Wealth Preservation: Crafting a Strategy to Last Lifetimes
Lots of people dream of becoming truly wealthy. But it’s one thing to earn or save enough money to hit whatever benchmark you’ve built up in your head as the “finish line” – $10 million, $20 million, or more. It’s another thing to keep that money safe and preserve it for later. You need to ensure you keep that money not just for your lifetime but for lifetimes to come.
That’s where wealth preservation comes in, and it’s part of what we offer at Dominion. If you don’t believe us or you’re not sure what’s needed for wealth preservation, read on.
Wealth Protection: Not the Same as Wealth Preservation
Before we proceed, remember this key fact: wealth preservation is definitively not the same thing as wealth protection. Wealth protection, put simply, involves safeguarding your hard-earned cash, real estate, and other property against aggressive litigators, creditors, and everyone in between.
When you earn a lot of money, you also put a target on your figurative back. Creditors are more likely to come after you for outstanding loans, you are more likely to be sued by disgruntled business partners, customers, or other individuals, and tax laws can become so complex and burdensome that you might run afoul of one or more tax penalties.
In any case, wealth protection means defending your assets against these numerous threats. When you work with a partner like Dominion, that often involves putting key assets into an offshore asset protection trust (APT).
The right asset protection trust can effectively keep your assets safe in perpetuity by eliminating your ownership of those assets in favor of a trusted third party.
Wealth protection is necessary for wealth preservation, but the latter concept is focused more on:
- Maintaining your money over the long term, such as by investing it wisely to ensure it keeps pace with inflation
- Growing your money over time, which can also be accomplished through smart investments, tax reduction strategies, and more
Both of these focuses are necessary to make sure your money is still around and still valuable when you (or your descendants) need it.
Key Elements for Long-Term Wealth Preservation
When we plan for the long-term at Dominion, we include two elements in our wealth preservation strategy. There’s an art and science to effective wealth preservation, and we use both to provide top-notch service to our clients.
Numeracy
The science of wealth preservation is numeracy. Think of numeracy as all of the quantitative or “hard math” elements of this service. It includes but is not limited to:
- Data analysis, which can help to inform your investment decisions
- Fund monitoring
- Future cash needs projection
- Resource optimization
In essence, numeracy is the number literacy and expertise necessary to make the most of your current wealth and to ensure that it stays valuable, even with inflation, changing tax codes, and necessary expenditures like distributions.
The scientific element of wealth preservation is a huge part of the entire endeavor. After all, you won’t be able to preserve your wealth if you can’t effectively calculate how much money you need to take out each year and, if distributions are necessary, how much money your asset protection trust needs to earn to keep your wealth sufficiently solvent.
Dominion employs knowledgeable financial analysts and advisers to assist with wealth preservation. That way, you can rest assured that your asset protection trust will be set up to properly generate new money from your existing cash and investments.
By the time you or future beneficiaries need to take advantage of that trust, it should be well-stocked.
Philosophy
The art aspect of wealth preservation is philosophy. That might sound a little too abstract for comfort, so let’s break it down.
The “philosophy” of your wealth preservation strategy can best be summarized as the human story or emotion behind your approach/goals. Why do you need to preserve wealth? There are numerous reasons for this, such as:
- You never want to work again. You want to preserve your wealth so you can retire early at the age of 45 and enjoy a luxurious lifestyle without ever having to clock in to work
- You want to ensure your family is taken care of, including your parents, your siblings, and your cousins
- You want to set your kids and grandkids up for success by paying for their college educations or by ensuring they always have a place to live via real estate
- You want to safeguard your wealth to give back to your alma mater or to some other charitable organization that made a big difference in your youth
The philosophy of your wealth preservation strategy can impact all of the concrete steps we take to achieve your goals. For example, the investments needed to ensure you never work again may not be exactly identical to the investments best suited to set your grandkids up for financial security decades in the future.
