Our Process
Financial and Life Planning
Financial Planning
Distinguish Your Goals from Your Objectives
Goals are your broad desired achievements, while objectives are the specific steps on the path to your goal. Consider whether you are pursuing financial objectives or goals today.
Examples of Common Objectives
- Achieve a specific rate of return
- Maximize retirement account contributions
- Minimize income taxes
- Save a certain amount of money
- Collect a pension or Social Security at a specific age
Examples of Common Goals
- Provide for the safety and well-being of your family
- Be able to retire (or work optionally) by a certain age
- Provide for the educational and living needs of some family member(s)
- Live exactly where and how you desire
Organize Financial Information
- Help you identify what you have
- Logically organize and present an inventory of your current resources
- Provide education on your current resources and what you have available
Improve Financial Efficiency
- Is your present path the most efficient way to accomplish your goals?
- What else could you be doing differently?
- Are your decisions coordinated well in a comprehensive way? (e.g. your investment decisions incorporate your personal tax rates, your risk level considers your assets/liabilities, income, and insurance, etc.)
Life Planning
The Pursuit of Purpose
Life is so much more meaningful with purpose and its pursuits. Similar to the difference between goals and objectives, how can we separate financial decisions (the means) from life decisions (the purpose)?
Finding Your Best Self
- When are you happiest?
- When are you at your best?
- When do you feel at peace?
- When do you feel most useful to others?
- Are you often worried?
- Do you doubt the quality of your decisions, or wish for an outside perspective?
Prioritizing What You Value Most
- Your family and close friends
- Giving to others
- Contributing to your community
- Caring for your whole self
- Reaching new goals
- Your company and employees
- Maintaining stability
Making a Difference
- Living the life you want
- Working towards a better place for you or others
Examples of Life goals
- Live in your dream home
- Travel where you’d like
- Spend time with those you care about most
- Help others you care about reach their goals
- Grow your company
Evidence-Based Work
We place a high value on the presence of evidence supporting a claim, and actively seek to eliminate bias and other subjective influences.
| This means we |
|---|
| - Use established empirical research to define research, modeling, and expectations for the future |
| - Subject our financial planning to a high standard of evidentiary requirements before acceptance |
| - Instead of attempting to predict outcomes, we will accept future uncertainty and model it by stress-testing inputs to varying sensitivities |
Realizing Outcomes
We generally pursue small, iterative progress over dramatic revamps, building upon what you’ve been able to accomplish so far. Through this approach, we seek to meet every client where they are and map out what is possible through collaboration. We then can work on establishing next steps that can be taken to improve financial and life outcomes.
| We seek to work with clients where we can clearly see | |
|---|---|
| - An opportunity for further improvement beyond the status quo | |
| - A desire for a voice of collaborative, outside counsel | |
| - A willingness to work towards any necessary changes to reach your goals |
Our Financial Planning Process Follows Universal Practice Standards
Our financial planning process has been designed to provide clarity and transparency early on in the inception of a new client relationship, and to allow for continuous collaborative feedback, emphasizing your wishes and situation as a guiding factor in establishing the scope and agenda for each meeting together.