Writing Your Unique Story

October 19, 2020

What’s your unique story? Every day at Blue Trust, we help our clients discover and articulate their story and the legacy they want to leave behind. Then together, we develop a financial plan to turn the desired legacy into reality. By coordinating a client’s outside advisors, providing ongoing, proactive advice and accountability, and employing technical and biblical wisdom, we help ensure each client’s plan stays on track. Our advisors assist clients in effectively stewarding their assets by providing three important benefits.

1. Implementing essential components to effective stewardship
Coordination among experts. Subject matter experts rarely talk to each other. The insurance agent gets paid to sell insurance, not talk to the estate attorney. The estate attorney gets paid to draft documents, not talk to insurance agents. We believe coordinating the advice of all of these experts is vital to helping our clients reach their goals.

One person who sees everything — financial and non-financial. There are no independent financial decisions. Choices that our clients make impact various areas of their lives and the lives of their loved ones. We provide a single perspective with a holistic understanding of our clients’ situations, illustrating how one decision affects another. We believe this enables our clients to make well-informed, wise decisions.

A comprehensive financial plan. People may have good components, but without a comprehensive plan, the individual pieces often don’t fit together as well as they could. A comprehensive financial plan, with all the parts working together, is critical to success.

Even with a team of experts at your disposal, it is helpful to have a “quarterback” who knows the game plan and executes it. From a quarterback’s position, we increase the value of the existing team members by coordinating their expertise and capabilities with the overall game plan, recommending what makes the most sense for a client’s particular situation. We believe this significantly decreases the probability of missed opportunities.

2. Staying on the right track
Even the best-laid game plans require flexibility and are subject to change. Whether clients are progressing towards financial independence or have already reached their financial finish line, they still face many questions including:

• How much is enough?
• Do I have enough and will it continue to be enough?
• What are the long term impacts of various spending and giving levels?
• How do I make good investment decisions?
• Am I missing any tax savings opportunities?
• Do I have the right estate plan for my situation?

Whatever the particular question or issue, our clients simply want to be sure they are doing the right things financially. We help them manage that tension by providing clear answers to their questions and building a plan that supports their story while properly balancing their time, talent, and treasure. Managing those resources is the definition of stewardship; while that is not an easy task, the wisdom of Solomon in Proverbs 15:22 is helpful: “plans fail for lack of counsel but with many advisers they succeed.” Having conflicting advice from different experts can be detrimental to accomplishing one’s goals. There’s a reason why every football team has a quarterback.

3. Timeless counsel
Decisions are only as good as the thinking that goes into them, which is usually limited to technical counsel. We believe the quality of thinking is elevated when someone is able to bring both technical counsel and biblical wisdom to the table.

At Blue Trust, we educate clients on their options, facilitate decision making, and coordinate implementation of those decisions. We continually help them navigate the inevitable decisions they will face and, as a result, help them to implement effective stewardship. It’s our privilege to help clients write their unique story so they can leave the legacy they desire. If you would like to connect with a Blue Trust advisor, please call 800.987.2987 or email blog@bluetrust.com.

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Scripture quotations taken from the NIV(R) Copyright by Biblica, Inc.(TM)

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