1. Business Owner Life-stage Design
TAKE THE BOLD STEPS
TO ADVANCE YOUR BUSINESS
As a business owner, you face a great deal of financial decisions. In addition to taxes,
retirement and estate planning, you must also worry about providing retirement benefits to
your firm’s employees, retaining your key people or preparing for their loss, and preparing for
the day you will hand over the reins to someone else.
This sheer number of decisions and their complexity can paralyze a business owner. However, ignoring
these issues won’t make them go away. You need answers to questions that are critical in the decision-
making process.
• Where do I start?
• Do I handle all of these concerns at the
same time?
• Do I handle the personal concerns first, then
business concerns?
• Is there a roadmap?
Business Owner Life-stage Design (BOLD) helps you answer these questions and develop strategies to
address the key financial decisions you and your business face.
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2. Creating a roadmap
Your BOLD roadmap starts with your current state of affairs and ends when you leave the
business. In order to properly implement BOLD strategies, we will want to find answers to
questions regarding your:
1. Stakeholders
2. Current business life-stage
3. Top priority
1. Stakeholders: Who’s coming along?
All business owners have both personal and business stakeholders:
• You and your family • Your employees • Your business
2. Life stages: Where are you now, and where are you going?
If we start today, what life stages lie ahead?
3. Direction: Personal, business or both?
There are two main directions you can take. Some people may focus on their personal goals first, while
others concentrate on their business goals first. A complete BOLD strategy explores both directions.
4. Moving forward: you will move throughout various priorities, depending on direction.
Retirement income
strategies
Retirement GPS
Life Insurance in
Retirement Program
S-corporation owner
EXITTODAY
Business succession
One-way buy-sell
Cross purchase
Entity redemption
Cross-endorsed buy-sell
LifeCycle buy-sell
Key person protection
Key person
Executive compensation
Executive bonus
Split dollar
NQDC
Retirement plans
Defined contribution
Defined benefit
PERSONAL
BUSINESS
YOUR EMPLOYEES YOUR BUSINESS
YOU AND YOUR FAMILY
Estate planning
Wait See Estate Planning
SLAT/PLAT
ILIT
BLAT
3. Retirement income strategies
Have you saved enough to maintain your lifestyle
and become independent of the business?
People think preparing for retirement involves
saving as much money as possible and investing
it wisely by diversifying. But in addition to
diversifying investments, smart retirement savers
also consider how taxes will affect their retirement
dollars. There are a number of ways to save for
retirement and withdraw income once retirement
arrives. It’s important to consider the contribution,
accumulation and distribution tax characteristics
of these options.
Estate planning
Can you successfully transfer the assets you’ve
worked a lifetime to accumulate?
You’ve worked hard to build and maintain a legacy,
and you deserve to pass it on to your children and
grandchildren. But when the time comes, estate or
income taxes and other costs can erode the assets
you’ve spent a lifetime accumulating. A life insurance
solution can help protect those assets by providing
a tax-free death benefit to help alleviate these costs
and provide a legacy to your beneficiaries. It also
plays an important role in many estate planning
strategies.
Retirement plans
Does your retirement strategy compliment your
business objectives?
We provide a highly flexible approach to retirement
plans that allows you to provide customized
solutions designed around your goals, budgets
and employee demographics.
Executive compensation
Have you created programs to recruit, reward
and retain key employees?
Key employees make an important contribution to
your company’s profitability. It is in your best interest
to recognize their contribution. Selective executive
compensation benefits reward those employees
whose achievements are most responsible for the
business’s success and allow key employees to share
in the accomplishments of the business.
Key person insurance
If a key employee dies, will your business suffer
financially?
Key employee life insurance is owned by a company
on the life of one of its important employees. The
death of one of your key employees could cause
serious problems to your company, such as lost
sales, lower earnings and added costs for hiring and
training a replacement. Key employee life Insurance
provides a death benefit that helps you replace
these costs and operate smoothly after losing a key
employee.
Business succession
Have you identified steps to transfer the business
to others at a fair price?
Having a business succession strategy in place is
a key to success and survival of your company.
Strategies such as buy-sell arrangements can
facilitate the transfer of a business interest upon a
certain event (death, disability or retirement).
WE CAN HELP YOUR BUSINESS AND YOUR FAMILY
With Business Owner Life-stage Design, creating solutions to address your key financial and
business concerns doesn’t have to be overwhelming. We’ll start by gaining answers to a few crucial
questions, and then develop your roadmap through the priorities you identify as most important.
