financial planning process

Truly holistic plans integrate risk management, financial management, retirement (or financial freedom), investments, estates, and tax and benefits.

Professional financial planners recognize that everything touches everything else, and the the planning process below has evolved over my thirteen year career co-creating professional, holistic financial plans with clients.

 
A woman in outdoor gear kneels on the ground with a compass and amap

Discovery

This is usually the worst part of the whole financial planning process. It’s normal to need time to find all the information we need about your income, expenses, assets, liabilities, insurance, savings, investment, taxes and estate. Getting Organized for Financial Planning describes it in more detail.

If you need help sorting out what’s important and what’s not, I’m happy to support you. One benefit of going through Discovery is that you come out the other end much more organized and aware of what’s important information (and what’s not).

Once you’ve finished gathering your information, the hardest part of the work (for you) is done.

Foundation

By now, your plan is coming together. I build a financial model based on the information you shared with me, and prepare a report that includes my understanding of who you are, what you need to get out of our work together for it to be a success, and the assumptions and methodologies I’ll use.

We meet to review the report (and stop mistakes from creeping into your plan) and fill in any last information gaps. Although I’m not ready to make recommendations yet, we discuss the preliminary results to make sure that the recommendations I do make align with your values and goals.

 
Camping tools laid out on a bed roll, seen from above.
Seen from behind, a woman in a canoe dips her paddle into a smooth lake while the sun rises from behind the trees on shore.

Plan

After hours of analysis and scenario testing, I prepare a written plan in plain language that includes an executive summary (for all you TL;DR folks out there), detailed recommendations, an action list for the coming year, and ten years of cash flow and net worth projections (much more detail lives in the planning software that you have full access to).

This document also includes all of the data and assumptions that went into its creation and that we refined together in our Foundation Meeting.

We meet to review your plan and make sure that you understand exactly what the results of our work together mean, and how to use the planning software (if you’re interested in doing so).

Ongoing Support

What comes next, for most clients, is ongoing support, a formal relationship that includes:

  • Access to me, now familiar with your goals and values and with a complete model of your finances so you can ask questions or think through decisions throughout the year

  • Ongoing access to your plan in the planning software, so you can see how different decisions might play out without having to wait for me to model them

  • One meeting per year that we prepare for in advance by updating the things that have changed since the last time we met

A person stands overlooking a river checking a compass against a map

If you’re still working and not withdrawing from your portfolio yet, we have an Annual Review Meeting, usually held in the first quarter of the year.

If you’re retired and withdrawing from your portfolio, we have a Retirement Income Planning Meeting, usually held in the last quarter of the year.

No matter what happens, my job is to make sure that when life, your goals, the markets, inflation, and tax policies change, your plan changes with them.

Book your Introduction call today