When you work with Dominion, we’ll speak to you extensively about your philosophy and your approach to life. We’ll help you understand how you want your money to work for you if you haven’t already considered this.
You can build a map of your values, plus develop an asset protection and wealth preservation plan that remains flexible enough to incorporate shifting goals and desires much later in your life.
Legal Understanding
Beyond numeracy and philosophy, a solid legal understanding is crucial for long-term wealth preservation. This involves having a thorough knowledge of the legal and regulatory frameworks governing trusts, taxes, and asset protection in both your home country and the chosen offshore jurisdiction.
By understanding these layers, you can make informed decisions about trust structuring, asset allocation, and tax planning strategies.
Adaptability
Additionally, adaptability is essential in the face of ever-changing economic landscapes and legal environments. By remaining flexible and open to adjusting your wealth preservation strategy as needed, you can respond effectively to unforeseen circumstances and emerging opportunities.
This may involve revisiting investment allocations, exploring new asset classes, or adapting your trust structure to comply with evolving regulations.
How Dominion Helps You Preserve Wealth for Decades
Every specialty firm has its own strategies and processes, and at Dominion, we’ve developed a playbook for wealth preservation that works for clients just like you. Of course, the wealth preservation strategy we developed for your benefit will also have unique elements to ensure it meets your goals.
Initial Consultation
First, we’ll host an initial consultation where we get to know you and break down your overall financial situation. If you come to us with $10 million, you’ll have plenty of options. But if you come to us with $20 million, you’ll have substantially more flexibility in terms of how you can use that money, what kind of investments you can make, and so on.
Identify Your Goals
Over the course of the initial consultation and successive meetings, our financial advisors and legal experts will help you determine what your overall goals and philosophy are for your wealth preservation approach. As noted earlier, this will help us make the best decisions possible regarding things like:
- Trust jurisdiction
- Trustee powers and distribution plans
- Investments and focus on growing wealth vs. sustainably distributing wealth
Establish a Trust
Once your goals are fully understood and sent by you and us, we’ll help you set up an offshore asset protection trust. We’ll handle the heavy lifting for this element of wealth preservation by researching the perfect jurisdiction and banking partner for your unique needs.
Our lawyers are also specialized in trust formation. They’ll make sure that your trust paperwork is drawn up so that it perfectly reflects your goals, needs, and preferences regarding distribution. At the same time, our legal advisors won’t allow your trust to be exploited via loopholes.
Invest Wisely
Now comes long-term administration and investments. When you work with Dominion, you can rest assured that our trustees know exactly the kinds of investments to make to match your wealth preservation philosophy, whether that’s setting yourself up for a life of luxury until the end of time or building your estate over decades so it’s truly gargantuan by the time your kids need funds for college.
If long-term wealth preservation is important for your family or extended clan, we’ll also make investments that your family can continue to contribute to.
Everyone in your family can do their part for the collective estate. If building something that lasts for many generations to come sounds appealing, we can find you the financial hammers to get the job done.
Remain Adaptable for Shifting Priorities
Dominion’s work doesn’t end when we make the trust. We’ll administrate your assets and stay highly adaptable because we know wealth preservation can shift, grow, and evolve with the people who pursue it.
Your goals now may not be the same as your goals when you turn 55 or even older. Because of this, you can work with Dominion to change your wealth preservation plan and adopt a new strategy if your goals change significantly sometime in the future.
Of course, our advisors will be on hand to answer questions you may have about the trust, its management, how it’s set up, and what you need to do to ensure that your estate continues to grow over the years. More than anything else, we provide you with the tools and expertise needed for peace of mind.
Get in Touch with Dominion Today
Ultimately, Dominion is in the perfect position to help you with wealth preservation for the short and long-term future.
If you never want to work again, we can help with that. But if you want to ensure your family benefits from the hard work you’ve put in throughout your career, we can guarantee they see the fruits of your labor generations down the line.
It all starts with an initial consultation, so contact us today.
