“Slow Down if You Love Your Family” says a car bumper sticker that caught my attention recently on the back of an MPV.
The message still sticks in my mind. Interestingly, if the message is analysed more deeply, it can also be applied to estate planning.
There are two components to look at: first, it has something to do with risk management and, secondly, it is about the purpose of planning your estate prudently.
Risk management
When one is sitting behind the wheel of a car, one is responsible for making sure the vehicle and all the passengers in it have a safe journey as they speed towards their destination.
The safety of all the passengers is in the hands of just one person, the driver.
The driver is in control. They can maintain a certain speed that they feel comfortable with, in case they need to hit the brakes suddenly to bring the vehicle to a complete stop to prevent getting into a road accident.
Maybe the car in front slows down suddenly, another car comes out of a side road or even a dog suddenly runs across the road.
The purpose of planning your estate
As a practising financial and estate planner, I listen to my clients and take their will instructions in order to design a personalised estate plan for them.
I sometimes wonder what my clients’ motivations are when they call to make an appointment with me.
In the psychology of motivation, there are only two things that motivate people to take a particular course of action – avoiding an undesirable result or expecting to gain a benefit.
Twin psychological forces of motivation
I believe the clients planning their estate are motivated by these twin psychological forces.
On the one hand, it is to ensure that their beloved beneficiaries do not have to suffer unnecessarily in the event they die prematurely.
At the same time, they want to ensure that their beneficiaries will enjoy the optimum benefits of their accumulated assets as a result of their prudent estate planning.
Love for the family
But most of the time, the strongest inner drive that gets people to start thinking about planning their estate is simply because they love their family.
Lee Khee Chuan is a Securities Commission and Bank Negara-licensed financial advisor/representative who has been practising estate planning for over 17 years. He also researches and writes extensively about the subject besides lecture courses for the Certified Financial Planner certification programme.
For more information, visit www.estateplanningmalaysia.com.