Ongoing Financial Planning Support
You’ve done it - invested the time and money into co-creating a holistic financial plan. You know what’s possible, what handful of actions you need to take, specifically, and what worries you can put out of your mind.
What Comes Next?
For some people, what comes next is just doing life: working, saving, spending.
For others, what comes next is taking action: implementing a cash flow plan, converting RRSPs to RRIFs, getting quotes for more insurance.
For still others, what comes next is making a decision: will you actually retire, now that you know it’s possible? Will you really buy that house, or take that sabbatical?
Financial Planning vs. The Real World
What we assumed and stress-tested during our planning work together is happening out there in the real world, and chances are high that the facts on the ground will be different than the assumptions on the pages of your plan.
Over time, your investments will perform however they perform. Inflation will do its thing to your expenses. Your income will grow (or not). You’ll save more or less than you thought you’d be able to. The interest on your debt will change, and you’ll pay off more or less than we assumed. Tax policy will definitely change to incentivize different behaviours.
This, friends, is the reason it’s called “financial planning”: it’s an iterative process, rather than a one-and-done product.
Financial planning is like going on a trip: you decide where you want to go and how long you want it to take, pack what you think you’ll need, and plan a route. Once you’re on your way, you adjust: maybe your transportation breaks down and you’re stuck in a small town overnight. Maybe a new, faster route opens up and shaves a couple of days off the trip.
Maybe you even change your mind about where you want to end up.
Talking regularly to the person who helped you plan the trip in the first place makes it easier (and faster) to adjust it in real time and still end up where you want to go.
Ongoing Financial Planning Support
I offer ongoing financial planning support to my clients because life never stops happening, and plans change. It’s priced to cover:
The cost of storing planning data in accessible formats that I can refer back to
Being available throughout the year for questions as they come up
Scheduling, preparing for, and reserving time in my calendar for one meeting per year to check in on how your life is unfolding and what (if anything) needs to change in your financial strategy to keep you moving in the right direction.
Most people pay for this ongoing support on a monthly basis; others prefer quarterly or annual payments. It genuinely doesn’t matter.
The handful of clients who decide against ongoing support are always welcome to come back in the future. When they do, we have a conversation to scope out what they need so that I can prepare a proposal for the work, which will include time to rebuild their financial data in my planning software.
Professional Financial Planning
Professional financial planning isn’t fortune telling. In the words of Financial Planning Canada (the designating body for all Certified Financial Planners® and Qualified Associate Financial Planners™), it’s:
Assessing your current financial and personal circumstances against your future goals, and developing strategies and recommendations to achieve those goals while optimizing the allocation of financial resources.
Those circumstances, goals, strategies, recommendations, and resources change.
Your plan should too.