The Cost of Piecemeal Planning

How much is piecemeal planning costing you?

The planning whole is greater than the sum of its parts. By doing piece-meal planning, you are sure to have gaps in your planning, expensive redundancies, or possibly both. When your advisors are not part of one collaborative team with a "quarterback" to oversee all elements of the planning, they are unaware of any progress you are making in other areas. This can result in multiple advisors trying to solve the same problem with different tools and strategies — costing you twice the money. In addition, there will be no communication or collaboration to ensure that all planning gaps are covered. Both of these mistakes can be detrimental to your long-term planning.

Do you see any of these "warning signs" in your current situation?

• You use a CPA for tax returns, an attorney for estate planning or asset protection, an insurance agent for life and disability insurance, an investment advisor for investments, a banker or mortgage broker, and even more advisors for your practice.
• Your CPA, attorney, insurance and investment advisors do not meet, or even speak by conference call, to coordinate your planning, and there is no secure method by which they can share planning documents.
• Your advisors don't bring you detailed analyses of your practice and personal situation, complete with helpful suggestions, annually.
• You have never paid for a second opinion on your tax returns from another CPA; on your investments from an experienced portfolio manager, or on your personal or practice asset protection planning from a well-known asset protection attorney.

You need the right pieces to complete the planning puzzle. Even the best advisors will not be an effective team for you if they are not working together for your benefit. However, assembling the right team of experts — who are experts in working with doctors and business owners — is not easy. Most advisors work for firms that are built to provide professional services to the masses. This can be very costly for high income or high net worth clients because of their unique challenges. Consider the following:

Many clients like you make mistakes by hiring advisors who are not familiar with addressing the unique challenges that doctors and business owners face. As a result, clients often fail to:

• Use the most beneficial type of business entity (S corp., C corp, LLC, etc.).
• Adequately protect business and personal assets from lawsuits.
• Utilize qualified and non-qualified/hybrid retirement plans.
• Create an exit strategy from the business at retirement.