No matter how much you plan, something is going to happen resulting in a change of course.

I love how Mike Tyson eloquently put it, “Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the face.” Did you hear his voice as you read that? I sure did.

As we close out National Financial Planning Month, I wanted to take a moment to remind you that financial planning is a roadmap to achieving your goals. The process of creating your plan can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. Although ensuring a solid foundation requires realistic information and goals which once established, allows the process to truly begin. Throughout your financial journey several non-financial considerations should take place while you manage emotions and speed-bumps as they come into play. If we carefully measure your constantly changing needs early in the process, we will be able to create a final cut on your plan knowing we haven’t lost out on any missing pieces.

To help you understand our process, here are the high-level steps we take as advisors:

Understand the client’s personal and financial circumstances
Identify and prioritize goals
Analyze the client’s current course of action and potential alternatives
Develop financial plan recommendations
Present the financial plan recommendations
Implement the plan
Monitor and adjust the plan

Plan for the Expected AND the Unexpected

The basics of a financial plan are a great start to your journey to overall financial wellness but monitoring and adjusting as life goes on is a huge step to making a real impact. We can all think of life events that changed our financial situation. How did those events impact your goals?

Financial planning is more than investment and savings planning, it also requires risk management. Making sure a safety net has been created correctly will protect against damage from unexpected events. Not only that but doing a full evaluation of all your insurance programs can help determine if you are appropriately covered, paying too much, or have too little of coverage. This evaluation helps free up cash flow in the event policies are too large for what is needed which in turn can be applied toward other financial goals.

While there are numerous **software programs** and **apps** available to get this process started, as well as, simplify the process, many times they only base their recommendations on raw data. But we all understand how emotions and personalities affect our individual situations and decision making. Laying a foundation is a great starting point and can be done with the help of these technological resources, but **working with an advisor** to develop and implement your plan will pave the route to success. Unfortunately, these digital conveniences are unable to truly adjust a plan based on life events which often take us all off track. As advisors, part of our role is to strategically plan for all possible roadblocks and speed bumps to see how your plan will need to adjust.

Sticking to Your Retirement Plan

With retirement planning, the game plan is to not only trust the process but also develop distribution amounts and strategies effectively. One topic we frequently see as individuals reach retirement is a necessary change in perspective. If you have been contributing to your 401(k) throughout a long career and never touched it, what happens when you suddenly have access to this large nest egg?

Part of our role is to keep you on track with your spending and not give in to the temptation of withdrawing too much at any point in time. As you progress through retirement, your needs may change and with that we are able to make appropriate adjustments. However, we want to keep you on track with your plan and remove any stress from the financial changes you experience along the way.

Financial planning is the act of setting goals and following the path to achieve them.

Following our process for financial wellness helps to reduce the overall stress of saving and investing for the future. The goal is to trust the process and create safety nets to weather any obstacles. If you are either early or late in your career, following your financial plan will help you enjoy life to its fullest. By measuring twice and cutting once we can all be prepared for the unexpected as well as prevent unnecessary mistakes in our financial planning.

Measure Twice, Cut Once to Improve Your Financial Wellness

2021 Holiday Greetings

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