Let me suggest a comparison that might help illustrate the value.

Imagine that your valuables are scattered around your house. Your jewels are in your jewelry box. Your watch is on the bed stand, your cash is on the bureau, your stock certificates are in your desk, the deeds to those rental properties you own are in folder somewhere, you’re not sure where…

(remember this is a metaphor — I don’t really think you keep your stock certificates in your desk).

Now imagine that there was some sort of document that represented your hopes and dreams for your children, your grandchildren, your favorite causes. That’s lying around somewhere, too.

How can you protect all of that? What do you need?

You need a safe.

And what strategy will you use in buying the safe? “I want the simplest safe I can. I think I’ll go down to the toy store and buy one of those child’s safes?” No?

How about: “I think I’ll buy the cheapest, flimsiest safe I can find — something that can be broken into easily; something that will burn nicely in a fire; something that anyone could carry out the front door!”

To protect everything you have accumulated over a lifetime of hard work? You want something strong, secure, inviolable.

That’s why a well-made trust is a bargain at $5,000. It protects everything you have — now and into the next generation.

All right, one more comparison. This time to car insurance. The average price of new vehicle in the United States is $24,764. A very conservative estimate of the cost to insure that vehicle (say with Progressive) would be $85 a month, or slightly over a thousand dollars a year. That’s 4 percent of the value of the vehicle. But you pay it every single year!

Now let’s say you have an net worth of $1 million — not very large if you own a home in California. A $5,000 trust represents one-half of one percent! And once, not every year like that 4 percent you are paying on your car insurance. So why would you pay that kind of money to insure your car, but not want to pay to protect everything you own and value?

Probably because you have to have that car insurance, but you don’t have to have a trust, right?

And that’s true, you don’t have to. But being a grown up means you don’t do things just because you have to. You do them because they are prudent, because they are wise, because they are smart.

And that’s what makes a trust worth $5,000.

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