Marie Kondo, if you haven’t heard of her, you might want to look her up. She is an organizing consultant and author of, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. Her KonMari method continues to sweep the nation as it has since 2014. This method involves gathering your belongings, tidying them up by keeping only the ones that “spark joy”, and organizing what you have left.
NerdWallet published an inspiring article this month called, “Tidy Up’ Your Finances So Each Dollar Sparks Joy”. It talks about using Marie Kondo’s principles to spark joy in the financial area of your life. There are practical tips in it about going through your wants, needs, and savings. Tidying our finances is something we can all benefit from. While discussed in one sentence, the article also mentions consolidating.
Consolidation is one of the keys to success at Family Estate Planning Law Group. When you begin working with us we will have you start simplifying your assets. Asset consolidation is potentially the most effective way to both simply your life now and make things easier for your loved ones after you pass away. In our experience, what causes people a lot of stress and frustration after someone dies is not the major assets (i.e. homes, substantial investment accounts, IRAs, etc.) ;the headaches come from chasing down all the small assets held at numerous institutions (small stocks, several small annuities or life insurance policies, government bonds, or CDs held at eight different banks, etc.) Simplifying and consolidating your assets so you are dealing with only one bank and one major financial institution substantially cuts down on the amount of work your loved ones will have to do after you pass and streamlines the process by cutting out differing regulations and requirements from each institution. Every intuition has its own idiosyncrasies, which adds further complication if your family must deal with too many.
Marie Kondo’s principles are a perfect companion to our process here at Family Estate Planning Law Group. We want to help you simplify your life and your assets in order to better take care of your family when you pass, but also to ensure you will have a successful and sustainable estate plan.
You might worry about applying KonMari to your assets, especially your investments, but that is why we work with you and a financial planner (if you don’t have one, we encourage you to seek one or ask us for a recommendation).
Our estate planning process is truly about “tidying up” because we help you simplify your life through simplification/consolidation, and then we align your assets with your estate plan (organizing them into their proper places) and verify alignment with institutions, and then we maintain this alignment through continual tracking of your assets throughout your lifetime. Tidying up your assets and experiencing our process at FEPLG, which we have dubbed, SAVeTTM, will help spark joy in your life because you will gain peace of mind knowing you have a sustainable estate plan that guarantees your loved ones will be taken are of when it matters most and they will not have to spend time chasing down numerous assets.
Want to learn more about our unique SAVeT SystemTM and how we’ve incorporated Marie Kondo’s wisdom into our estate planning process, explore our blog and visit our website to schedule your free consultation today!
Leave a Reply