Hello, and welcome aboard. My name is Jay Hutchins, and I’ll be serving as your co-pilot on this journey. While you are at the yoke, I’ll be manning instruments, monitoring gauges, and navigating a steady course to our charted destination.

Of course, I’m not talking about co-piloting a plane, but about co-piloting your plan – the one you and I crafted for securing your comfortable lifestyle – all the way to the end of your retirement. A lot of folks simply fly solo you know, with only family members on board – none of whom know a whole lot about piloting either a plane or a financial plan. Should their pilot lose consciousness – or depart the craft, well, the remainder of that flight tends to get uncomfortably bumpy. So, as full as my job is while you are here making the piloting decisions, it gets even busier in the event you suddenly leave the cockpit.

Then, in addition to managing investments, tax planning, monitoring progress, and adjusting direction due to unforeseen changes in the plan, I also assist with estate administration and assisting your successor pilot in their transition – all to secure your journey without interruption. More commonly, where there is no co-pilot, well, havoc ensues. No one knows where all the assets and insurance contracts are housed, or that tax IDs need to be acquired, assets retitled, deadlines met, and a myriad of other tasks managed. Plus, they’re seldom familiar with the plan itself or know how to keep it on course. Everything turns into panic and disarray.

Still, many people feel perfectly comfortable flying solo. They may not know all the instruments, but having not crashed the plan so far gives them self-confidence. Besides, if they suddenly do depart, the plan’s no longer their problem.

But, if you think about the family members in the back of that plane, you almost can’t help but shudder. Of course, you don’t have to worry about any of that; you’ve got a co-pilot. But the next time you see a friend flying solo, you might think to put a bug in their ear. You know, just one pilot to another.