It was the Summer of 2018 when Thoughts On Money was born. Brian Tong, Director of Strategy & Communications at The Bahnsen Group, was willing to entertain an idea I had for writing a weekly note on financial planning, what came to be affectionately known as “TOM.” Some three years later, and Brian (along with Glen Hall) has edited, published, and recorded about 150+ of these little TOM notes.

As a reader of our content or a client, you begin to learn some of the names and faces of The Bahnsen Group. You may have a deeper, more familiar relationship with one or two of us, perhaps you’ve met another one or two in passing, and maybe you are aware of some of the others that make up this team. If you work at The Bahnsen Group, you know this more than a team; it’s a family. Now 35+ members make up this family, and there is a constant buzz and conversation across different departments and team members all striving for one goal – how to serve our clients better.

Why this topic? Well, I think this is one of the more underappreciated areas of financial planning. We have a lot of folks that come to us because they want a trustworthy advice-giver to backfill them as the CFO of their household. We hear this a lot, “I just want to make sure my family is taken care of if anything was ever to happen to me.” This is a common desire, and resourcing an advisor is a positive step in the right direction to solve for this. Still, there are also some practical steps around organizing your financial documents and executing some estate matters that often get put on the back burner or forgotten. Today we discuss real-life experiences as a financial advisor and use these examples to reiterate the importance of organization and legacy planning, all from a practical application perspective.

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