Life After Harvest:
Family Farm Retirement Planning
Create a transition plan that works for you
Life After Harvest:
A Transition Planning Solution for the Family Farm
The most difficult part of successfully navigating your transition off of the farm into retirement is starting the process. The second hardest part is keeping the process going. Many farm business owners find that they too often start having discussions with their professional advisors regarding how to navigate this major life transition, only to get partially through before they hit a wall. Much like the cyclical farming nature of seeding, spraying, harvesting, repeat. Farmers find themselves trapped in an endless cycle. As a consequence, many farm business owners end up either paying too much tax, damaging family dynamics, or both.
We always hear that “Succession planning is a process, not an event” but many advisors treat it as an event driven process. Completing one time succession plans as a guideline to implement at a future date, with no action plan to implement, or the flexibility to adapt as circumstances change.
That is why we have created the Life After Harvest mentorship program. This serves as a program to not only educate farmers on their farm transition options, but to carefully plan for and implement these strategies over time alongside with them. This is accomplished through a concerted effort in order to bring all parties together who are responsible for ensuring the success of the transition, whether it is a farm succession or farm sale.
“Succession planning is a process, not an event”
While we do have the resources to take over the financial planning, tax work, tax planning, and reorganizational consulting – we’re more than happy to collaborate with any professional advisor you already have inside of your professional circle. Our role is to merely quarterback the process and fill in any gaps that are needed – no matter how big or small the gap.
The whole process can be simplified into a very simple two pronged approach:
- Develop a plan to transition off of the farm which addresses the financial, tax, legal, and accounting issues involved in retiring off of the farm
- Ensure that your accountant, lawyer, and financial advisor are all moving in the same direction in order to accomplish this.
If you’re interested in seeing if the Life After Harvest program can help you in your farm transition plan, schedule your discovery meeting today.
Life After Harvest Workshops
The Life After Harvest workshops focus on 3 main topics: Business Structures, the Capital Gains Exemption, and Transitioning off the Family Farm, and were created to help educate 2 generations of farmers at the same time; the incoming generation and the outgoing generation. Both generations have something to gain from the workshop as discussion focuses on how to prepare both parties for a ‘transition’ off or onto the farm.
Life After Harvest workshops also give attendees the opportunity to ask the questions that have been keeping them up at night about exiting the farming operation. Where we cover both the “hard issues” such as farm taxation and business structures, but also the ‘soft issues’ as well such as family dynamics, the treatment of farming and non-farming children, and estate planning.
Life After Harvest workshops are free to attend and will hopefully be that additional service to help keep your family farm in operation for several generations to come.
For further details and to register for upcoming workshops, please visit: https://pwmprivatewealth.com/events/
Riley Sittler, CFA®, B.Comm.
Riley began his career managing the investment portfolio for multiple credit unions in rural Saskatchewan and has since spent the majority of his working career working with business owners and farm families in order to help them realize their succession planning and retirement goals. He takes pride in looking at the big picture and bringing together all of the aspects needed to successfully execute a successful transition off the farm. He believes that a farm succession plan cannot be successful unless it is integrated with the wealth, legal, tax, and family planning needs of the families he works with.
Riley holds a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Saskatchewan where he majored in Finance, in addition to his studies at the Jönköping International Business School in Jönköping Sweden where he focused on Entrepreneurship and Leadership. He also possesses the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, which is widely regarded as the gold standard of finance academia in the industry, and is our primary director for the Life After Harvest Mentoring program recently launched at our firm.
Riley is a lover of all things outdoors and likes to spend his time in Northern Saskatchewan hiking, hunting, fishing, and camping. While in the city you can usually find him playing slo-pitch, golfing, biking, or spending quality time with friends.
Farm Retirement Education Series
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Life After Harvest provides financial management & services and is based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The particulars contained on this website were obtained from various sources which are believed to be reliable. Furthermore, this website is provided for information purposes only and is not construed as an offer or solicitation for services. The information contained herein may not apply to all types of investors.
