The Value of Staircase Conversations
- Rexford Cattanach
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
The World Club final will host power teams Argentina and Spain in the championship match.
Years ago, our family hosted a high school student from the Basque region of Spain. He played pickup ‘soccer’ (to use the American label) with my son’s team, so we saw him dribble and play, and we can confirm the football crazy culture that is Spain.
We took our student visitor to the St. Croix River near our home, a town with a steep bluff climbed by stairs that lumberjacks (and bar patrons) used to get downtown for work, before Minnesota was a state.
The view of the historic river from the top is beautiful. The climb, three times up and down 150 stairs, provided captive time to ask our guest questions about his home country, family, culture, food, and interests. With each flight, the questions grew deeper and began to paint a picture we would otherwise miss.
The popularity of these stairs is told by the outside groups that came to the town to care for them.
Whether or not you follow the world’s game of football, do you create captive time for meaningful conversations about financial and estate planning matters with your family.
Do your advisors?
Not just opening, conventional questions, like “what are your goals” or “what income do you need to retire comfortably?” Those questions are fine, but they just scratch the surface, hardly moving the needle on relationships or change.
Meaningful conversations are often tougher. Darth Vader questions; we dare not speak his name.
Some advice, without a foundation or deeper context, can solve the wrong problem even if technically correct (and often it’s not).
It might sound like a tax question, but it might be a family relationship or estate-planning question, a health care question, or a purpose question.
A common staircase conversation these days is, “should I do a Roth IRA conversion” or variations ─ how much, when, how often? A better question, why?” Control future tax obligations? Higher lifetime wealth or income? For whom: me, my spouse, my children?
“Retirement income planning” is vegetable soup in a can. The label does not tell us whether there is a real process behind it. A retirement-income plan should be much more than a withdrawal percentage attached to an investment portfolio.
If you can’t ‘see’ this decision tree with your planning process, maybe you’re past due for a staircase conversation.
Financial guardrails can be funded, at least in part, by taxes you avoid paying. Closed-mindedness on this point—even among smart, talented CPAs—can mean missing a life-changing opportunity. Your financial roadmap is waiting. Grab it.
Congratulations, Spain and Argentina.
Visit the Lumberjack Stairs (credit to KSTP-news):
Comments