Exit Stage Left

If you break it down to the fundamental components, life has three stages; beginning, middle, and end. We are born and grow up, then fly the coop to be on our own and do things, and then it’s over. If you are reading this week’s edition of the Weekly Report, I would assume you are somewhere in the middle…like me. Although it’s getting harder to believe that I’m middle-aged. If this is truly the middle and I’m (soon to be 57) I’d die at 114. 

No one plans the beginning. It is planned for you… sometimes… by your parents. Before you were born, there was planning that lasted slightly less than nine months. There was a due date and you arrived shortly before or shortly after. And from the beginning of your life, things were planned for you; what to eat, what to wear, what to do, where to go to school, etc.

At some point, when you legally became an adult, the “middle” started. Whether you made a plan or not, life just happened. You may have planned to go to school for example. You may not have planned to drop out. Either way, the middle section of life is where all the wonderful things happen –– marriage, work, kids, friendships, and all of the accomplishments. Things may not always have gone according to plan, but there was some sort of planning involved. 

The last part of life, a.k.a.” the end,” is the cruelest and most finite. We never know when the end will come, but we can always plan for it. The problem is that most people do not make a plan and that can have dire consequences. We’re so busy living life that we forget to think about what happens at the end. What happens to the money, the house, the family, and the business? Shockingly, 68% of Americans don’t have a “last will and testament.”

If you don’t have a will, you need to get one. In high school, I worked at a pharmacy with a man named Woody. His real name was Woodrow Wilson Drewry. He was a survivor of the Great Depression and passed in his late 60s. Woody never married and had no kids. He lived a very simple, meager life and kept his money in boxes in his trailer. When he passed away, the Commonwealth of Virginia ended up with the almost half a million dollars in cash he had hidden around his home. If you do not make a plan, one will be provided for you. 

If you own a business, and you don’t have an exit plan, you need to get one. You don’t want the business to die with you. After all, your family, partners, and colleagues deserve a bright future. 60% of businesses fail after the owner passes. If you do not make a plan, one will be provided for you.

With that in mind, I need to make an appointment with my buddy Scott Stovall, Estate Planning Attorney with CowanGates. You should, too.