So, if you know anything about the FIRE (financial independence/retire early) community, they are totally and absolutely at an elite-level at optimizing, right? We know our savings rate to the decimal. We’ve debated lean FIRE vs. fat FIRE vs. barista FIRE at a dinner table while those “normal” people talked about the game. Most of us have our opinions about withdrawal rates that would make most people’s eyes glaze over! lol
And yet. A pretty large chunk of this community has done practically nothing about what happens to all of this beautifully optimized wealth when we die! Yep. We’re going there today.
Personally I’ve just started the process of setting up my own revocable living trust, in having just my first conversations with my attorney. I have had a will, and have added beneficiaries on some accounts. But I’ve learned that there can be a lot more that goes into estate planning. One of the main reasons is to avoid the long process of probate. Probate is basically the government stepping in to sort out a person’s financial life after they’re gone. So, your family is like stuck waiting, sometimes years, on the sidelines until the whole thing plays out.
Because I’m in the process of learning and building my estate plan, I was excited for a session at the 2026 EconoMe Conference in Cincinnati. Estate planning attorney Allison Harrison took the stage and spent her time with us delivering what can be described as a loving and funny, wake-up call to a room full of some of the most financially intentional people on the planet.
Just in case you are new here the EconoMe Conference is the only large-scale conference built specifically for the personal finance focused community with many of them in the FIRE movement. So the crowd is sharp. These are not people who need to be explained what compound interest is. But estate planning? That can be totally unsexy, uncomfortable, “I’ll get to it eventually” item that sits at the bottom of a lot of our to-do lists somewhere right below “organize the junk drawer” and right above “call the dentist.” lol Many of us don’t like to start thinking of death or what is going to happen after we die. Allison came to fix that.
Who Is Allison Harrison?
Allison Harrison is an estate planning and business attorney based in Columbus, Ohio, and the founder of ALH Law Group. She’s guided more than 3,500 individuals and businesses through estate planning, business law, and litigation across Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. What makes Allison stand out isn’t just her credentials. Her work is specifically focused on people the legal system wasn’t originally built for, including LGBTQ+ individuals and couples, minority-owned businesses, and anyone whose life doesn’t fit neatly into a standard legal template.
In short, she’s an attorney who actually gives a shit about making sure everyone has access to the legal protection they deserve. And she’s an excellent voice the FIRE community needs to start talking about estate planning.
Your Plan Is… Well, You Don’t Have One
Allison’s main stage session opened with pointing out that almost everyone in that room was a planner. They optimize, they think ahead, they know their numbers cold, right? Most have a plan for themselves. But what’s the plan for when they’re not around to execute it?
For most people, the answer is nothing. Sad isn’t it? Okay, maybe you have a decade-old LegalZoom template that was filled out half-asleep, with a vague hope that someone will figure it out. Allison said, politely but clearly, that none of those things are actally a plan. They’re like an illusion of a plan. And illusions are not legally recognized by anyone when it actually matters. lol
This can hit a differently in the our personal finance community specifically, because our financial lives can often be more complex than the standard house-401k-white-picket-fence type of situation that basic estate planning templates are built for. Brokerage accounts, rental properties, side businesses, car washes, storage units, HSAs, crypto wallets, NFTs… the more creatively you’ve built your financial life, the messier it gets without a proper legal framework behind it.
The Probate Problem (AKA the Government Will Decide for You)
Okay, here’s where Allison really started turning up the volume. If you die without an estate plan, errr… wait. When you die, and if you don’t have an estate plan, your assets go through probate. Probabe is a court-supervised process where a judge validates your will if you have one, pays off any debts, and decides how your assets get distributed. It’s kind of super old-school and dates back to when we were still a British colony! This process has not really been updated since the fax machine era. I have a love hate relationships with fax machines. HMU sometime for the story!
Let’s dig in a little as to what probate actually means for your family. For most estates of average size, the process will range from six months to two years to fully complete. Your family don’t have access, and cannot even touch any of your money during that stretch. Accounts are totally frozen and assets sit there. And, did you know the whole thing is public record? Yeah, this means anyone who wants to can go look at exactly what assets you had and who gets what. I know many of us in the community are pretty transparent with our finances, but tf you’ve spent years building privacy around your financial life, probate burns that down completely.
