Four Pillars
Yeates & Co’s four pillars to our
Legacy approach to investment advice
Pillar 1
Social
Social is about place and purpose and reflects your contribution. Let us be clear: we are not talking Nobel prizes and Oscars. Rather, this is about what we each do every day, what we contribute every day. The stamp of our existence is that contribution.
Social legacy may be time, skills or career or may be in support of someone else or a charity or club. For many of us, our lasting social legacy is the business we created, the people we mentored and encouraged.
Helping another acquire and perfect the skills of a job and in life is a social legacy.
A parent, an employee or a provider of jobs. Others see this as contributing through faith, sport, school, community and behaviour or as an educator. The lollypop lady working at the school crossing or donating trophies for Saturday sports day are all examples of social legacy.
The stamp is yours.
Everyone contributes to our world in some way and that contribution usually says much about the way our moral and ethical compass informs and directs our lives.
The social aspect of your legacy guides our advice as it tells us about the how.
In developing and implementing legacy advice we develop actions consistent with your view of life that is uniquely about you.
Our advice process at Yeates & Co is bespoke and away from the trend toward boilerplate advice. Advice is about the individual. It is about you.
Our philosophy is: clients are unique and not just an account number.
In our advice process we do not represent any causes or beliefs. We would caution against any adviser who did.
Your basket of beliefs is what interests us. Your stamp will put the shine on them and help to shape the advice we provide.
Over the years we have been privy to causes, commitments and passions of all types and persuasions. To be invited to experience the enormous range of our clients’ interests and passions is indeed a privilege: as it is to assist in how people leave their stamp on society.
Make no mistake – your social legacy is not a flaky, politically correct notion; understanding your legacy is about us enabling and recommending actions for who you are and what you believe.
Tip: You may not be the King or Queen of Wagga Wagga but, to us, when we prepare advice – you are.
Pillar 2
Familial
Familial comes from the Latin; familia and famulus, meaning slaves of the household and slaves.
The word family comes from the Latin, with the notion of family changing over time from a set of relationships based on land ownership to people and specifically, people related by birth and marriage. The concept of family as many of us think of it is recent (C20th) and culturally western. Islamic, Aboriginal and Islander cultures think of family differently.
To us the 1950s definition of the nuclear family is no longer appropriate for everyone or relevant in the 21st century. Families look very different today from the immediate post-WW2 era. Changes in marriage, parenting, diversity and ageing have broadened that definition.
Today, the norm is to have conversations with clients where the most important person to them may not be related by birth or marriage, rather by choice and to many that is how family is defined.
Our legal system currently serves one notion of family – a recent and culturally specific notion. The concept of family is constantly evolving. Every day we see examples of this evolution; however, the advice process offered by old-style advisers is fixed in its definition. You are expected to fit a model that may not be appropriate to your circumstances.
The term family readily serves some interests by excluding others. In our work we often have to challenge how family is defined today and in tomorrow’s world and the narrowness of who is in and who is out.
We use the word familial as it allows you to control who is in and who is out. The outcome is a successful implementation of the legacy strategy and with it your financial objectives.
Tip: Ask yourself who is there for you and you for them; would they be there if there weren’t any money?
Pillar 3
Personal
An evolving personal legacy is the most dynamic and powerful of our four pillars. It is the basis of risk versus reward and directly guides our investment advice and services.
Investing can have multiple motivations.
Personal motivations and thinking are your narrative about the most important person in the process – you. Your story and how you think explains many of the conflicts and contradictions we all have and make each of us interesting. We want to know your story in your words. We know for lots of us that’s a huge challenge and a big ask. We aren’t talking a star chamber . . . what we do is listen. Any good talker has to be an even better listener.
These could be to grow the pie until you decide what to do with the pie. It could be for the future or it could be to cover living and lifestyle costs now. For many, it can be about covering costs of education or looking after elderly friends or family.
Yours is a very personal view of the world and often can be different within couples. We think of the personal as your set of priorities.
Your priorities shape the risk-reward trade-off and this may be one of the most important conversations you have with Yeates & Co.
Priorities shape each of us. They change over time. Who we are at 25 years of age will be different from who we are at 45 years of age and with it so will our sense of risk and the desired reward.
As we know, our personality can change over time and can vary with circumstances. Our advice is dynamic and embraces changes in you. This changing personality is why the advice process is an active one and tailored to you.
Learning what you want from your investments becomes so powerful when we include it with your concept of legacy.
In our experience, one brings life and colour to the other. Sounds obvious but not necessarily so.
Our advice is about you only, so your personality is a vital pillar. Hence a conversation with us is a good place to start. A guided chat helps describe your possible legacy and brings out the consistencies with your current strategy and where it can be enhanced. Furthermore, as we have learned over the last 30 years, discussion brings clarity and creates a more robust strategy.
Pillar 4
Financial
Our fourth pillar of our approach to advice is financial.
An investment strategy and management decisions framework for planning and implementation considers the ambitions and requirements for income and assets.
Many clients are the custodians of multigenerational legacies. In that inevitable ebb and flow, the meaning of legacy can become lost between the generations.
Over the decades we have observed the power of the correlation between growing wealth across generations with a clear acceptance and understanding of the legacy driving wealth creation.
Where legacy strategy is poorly documented or non-existent, wealth can be lost quickly. Conversely, where legacy is grounded in some form of belief system or philosophy and the intentions of the benefactor(s) are understood and more closely followed, wealth is enhanced and benefits shared.
The power of a bequest opens up a unique set of considerations.
What may seem an initial act of generosity, goodwill or an endeavour to preserve and protect may be reviewed or received as a burden. Increasingly, if not managed from the outset, legacies may evoke heightened states of discord and distress.
While a legacy may be thought of as an act of generosity by the donor, what we see all too often is the other side: jealousy, entitlement, wastefulness and family collapse. More estates are being legally challenged, lawyers become wealthy and families financially and emotionally poorer.
When an individual is appointed to a role such as an executor and they lack the skills, it is not unusual that the result is disharmony, loss of wealth or a legal dispute.
In recent years we have seen an alarming increase in disputation and resulting family collapse.
If you think, “It won’t happen to us”, it does.
Sadly, it happens all too often.
Legacy cultures created in the next 20 to 40 years could endure well into the next century and beyond: such is the economic power of wealth created by Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers
Creating such a culture needs a clear understanding of legacy, investment management strategy and financial imperatives.
The investment strategy is the most tangible outcome of this pillar, determining asset allocation, investment strategy and investment selection. Financial objectives and target returns are all described in the strategy.
While the financial pillar is where most clients start a conversation with Yeates & Co, when we understand the other pillars of social, familial and personal, we get clarity for the financial with greater likelihood of achieving outcomes and objectives for this generation and those beyond.
To provide the right, unbiased advice required us to establish a new business with the freedom and commitment to help founders and their families. This is one of the key reasons we developed Yeates & Co Advisory.