussing the legacy you want to leave. Your children and grandchildren can offer their insight into the important values they've received from you, and they can provide ideas about courses of action that will honor those values. And for those who are dedicated to the idea of helping others, a mission statement can assist future generations in continuing the philanthropic journey you've begun.
The best family mission statements are those that involve all generations in the articulation of a shared identity and shared goals, so consider raising these topics with your family next time you are all together - perhaps during the summer holidays.