Next let’s talk about the f’n cost! I learned that probate costs in the U.S. typically around 3 to 7 percent of total estate value. Dude! so if you have ~$750,000 estate, that could be up to a whopping $52,500! GTFOH!
Allison then showed us what some approximate costs for an estate plan. A basic estate plan for a single peep with let’s say half a million dollars in assets would fun roughly $2,500. For a married couple with half a million to a million? A proper estate plan may be about $3,500 to $4,500 depending on how complex things are. So if you compare that to what probate attorney fees alone cost on those same estates, and you’re looking at more than double, or sometimes even triple the price! And that’s before you add things like appraisal fees, court costs, fiduciary fees, and realtor commissions if there is real estate is involved.
She made the point really hit home! I mean, if you’re an optimizer, will spend enormous energy chasing an extra percentage point of return. But you could let probate eat thousands upon thousands of dollars that your family is going to hand straight to attorneys because you procrastinated on a document. Doesn’t make sense does it?
Real Stories, Real Consequences
Allison then walked through some scenarios that helped illustrate how a missing or broken estate plan can totally devestate your loved ones after you’ve passed. I’m sharing a few because they’re the kind of stories that actually make you put your f’n phone down and go update your paperwork! lol.
Jeff the Business Owner. Let’s look at Jeff. Jeff ran a successful car dealership for years as a sole proprietorship. Everything was in Jeff’s name. The lease, the state license, bank accounts, every vehicle title. He died of a sudden heart attack in his early 50s. What’s the first thing that happened? Remember, Everything froze instantly. His family couldn’t run payroll. Vehicles sat on the lot depreciating while nobody could sell them. The family that was supposed to inherit a thriving business instead spent months in probate f”n chaos trying to unlock assets our boy Jeff spent a lifetime building. A properly structured LLC or corporation with succession planning could have prevented the entire disaster. Instead, he left his family a financial emergency on top of all the grief of the loss of Jeff.
The HSA Trap. This was something that was totally new to me and often catches people off guard. Many of us in the FI community love our HSAs. And we should! I mean they are the Triple Tax Advantaged Powerhouse! Tax-free money in, tax-free growth, tax-free money out for medical expenses. They’re genuinely great. But here’s what most people don’t know. If your HSA is left to anyone other than a spouse, the entire balance becomes taxable income to the beneficiary in the year they receive it. Let’s say that again. If your HSA is left to ANYONE other than a SPOUSE, the entire balance becomes taxable income to the beneficiary in the year they receive it! So that $100,000 you carefully built up over years? If you leave it to your partner, your sibling, your best friend, anyone who isn’t your legal spouse, they’re getting a surprise tax bill they didn’t plan for, on top of income they’re already earning that year. HOLY CRAP! So to Allison’s point here is to know the specific rules for every single account type you own, because the general rules don’t always apply.
Susan and Veronica. Lastly, we have a same-sex couple who did the what they believed was the right thing and created a will. Their intentions in the will were very clear. Assets that are Susan’s is also Veronica’s and vice versa. But, guess what? They never updated the beneficiary designation on Susan’s 401k from a previous relationship. Yeah you know what happened. Susan died. Veronica found the will. She had felt that this was all taken care of only to discover that the 401k, worth a few million dollars, went to someone named John from over a decade ago, because that name was still on the beneficiary form! Ohhh SNAP! Remember, the will does not override it. There was nothing Veronica could do. That’s just how it works. Beneficiary designations override your will, full stop. Done. No appeals.
That last story is just brutal. Sadly, it happens every single day in real life, and it is completely preventable. This is just a reminder that in LGBTQ+ estate planning with same-sex couples, unmarried partners, and anyone whose family structure falls outside the legal default face significantly higher exposure to these kinds of outcomes. The law’s default assumptions were not built for everyone, and without proactive planning, people who’ve already had to fight hard to build their lives get hit hardest.
