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You've spent decades building your wealth. Now, as you approach or settle into retirement, you're facing one of the most important financial decisions of your lifetime: how to ensure your hard-earned assets reach your children and grandchildren efficiently, while still maintaining the retirement lifestyle you've earned.
The numbers tell a remarkable story. Over the next decade, the boomer generation will transfer an estimated $84 trillion to the next generation—the largest wealth transfer in American history. The question isn't whether this transfer will happen, but how much of your wealth will actually reach your intended beneficiaries.
The Hidden Cost of Fragmented Planning
Many families approach estate and financial planning as separate endeavors, working with different professionals, with different skillsets, who may never communicate with each other. Your estate planning attorney handles your will or trust. Your financial advisor manages your investments. Your CPA deals with tax planning. Each expert operates in their own silo, often unaware of how their recommendations impact the others' strategies.
This fragmented approach can be costly. Without coordinated planning, you might discover too late that your estate plan conflicts with your retirement income strategy, or that your investment allocation doesn't align with your legacy goals. Worse, your family may inherit a complex web of accounts, documents, and instructions that no single professional fully understands.
The Power of Integrated Planning
When your estate and financial planning work in harmony under one roof, something powerful happens: simplicity emerges from complexity.
Consider Sarah and Robert, who spent 40 years building their retirement savings while raising three children. When they approached retirement, they had accumulated assets across multiple 401(k)s, IRAs, taxable accounts, and their family home. Working with separate professionals, they received conflicting advice about when to take Social Security, how to structure their estate plan, and which accounts to draw from first in retirement.
Everything changed when they moved to integrated planning. Their planning team at Oath could see the complete picture—not just individual pieces of their financial life. They discovered opportunities to optimize both their retirement income and their legacy plan simultaneously.
Their new strategy allowed them to enjoy their retirement years fully while positioning their assets for efficient transfer to their children. Instead of leaving behind a puzzle for their family to solve, they created a clear roadmap that their children could easily follow.
Protecting Your Legacy While Living Your Life
The beauty of coordinated planning is that it doesn't force you to choose between enjoying retirement and leaving a legacy. When your estate and financial plans work together, you can:
Optimize your retirement income by understanding exactly how much you can safely spend each year without compromising your legacy goals.
Minimize taxes across generations through strategies that consider both your current tax situation and your beneficiaries' future tax burden.
Reduce complexity for your family by creating streamlined account structures and clear documentation that one planning team manages and updates together. Your beneficiaries will go to one place to get answers to all of their questions.
Adapt to life changes seamlessly because your entire planning team understands how adjustments in one area affect all others.
The Trillion-Dollar Opportunity
As part of the $84 trillion wealth transfer, your legacy represents more than money—it represents the values, security, and opportunities you want to provide for future generations of your family. But without proper coordination between your estate and financial planning, much of that wealth could be lost to unnecessary taxes, fees, and probate complications.
The families who preserve the most wealth for the next generation aren't necessarily the wealthiest to begin with. They're the ones who recognize that intentional, coordinated planning makes the difference between leaving behind financial chaos and leaving behind financial clarity.
Your Next Steps
If you're currently working with separate professionals for your estate and financial planning, consider these questions:
- Do your advisors communicate regularly about your overall strategy?
- Can you easily explain how your estate plan affects your retirement income plan?
- Would your children know who to contact and what to do if something happened to you?
- Are you confident that your current approach minimizes taxes and maximizes efficiency for the next generation?
If any of these questions give you pause, it might be time to explore integrated planning under one roof.
At Oath, we believe your life's work deserves protection through intentional, coordinated planning. Because when your estate and financial strategies work together, your family inherits not just your assets, but your peace of mind.
Your legacy is too important to leave to chance—or to separate teams working in isolation. It deserves the transparency and coordination that comes from having one team, one plan, and one commitment to your family's future.
Disclaimer: This blogpost provides general information about estate and financial planning and is not intended as legal or financial advice. It’s essential to consult with a qualified estate planning attorney and financial advisor to discuss your specific needs and create a plan that’s right for you.
