This article will:
- Explain how personalized financial planning helps families make financial decisions that reflect their values and goals.
- Explore how caregiving, retirement and inheritance can reshape client priorities, making ongoing guidance essential.
- Highlight planning across generations that can help families preserve wealth, prepare for wealth transfer and build a lasting legacy.
Every family's financial story is different.
For some, wealth represents decades of hard work and sacrifice. For others, it's the opportunity to create choices for children and grandchildren, support causes they care about or help loved ones navigate life's inevitable transitions. Whatever the motivation, financial planning becomes most meaningful when it reflects not only the client’s investments, but also what they value.
That's why financial planning that is both comprehensive and personalized has never been more important.
Families today are navigating longer life expectancies, evolving career paths, caregiving responsibilities, changing family structures and one of the largest intergenerational transfers of wealth, The Great Wealth Transfer, in history. While the circumstances differ, the underlying question remains remarkably consistent:
Insights from Equitable's recent research, Approaching Retirement: Getting Gen X from Good to Great and PEAK 35™: Guiding a New Generation of Wealth, show that financial priorities evolve over time. Yet across generations and life stages, many people remain motivated by the same enduring values: caring for family, preserving financial independence, creating opportunity and leaving a meaningful legacy.
For financial professionals, recognizing those shared motivations creates opportunities to deliver more tailored planning experiences and helping clients connect financial strategies to the lives they're working to build and share. As revealed by the Gen X study, 84% of clients want advisors to have a deeper understanding of their financial goals.1
Begin with understanding people – beyond portfolios
Financial planning isn't static. It evolves as people's lives evolve.
Career builders may be balancing student loan payments while saving for a first home. Peak earners may be preparing for retirement while helping aging parents and raising a family, saving for kids’ college or supporting adult children. Retirees may find themselves caring for a spouse, welcoming grandchildren or reconsidering how they'd like to share their wealth during their lifetime.
The anticipation or experience of each life event introduces new questions, priorities and trade-offs. For some, that may mean building wealth to support future generations. For others, it may mean preparing to transfer wealth to a beneficiary or receive an inheritance. In fact, the PEAK 35™ study found that nearly 70% of millennials expect or are fairly certain they will receive an inheritance, underscoring the growing importance of wealth transfer and legacy planning conversations.1
Rather than assuming every client within a generation shares the same concerns, personalized financial planning recognizes that life stage, family dynamics, personal experiences and individual values all influence financial decisions.
When financial professionals begin with conversations that explore each of these dynamics, planning can naturally become more relevant and often more enduring.
Caregiving often shapes financial priorities in unexpected ways
Many pre-retirees are balancing responsibilities for aging parents while continuing to support their own children as they establish financial independence. Increasingly, the next generation, millennials, are also experiencing these competing priorities as families care for multiple generations simultaneously.
These responsibilities can influence retirement timing, healthcare planning, retirement savings, housing decisions and estate planning. For advisors, they also highlight the importance of planning for healthcare costs, which can be substantial, with a 65-year-old couple estimated to need $388,000 for healthcare expenses throughout retirement.3
Consider a retiree in their mid-70s and caring for a spouse as they begin experiencing memory loss. Although they prepared for long-term care, changing circumstances have prompted new questions about maintaining financial independence while preserving flexibility for the future. Their daughter encourages them to explore options for guaranteed income strategies that may strengthen their overall retirement plan and help address future care needs.
For younger families, conversations may look different but are equally important. Clients beginning to care for aging parents often find themselves encouraging those parents to revisit retirement income strategies, update estate plans or work with a financial professional to evaluate whether their financial plan continues to reflect changing needs.
Helping clients support the financial independence of those they love can become a meaningful extension of personalized financial planning and often strengthens relationships across generations.
Financial plans should evolve as life changes
A financial plan shouldn't simply be created; the most adaptable strategies evolve as life changes.
Marriage, career advancement, entrepreneurship, caregiving responsibilities, retirement, growing families, health changes and inheritance can all reshape financial priorities.
