Legacy planning affects everyone and being open about it can prevent a great deal of pain in the long run.
From being transparent about inheritance among family members, to clearing debts, Lionel Wong, associate director of finexis advisory, shares tips on how to conduct your legacy planning smoothly.
(Photo: iStock)
Here's an excerpt from the podcast:
Lionel Wong:
Drafting the will is easy, but the legacy planning ... can take months. Partly it's also because most clients find it very difficult to think about this ... they will get stuck. It's such a difficult question to answer, like, how am I going to distribute this to my children?
Andrea Heng:
Yeah, what's fair?
Lionel:
Or whether should my children even need so much? If they don't need so much, where is this all going? So if this is too complicated a question to answer, what (Singaporeans) do is they just put under the pillow. Months later, (I'll ask) "Mr Tan, have you thought about the question I asked you?"
"Give me some time," and then they will chuck (it under) a pillow.
Andrea:
At what point in my life should I start thinking about drawing up my legacy plan? Obviously, if you're saying that doing it in your seventies and eighties, when you are facing your mortality, that's when things start to get really urgent, right? But if that's not the case and that's not recommended, what do you recommend?
Lionel:
Having a plan or discussing a plan doesn't mean you have to do something about it. So I'll say that to start thinking about it and to have a discussion about it with a professional ... the minute you are married.
Andrea:
Because you are introducing a new family member to the household.
Lionel:
Yes, especially if you want to take care of your spouse. So (it's easy) when a person who is single. If (an) accident happens, everything goes to the parents. But when a spouse comes in, we ... start thinking about how (to) take care of (our) spouse. I have clients who told me that they thought if anything happens, they will just pass all their money to the spouse to handle and the spouse will take care of the parents for him.
But the spouse told him during a discussion with me, that she rather not hold the money meant for the parents to prevent any misunderstandings, even though they are on very good terms now.
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A new episode of Money Talks drops every Tuesday. Follow the podcast on Apple or Spotify for the latest updates.
Have a great topic for us? Drop the team an email at cnapodcasts [at] mediacorp.com.sg
Source: CNA/jj/yy
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From being transparent about inheritance among family members, to clearing debts, Lionel Wong, associate director of finexis advisory, shares tips on how to conduct your legacy planning smoothly.
(Photo: iStock)
Here's an excerpt from the podcast:
Lionel Wong:
Drafting the will is easy, but the legacy planning ... can take months. Partly it's also because most clients find it very difficult to think about this ... they will get stuck. It's such a difficult question to answer, like, how am I going to distribute this to my children?
Andrea Heng:
Yeah, what's fair?
Lionel:
Or whether should my children even need so much? If they don't need so much, where is this all going? So if this is too complicated a question to answer, what (Singaporeans) do is they just put under the pillow. Months later, (I'll ask) "Mr Tan, have you thought about the question I asked you?"
"Give me some time," and then they will chuck (it under) a pillow.
Andrea:
At what point in my life should I start thinking about drawing up my legacy plan? Obviously, if you're saying that doing it in your seventies and eighties, when you are facing your mortality, that's when things start to get really urgent, right? But if that's not the case and that's not recommended, what do you recommend?
Lionel:
Having a plan or discussing a plan doesn't mean you have to do something about it. So I'll say that to start thinking about it and to have a discussion about it with a professional ... the minute you are married.
Andrea:
Because you are introducing a new family member to the household.
Lionel:
Yes, especially if you want to take care of your spouse. So (it's easy) when a person who is single. If (an) accident happens, everything goes to the parents. But when a spouse comes in, we ... start thinking about how (to) take care of (our) spouse. I have clients who told me that they thought if anything happens, they will just pass all their money to the spouse to handle and the spouse will take care of the parents for him.
But the spouse told him during a discussion with me, that she rather not hold the money meant for the parents to prevent any misunderstandings, even though they are on very good terms now.
Find more episodes of Money Talks here.
A new episode of Money Talks drops every Tuesday. Follow the podcast on Apple or Spotify for the latest updates.
Have a great topic for us? Drop the team an email at cnapodcasts [at] mediacorp.com.sg
Source: CNA/jj/yy
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