What You Actually Need to Do (Actions for the Living)
Allison called this section “Actions for the Living,” which is honestly the most metal framing of an estate planning checklist I’ve ever encountered. Someone put that on a shirt please lol! I often wanna put everying on a f’n t-shirt.
Here’s the breakdown:
If you own a business, make it an entity. Sole proprietorships can be a trap. An LLC, corporation, or partnership creates legal structure that separates the business from your personal estate and enables actual succession planning. Succession planning is a documented plan for what happens to your business when you’re no longer in the picture. It’s can be the difference between your family inheriting a functioning business and inheriting a fuckin’ legal nightmare. So your operating agreement or bylaws should explicitly spell out what happens to the business when you’re gone… errr dead. We all die. It is what it is. Whether that’s a buy-sell agreement with partners or a transfer plan to family.
Get a healthcare power of attorney. This names someone who gets to talk to your docs and healthcare pros to make medical decisions if you can’t. Without it, that defaults to your parents if you’re single, or your spouse if you’re married. Maybe that’s totally fine. But maybe it’s not fine lol. You get to decide, but only if you fill out the document. Think hard about who is actually best positioned to make those calls, not just who is technically next in line by default.
Get a durable financial power of attorney. This is critical and so underrated. This names someone who can manage your finances if you’re unable to. Without it, nobody can. Again… Without this NOBODY CAN. Your accounts freeze. Investments just sit. Properties can go unmanaged. A durable financial power of attorney is effective from the day you sign it. If you don’t trust someone enough to have access to your accounts today, you shouldn’t be naming them for when you’re unconscious! Word!
Update your beneficiary designations. I’d go look at every single account you own right now. Your 401k, your IRA, your HSA, your brokerage accounts, your life insurance. Who is listed? Is it up to date? Does it actually reflect your life today?
Think about your digital life. This is becoming more critical every year and most estate planners still aren’t covering it enough. Most password managers, including 1Password, Bitwarden, and Dashlane, plus Apple and Google on your phone, have a trusted contact or digital legacy feature that lets you designate someone to access your passwords if you’re incapacitated or gone. That person can then access your banking, portfolio, even a crypto wallet if you have a seed phrase stored somewhere accessible, and keep the financial lights on while everything else gets sorted. If you’re not using this feature, go set it up. It takes ten minutes. DO IT!
Update your plan when life changes. Life continues to change. Marriage, divorce, a new kid, a death in the family, a significant jump or drop in assets, starting or selling a business. These are all things that would cause us to revisit our estate plan. Your estate plan is not a set-it-and-forget-it deal. Think of it like rebalancing your portfolio. As the circumstances change, and your plan needs to keep up.
If you travel internationally or are a digital nomad, This is so scary to me. There are those peeps that love to travel, right. There is an extra step for those peeps that are running around the world. Allison mentioned to look for an attorney familiar with the Hague Convention, this is an international treaty that governs how legal documents are recognized across countries. It requires just one additional signature on your documents and goes real long way toward making your paperwork valid in a much broader set of countries.
Wrapping Up
Here’s what I kept thinking about during the talk, and it connects directly to what I’ve been writing about from across the whole EconoMe lineup this year. Whether it’s figuring out who you are when the work stops, or building a spending plan that lets you actually enjoy your money in retirement with confidence, the theme running through every session is that the FI community is totally awesome at building and accumulating, but may not be as good at planning for what happens on the other side of FI.
Estate planning is the most extreme version of that blind spot. Because on the other side of this particular transition, you cannot course correct, Right You cannot update the spreadsheet. You cannot optimize one more time. The only person who can act is you, right now, while you’re still here to do it.
So, ask yourself this question, “If I died tomorrow, does my family know what to do, and do they have the legal power to actually do it?” If the answer is no, get a plan.
Because having a plan is the ultimate act of control. You’re still the captain of the ship, even after you’re gone, but only if you did the work while you were alive to do it. You’ve optimized everything else. Go optimize this.
Horns up friends! \m/ \m/
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