Imagine a mid-30s small business owner who built a successful business around innovative energy technology. As the business grows, so do the complexities of their financial life. The focus has shifted beyond accumulating wealth to balancing business opportunities, family priorities, tax considerations, investment diversification and long-term financial security.
Another client faces a different transition. Approaching retirement, they’re looking forward to spending more time with family and recently learned they’re becoming grandparents. That milestone prompted a revisit to their financial plan, not because something had gone wrong, but because something meaningful had changed.
For financial professionals, these moments create natural opportunities to revisit assumptions, refine strategies and help clients ensure their plans continue reflecting what matters most.
Legacy is about more than passing along wealth
Today's legacy conversations often begin long before an estate is settled.
Many families want to experience and enjoy the impact of their wealth during their lifetime, helping grandchildren pursue educational opportunities, supporting charitable causes, creating family experiences or investing in communities they care about.
It’s a common scenario for pre-retiree couples to imagine having a place for their growing family to gather, perhaps at the lake where they spent summers when children were young. After receiving an inheritance, they're considering purchasing a property that could become a lasting family tradition. Their question isn't simply whether they can afford it – it's how that decision fits within their broader financial goals, retirement income needs, and plans for future generations.
Business owners often think about legacy differently. They may hope to transition ownership, recognize employees, strengthen their communities or prepare the next generation to carry their vision forward.
Whatever form legacy takes, thoughtful planning can help align those aspirations with tax considerations, wealth transfer strategies, retirement needs and long-term financial priorities.
Opportunity is one of the most enduring family values
Ask clients what they hope their wealth will accomplish, and many will talk about creating opportunities for others.
That may mean helping children graduate with less student debt, supporting the education for loved ones, funding a first home, launching a business or simply giving family members greater financial flexibility to pursue meaningful goals.
Understanding those motivations allows financial professionals to connect planning strategies with the values driving financial decisions – not simply the assets being managed.
Personalized financial planning creates stronger family conversations
Despite clients experiencing different life stages – sometimes within the same family – many share remarkably similar aspirations: caring for loved ones, preserving financial independence, creating opportunity and the desire to leave behind a legacy.
Comprehensive and personalized financial planning acknowledges those shared values while recognizing that each family's path is unique. It also creates opportunities for meaningful conversations about wealth transfer, expectations and responsibilities across generations. While nearly seven in 10 have had financial conversations, only 41% of millennials have had detailed family discussions. And yet 87% say those relationships influence whether they stay or switch advisors.2
Experienced financial professionals understand their role extends well beyond investment recommendations. They help families navigate life's transitions, facilitate conversations across generations and adapt financial strategies as circumstances, priorities and goals evolve.
Ultimately, personalized financial planning isn't simply about managing wealth. It's about helping families make thoughtful financial decisions that reflect who they are, what they value and the legacy they hope to create.
Explore full findings
Every family's priorities are different, but understanding the trends shaping today's investors can help financial professionals deliver more meaningful planning conversations.
Explore Approaching Retirement: Getting Gen X from Good to Great and PEAK 35™: Guiding a New Generation of Wealth to learn how evolving attitudes toward family, wealth, caregiving, retirement and legacy are reshaping personalized financial planning, and discover actionable insights to help strengthen client relationships across generations.
1 “Approaching Retirement: Getting Gen X From Good to Great,” WSJ Intelligence & Equitable Thought Leadership Study, August 2025.
2 “PEAK 35™: Guiding a New Generation of Wealth”, Equitable 2026.
3 2025 Milliman Retiree Health Cost Index, Milliman, September 2025.
Equitable is the brand name of the retirement and protection subsidiaries of Equitable Holdings, Inc., including Equitable Financial Life Insurance Company (Equitable Financial) (NY, NY); Equitable Financial Life Insurance Company of America (Equitable America), an AZ stock company with an administrative office located in Charlotte, NC; and Equitable Distributors, LLC. Equitable Advisors is the brand name of Equitable Advisors, LLC (member FINRA, SIPC) (Equitable Financial Advisors in MI & TN).
©2026 Equitable Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
GE-9091266.1 (08/2026) (Exp. 08/2030)
