An Advisor’s Guide to Holiday Conversations

It’s Thanksgiving. Your clients are spending time with their family and friends. It’s joyous, festive, and maybe a little stressful. They want to talk about regular stuff – work, kids, how is Survivor still on the air? But it’s also a chance for your clients to get answers from their families to some difficult questions.

Here’s a breakdown of the things your clients might want to talk about with their loved ones, before the Turkey hang-over begins:

• Where do you keep important documents?
• Do you have a properly executed will?
• Is your life insurance up-to-date?
• What would you want done if you suffered a medical emergency?
• What are your funeral wishes?
• What about passwords and basic household information?

By encouraging your clients to ask/answer these simple but meaningful questions with their loved ones, you are not only doing your clients a huge favor, but you might just find yourself in a more meaningful conversation. Most advisors avoid these types of questions because they are outside the realm of typical financial planning an investment advisory. But today’s reality is that clients want more from their advisor and above all they want to make sure their families are being taken care of after they are gone.

Here are six topics every advisor should be pushing their clients to talk about with their families around the holidays. A simple way to do that would be to send an email with the built-in links below, expressing your own sentiments and pledging to do the same with your own inner circle.

Abby Schneiderman is co-Founder and co-CEO of Everplans, a digital estate planning and organizational platform that helps financial professionals deliver better service and have more meaningful conversations with their clients.