Wealth planning with a trained advisor is vital to ensuring the legacy of your business once you have either passed or are no longer the owner of the estate.

In a recent podcast, Osage sat down with Megan Trask from Connecticut Wealth Management to discuss why it is important for business owners to participate in wealth planning. From deciding who is going to buy your business to where you see yourself in five years, we covered the factors associated with successfully planning out your wealth.

The Beginning

The first step in your wealth planning journey is to sit down with your advisors and what you need financially from your business in order to meet your financial goals and maintain your desired lifestyle. Whether you want to buy a home in Florida, travel around the world, or pay off your children’s debt, associating a price with each of these objectives will set you up for success. Expressing all these interests honestly will benefit you in the long term, as your advisor can help you get more comfortable ahead of going into a conversation with a potential buyer.

Estate Planning

Understanding the role of estate taxes in distributing your wealth – and how to efficiently plan with those taxes in mind – will go a long way toward alleviating stress in your financial journey. The reason your advisors will ask what you want your future to look like is so they can share estate planning and gifting advice to help you maximize your wealth ahead of any business sale. For example, you could potentially gift some amount of your business to a trust for a discounted valuation, with the possibility of saving your family in estate taxes over time.

The Family Dynamic

If you are a business owner who wants to sell to your family members, wealth planning is especially vital to ensure each person receives the correct fraction of business. By planning in advance, you can avoid some tense family scenarios and dynamics. Though it might seem difficult, you should express to your advisor potential scenarios that could arise between your children and their spouses or even with your spouse when you are no longer here. Your advisor can then sit down with each family member individually and discuss how they envision their own futures as well. The trained wealth professionals have experience dealing with complicated situations and you can trust that they will do whatever they can to support your decisions.

Getting started on wealth planning well in advance will help you gain confidence in any decision to sell your business. In order to build your legacy successfully, you should allow yourself to have ongoing vulnerable yet empowering discussions with your advisors, family members, or others who may be involved in your selling process.

Osage Advisors provides a lot of guidance in the M&A market here on our blog and on our YouTube channel and Podcast.