Retirement planning

Planning for retirement can be a complex matter, not just from a financial perspective but emotionally too.

What will you do once you are no longer a business leader? Sail into the sunset without a backward glance, pay it forward by sharing your experience with budding entrepreneurs, or give back to your community by supporting charitable causes?

Often the reality is a combination of all those things. We work with family business owners and entrepreneurs as they take this next stage in their lifecycle. We take a holistic approach with our clients, making sure we understand what their vision of retirement looks like, what they need to do to get there and how we can support them on the way.

What’s your magic number?

Success at retirement is more than just a ‘magic number’, but it is important to understand what your number needs to be to make sure you can achieve your goals.

Succession of a business is often the hardest part - who will take over, should you sell and if so how, what does the process look like and how long will it take. Often the answer is it depends, largely on whether you are selling outright or considering a family or management succession plan.

Our job is to consider all options with you to support you and your family through to the next stage. This involves considering all options for tax, making sure the business is financially strong so you can realise the highest price possible and pre-sale planning to make sure the consideration is protected for generations to come, whilst still ensuring you have flexibility to meet your needs.

What’s next?

We recently supported a family through the sale and exit of their business including some pre-sale planning to protect value for the family by settling some shares into a family trust. Post sale however they need a different level of support as they navigate the process of managing their wealth.

We started the conversation by highlighting some of the things they might want to think about:

• Spending – new houses, cars, holiday homes – compile a wish list so this can be factored in to any planning
• Income extraction – where will your income come from and how much do you need to meet everyday expenses.
• Investments – where and how should you invest and what help do you need.
• Asset protection – this can involve trusts, family investment company structures and crucially will reviews.
• Financial education – management of the family wealth can be daunting, it is important to take advice, but also to include the next generation in these conversations (once they are old enough) so that they are able to takeover in the future.
• Philanthropy – often people use this opportunity as a chance to give back by supporting charities they are passionate about or even creating their own charitable foundations.
• Compliance and management – sadly, there are still tax returns to complete and where there are more assets and various sources of income and gains these can be more complex.

Keep talking

In this case, this family is just emerging from the sale process and allowing the dust to settle as they get used to the new financial situation. This is very sensible but it also important to keep the conversations going so that any crucial decisions are managed and structured effectively.

Communication and education are essential for the families we work with, building a long standing relationship is important to us as we support intergenerational wealth not just on tax issues but ensuring our clients reach their vision of success whatever that might look like.

For more information about the topics discussed in this article please get in touch with Rebecca Durrant or your usual Crowe contact.