by Bruce Helmer, President, Wealth Enhancement Group

Each of us leaves a legacy to our children. Producing your own personal legacy is an art form, like writing a symphony. And like the composition of a symphony, your wealth management solutions will require thought, planning, and creativity. Estate planning is about living. What you do with your estate is not just a matter of death and dying. How you plan the distribution of your assets helps define who you are, how you think of yourself, your aspirations, and your sense of purpose in life.

Who will benefit from your life's work? Will it be the people you want to benefit? How can you be sure they will receive what you want them to receive when you're gone? Your estate plan helps answer these questions.

Where do you start?

At my company, we approach estate planning differently than most. We do it almost backward from how it's traditionally done. We look first at our clients' income needs for the lifestyle they want. Only then do we look at how they can use what remains to create an estate for their children or others. We base estate planning on their excess cash flow, money they don't need and wouldn't spend anyway.

For instance, paying a premium for life insurance in order to give more money to charity or to benefit your children may be generous, but we don't want our clients to be saddled with costs, overhead, or premiums that are going to diminish their lifestyle. A cash flow analysis ensures that they can live as they want in their later years, which we believe is more important than the size of their estate. So we always do an analysis of cash flow needs first, and we look at buying insurance for estate planning only if they can pay the cost of the insurance without detracting from their lifestyle.