Strategic Wealth Management

Strategic wealth management are the three favorite words of the merry widow Mrs. Lotsa Dough whose net value is about two and a half million dollars. While the value is paltry by many standards, the woman's gardener making eight dollars an hour has different ideas. The widow has become extremely interested in growing and preserving her money in recent years and while having tea at the country club with the lady's friends one day, learned about a wealth management seminar being held nearby. By the time the woman left the three hour workshop, the woman knew a great deal more about this subject that was so relevant for the situation. While the tens of thousands of people across the United States who have a great deal more money than the merry widow leave all the management to experts, Lotsa Dough would take a hands on approach to managing her portfolio.

Strategic wealth management is an umbrella term for a number of financial policies designed to grow and oversee a large sum of personal wealth. Its coverage includes a number of factors, each designed to give piece of mind and a satisfaction that each George Washington owned is not chopping down cherry trees but out hustling to make more Georges. The high-net worth customers that use this kind of management are often referred to by the financial planning business as being mass affluent or upper retail. Probably a little more classy than just calling somebody loaded or having more money than Midas, but both terms are meant to convey the idea that a mass affluent or high retail customer has the ability to purchase a number of financial products from strategic wealth management advisors. Here is a thumbnail sketch of each of the five areas of wealth management.

Assuming that a person who is loaded, oops, mass affluent is dealing with a bank for asset direction, retail banking services would be a place the banking officer would begin in developing a strategic wealth management plan for Lotsa Dough. Retail banking is a buzzword for using a massive bank's many local branches. Customers can register for on-line banking, have personal savings and checking accounts, get debit cards and perhaps even free balloons. The point is for the bank to offer all its regular products even to those with a great deal of money. Retail banking incorporates all of the ways in which a financial institution attempts to make it very intimate to the customer. So of course, the merry widow would be introduced to the very perky Master of Business Administration graduate who would become Lotsa Dough's personal banker.

Miss Perky MBA would want to check with Lotsa Dough to see if any estate planning had been done by the widow. Surprisingly, the senior had given no thought to a will, a power of attorney or a healthcare proxy. Sound strategic wealth management will insure that a person of means will have an ironclad legal will in place that meets all the desires and wishes of its owner. A plan for asset inheritance for the merry widow would have to include a new owner for the senior citizen's most precious possession, a three year old schnoodle named Pumpkin. But the woman also had a number of art pieces that were not bought at a starving artist sale, furniture, first edition books, a coin collection from the woman's late husband and other valuable possessions. Her will would have to cover those inheritance issues as well as appointing a power of attorney and a healthcare proxy which would include whether heroic efforts would be used to revive the tough woman.

Legal resources and taxation advice would be the third and fourth components in the widow's strategic wealth management plan. Lotsa Dough did not have a personal attorney; her husband's attorney had died shortly after he did. The bright personal banker invited the new client to peruse the list of attorneys that the bank recommended, but the senior was free to choose any attorney of her liking. The feisty lady had hoped for a lawyer that looked like Cesar Romero, but chose a law firm that worked exclusively with estate planning and taxation issues. The older woman would look to this law firm for help on finding tax shelters for the money, including a list of charities that she would begin funding in the years to come. Sad to say, but many people who have a great deal of money often have trouble loving God more than their wealth. Jesus made that point clear when he said, "...Verily I say unto you that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 19:23)

Strategic wealth management plans will also include a strong investment plan. Surprisingly, the merry widow's husband never like taking chances on the stock market or any other entity that had even a modicum of risk. As a result Lotsa Dough became quite interested in the possibility of growing her money at a higher rate than a slow savings account rate. In the weeks and months that followed, the woman began to educate herself on the possibility of enlarging the estate's wealth through a plan of overseas investments, specifically on the Pacific Rim as well as dabbling in the futures trade and some interest in gold investment. Needless to say, the merry widow's subsequent teas at the country club were filled with long explanations of how the woman was helping to direct the way the estate's assets were to be allocated, wowing her friends who kind of secretly wished that their husbands would soon leave this world so they could craft their own strategic wealth management plans.

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