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Tuesday, January 21, 2025

By Jeff Velastegui
Founder of The Legacy Group, Personal Estate & Business Advisor

Introduction

Estate planning is about more than just preserving wealth—it’s about shielding your legacy and feeling confident that your hard work will benefit future generations. With the upcoming 2025 tax law changes, having a proactive, personalized strategy is now more important than ever. At The Legacy Group, our unique 3-Dimensional  Planning Approach™ helps high-net-worth individuals and business owners navigate these changes with confidence, creating plans that work for their families and businesses.

Why 2025 Demands Action Now

Your estate is more than just assets—it’s a reflection of your success, values, and dreams for the future. But with 2025 now underway, your legacy could face new challenges.

The current estate tax exemptions of $13.99 million per individual may drop to around $7 million, potentially limiting your ability to transfer wealth efficiently. For families and business owners, this change could mean losing millions to unnecessary taxes—money that should be directed toward your loved ones’ futures.

The good news? Today’s tax environment offers unique opportunities for those who plan ahead:

By acting now, you can lock in today’s exemptions and leverage these tools to preserve your wealth for generations.

Understanding Our 3-Dimensional  Planning Approach™

What makes The Legacy Group unique is our holistic and personal approach to estate planning. With our 3-Dimensional  Planning Approach™, we go beyond cookie-cutter solutions to create a plan that reflects your values, goals, and vision for the future. Our planning philosophy is rooted in a cross-disciplinary process that ensures that your planning is done through a collaboration of financial, legal and accounting perspectives. This allows us to identify coordination gaps in your existing plans and new planning opportunities.

Discovery

We start with a heartfelt conversation. What matters most to you? Supporting your grandchildren’s education? Keeping your business thriving in the hands of the next generation? Funding causes close to your heart? These personal insights guide every detail of your plan.

Design

With your vision in mind, we create strategies tailored just for you:

  • For business owners: Seamlessly combine succession planning with estate strategies to preserve both your personal and professional legacy.
  • For families: Use smart trust structures to safeguard assets, reduce taxes, and make passing wealth to future generations effortless.

Deployment

Your plan comes to life through close collaboration with legal and tax professionals. But we don’t stop there—life changes, and so do your goals. We keep your strategy up to date-and aligned with your goals and objectives.

At The Legacy Group, we believe estate planning isn’t just about finances. We want to preserve what you’ve built to create a lasting impact for years to come.

Bringing it All Together: A Practical Example

Consider one of our clients, a successful business owner with $20 million in assets. Facing potential estate tax changes in 2025, he sought to establish his legacy while maintaining access to needed resources.

Using our 3-Dimensional  Planning Approach™, we implemented:

  • SLAT to transfer significant wealth while maintaining financial flexibility.
  • buy-sell agreement to facilitate a smooth ownership transition for his business.
  • A coordinated gifting strategy that maximized the use of annual exclusions and reduced the taxable estate.

The result? A personalized, holistic plan that not only saved millions in potential estate taxes but also kept the business thriving for generations. It provided for the client’s family, aligned with their personal values, and supported their charitable goals—creating a lasting legacy that reflected everything they’d worked so hard to build.

Looking Ahead: Your Next Steps

True wealth is measured not just in dollars but in the impact you leave behind. Whether it’s establishing your business legacy, minimizing estate taxes, or fostering a sense of purpose among future generations, The Legacy Group’s 3-Dimensional Planning Approach™ provides a clear path forward.

As a fee-based fiduciary firm, we’re here to guide you with only your best interests in mind—no sales targets, no product-driven recommendations. Our focus is on preserving not just your wealth, but also the values and vision that make up your unique legacy.

With the 2025 changes approaching, now is the perfect time to get your estate plan ready for success. Reach out to us to schedule a consultation and take that first important step toward supporting your legacy for future generations.

Learn more about our 3-Dimensional  Planning Approach™ here:

To schedule a meeting, get started now or call (516) 682-3383 or email jvelastegui@legacygroupny.com.

Any discussion of taxes is for general information purposes only, does not purport to be complete or cover every situation, and should not be construed as legal, tax or accounting advice. Clients should confer with their qualified legal, tax and accounting advisors as appropriate.

Securities and investment advisory services offered through qualified registered representatives of MML Investors Services, LLC. Member SIPC.  The Legacy Group is not a subsidiary or affiliate of MML Investors Services, LLC, or its affiliated companies. [1393 Veterans Memorial Hwy, SUite 307S, Hauppauge, NY 11788 (516) 364-4203].

About Jeff

Jeff Velastegui is Founder and Personal Estate & Business Advisor at The Legacy Group, a financial planning firm dedicated to helping high-net-worth individuals, business owners, and executives build, preserve, and transfer wealth in the Long Island and Metro New York area. With over 20 years of experience in fee-based financial planning, Jeff is known for his “service-first” approach, offering personalized estate planning, business succession strategies, and wealth management. His proprietary 3-Dimensional Planning process brings together financial, legal, and accounting perspectives to help create cohesive and future-ready client plans.

Jeff’s mission is to “reach people in time to make a difference,” a passion sparked by helping his mother avoid an unsuitable financial product when he was young. This experience inspired him to guide others toward informed decisions and financial confidence. After beginning his career at Thrivent Financial and later Sagemark Consulting, Jeff joined the Center for Wealth Preservation in 2007, where he honed his collaborative planning philosophy. He founded The Legacy Group to help clients live a life of greater confidence, choice, and financial freedom through strategic planning and unparalleled advice.

Jeff obtained a business management and finance degree from the City University of NY and is licensed to sell insurance and securities in multiple states, enabling him to offer a comprehensive range of financial strategies. Living in Centerport, New York, with his wife, Pam, and their two children, Nicolas and Isabella, Jeff is an active member of his community, serving on nonprofit boards and mentoring young adults through his Sonrisa Foundation. Outside of work, he enjoys skiing, snowboarding, and spending time outdoors with his family. To learn more about Jeff, connect with him on LinkedIn.