Our Financial Planning Process
As a professional, I act as a fiduciary when providing financial advice and therefore, act in the best interest of my clients.
Financial Planning is a collaborative process that is designed to help maximize your potential for meeting life goals through Financial Advice that integrates relevant elements of your personal and financial circumstances.
My planning process is comprehensive and can be summarized in these six steps:
- First we learn of your Personal and Financial Circumstances including information about your health, life expectancy, family circumstance, values, attitudes, earnings potential, risk tolerance, goals, needs, priorities and current course of action. In addition, we will obtain information about your dependents, other professionals, income, expenses, cash flow, savings, liabilities, available resources, liquidity, taxes, employee benefits, government benefits, insurance coverage, estate plans, education and retirement accounts, employee benefits and capacity for risk. We’ll analyze the qualitative and quantitative information to make sure it’s enough to address the scope of the engagement.
- Once we have analyzed the qualitative and quantitative information and determined it’s enough to address the scope of the engagement, we can then help identify and prioritize your financial goals. During this step we’ll note the effects of selecting a particular goal may have on the other goals and discuss and apply reasonable assumptions and estimates which may include life expectancy, inflation rates, tax rates, investment returns and other material assumptions and estimates.
- We then analyze your current course of action, including the material advantages and disadvantages of the current course and whether the current course maximizes the potential for meeting your goals. In addition, we’ll analyze potential alternative courses of action; we’ll consider and analyze one or more potential alternative courses of action, including the material advantages and disadvantages of each alternative, whether each alternative helps maximize the potential for meeting your goals, and how each alternative integrates the relevant elements of your personal and financial circumstances.
- We will select and present to you one or more recommendations designed to maximize the potential for meeting your goals. For each recommendation selected we’ll consider the following information: the assumptions and estimates used to develop the recommendation, basis for making the recommendation, how the recommendation is designed to maximize the potential to meet your goals, the anticipated material effects of the recommendation on your financial and personal circumstances and how the recommendation integrates relevant elements of your personal and financial circumstances, timing and priority of the recommendation and whether the recommendation is independent or must be implemented with another recommendation.
- During the implementation step we identify and analyze actions, products, and services to implement the recommendations and explain the advantages and disadvantages relative to reasonably available alternatives. We’ll also discuss the basis for selecting an action, product, or service, timing and priority of implementing and disclose any material conflicts of interest.
- We continue to monitor your financial plan throughout our relationship and keep your plan current, so that whenever your life changes, your plan changes with it. This is done through regular meetings and consistent communication.
