OUR PROCESS
We follow a proven process to develop your financial plan.
Complete a Comprehensive Questionnaire
Our first step is to gain an understanding of what you wish to accomplish in your financial and personal lives. We do this by asking you to complete a fairly comprehensive questionnaire. We ask questions about you, your family, your work, hobbies, passions, goals for retirement, views about wealth, spending patterns, investment objectives, and charitable intentions. Some people have thought these areas through in great detail and others hardly at all. Since personal wealth planning is about using wealth to achieve personal objectives, it cannot be effective without having some reasonably articulated goals to work toward.
Discuss Your Financial Goals
The questionnaire is followed by discussion (either in person or via telephone, e-mail, or letter) to further flesh out your goals and objectives. This discussion is to challenge you to think about your future more deliberately and deeply than you ever have before.
Determine Your Net Worth
Our next step in the planning process is to prepare your personal financial statement -- a "snapshot" of your net worth often referred to as a balance sheet. While sometimes a difficult and time-consuming process, this net-worth snapshot is critical as it serves as the basis for your financial plan. Surprisingly, many of our clients, even those who have had financial advisors in the past, do not have a clear understanding of their net worth. When we're through with this initial stage of the planning process, you will have a one-page report that accurately depicts your net worth, including the values of what you own and what you owe.
Create Your Financial Forecast
After the discussion, our analysis begins. Using financial modeling software, we evaluate your current financial standing, make reasonable assumptions about your future income and expenditures, take into account your age and risk tolerance, and predict probable investment returns. We even factor in tax implications. The end product is a thorough, comprehensive financial forecast. With this forecast, we can predict whether or not your current standing will result in the achievement of your financial goals. If it won't, we will advise you on what must be done to make your goals achievable. How do we do it? We make certain "what-if" calculations to help illustrate your financial situation. If it appears that you will achieve your goals, we may lower the assumed investment returns to show a "worst-case" scenario, or we may increase your assumed expenditures to show you how much you can afford to spend without outliving your wealth. On the other hand, if it looks like you are not on track to meet your goals, we will change the income and/or expenditure assumptions to show you scenarios where you will succeed. In some cases, we may suggest a reassessment of your goals.
It is at this stage that our multidisciplinary approach begins to show its worth. The financial planning results will not be meaningful or useful unless each component –- investment, financial, tax, legal/estate, and insurance –- is properly factored in and all assumptions are reasonable. This is where most financial plans, traditionally led by an adviser from a particular discipline, fail. Important decisions are far too often made in isolation, without considering the whole picture. We don’t let that happen. Each member of our team brings their specific expertise to your plan. We work together with you to ensure that the plan is truly integrated, and that the interrelated inputs and assumptions are accurate and valid.
Review and Adjust the Plan to Your Needs
When the comprehensive written plan is complete, we meet with you and present it to you. Each of us involved with the planning participates. We work through the cash flow/retirement plan projections. We analyze your investment portfolio and make recommendations consistent with your goals. We discuss appropriate tax, charitable, and insurance issues and strategies. We review your estate plan and recommend any appropriate changes. If your priority is on a certain area, such as estate planning, we may spend more time on that facet of the plan, sometimes in a separate meeting. The overall process often raises questions, sometimes leading to revisions to your comprehensive plan. This is a good thing: A financial plan is meant to be a "living" document that serves as a basis for making informed financial and personal decisions. It can be changed as your circumstances change.
An Implementation Schedule
After we plan, we implement. This again is where many of our competitors fail. With a plan in hand, we oversee an Implementation Schedule or checklist. We ensure that your plan actually happens. We track the events to make sure you are satisfied and that all parties continue to carry out the agreed upon next steps. |
