The Pursuit of Financial Success Begins With a Plan
What do you want your money to do for you? Whether you hope to retire comfortably, help your children or grandchildren through college, build your dream home, or preserve wealth for future generations, a thoughtful, planned approach will increase your likelihood of success. As you look to the future, questions abound: how much do I need to save, how much can I spend, will I run out of money, am I doing the right things? You may simply be wondering where you are headed based on what you are doing today. A financial plan helps connect your finances to your life, offering direction on where you are headed and how to achieve your goals. Our team is your partner along the way, providing clarity on the path forward and helping you navigate life’s uncertainties with honest advice and thoughtful guidance.
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Knowing where you are starting from is critical to understanding and mapping the path forward. The complexity surrounding finances can be overwhelming, but we can help you sort it out. We will ask you to gather information on your assets, liabilities, retirement income, life insurance, etc., so that we can help you understand the financial foundation of your plan. Although this data gathering may seem arduous, creating a solid base of accurate information is essential to ensure we are taking the right path. Finding the endpoint can be impossible without knowing where you are starting from.
Here is a checklist of items we may ask for:
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Building a financial plan around your specific goals creates a plan that is uniquely yours. Once we know where you are at, we can focus on where you are currently headed and where you hope to end up. Some people have very clearly defined objectives, while others have feelings for what they want or fear, but struggle to translate this into concrete goals. The reality is that you may not know exactly what you want or need, and that is totally fine. Our job is to listen, facilitate conversations to understand your aspirations, and ultimately help you define realistic goals.
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Now that we’ve determined your starting point and where you hope to end up, we can build you a customized plan, laying out the options for achieving your goals. We will meet with you to review the plan, discuss the results, talk through any changes, and lay out a strategy to turn your plan into reality. You will understand the necessary steps to move forward and get on the path to success, and we will help to make it as easy as possible for you to implement.
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Financial planning is a process not an event, and we believe a financial plan should be dynamic and flexible. Life changes, priorities shift, and new opportunities present themselves. As your life evolves, together we will continue to monitor and update your progress over time ‒ so you’ll always know where you are, where you’re going, and if any adjustments need to be made along the way.
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To help ensure that your goals – and our strategy for pursuing them – are well-defined, we utilize sophisticated planning software from Raymond James called Goal Planning & Monitoring. This powerful resource, together with our deep planning experience, helps paint a picture of your life to easily understand the factors impacting you and the outcome of results. It also allows us to examine your plan from multiple angles, and stress test the results to provide you the confidence to move forward toward your goals.
IMPORTANT: The projections or other information generated by Goal Planning & Monitoring regarding the likelihood of various investment outcomes are hypothetical in nature, do not reflect actual investment results and are not guarantees of future results.
The return assumptions in Goal Planning & Monitoring are not reflective of any specific product, and do not include any fees or expenses that may be incurred by investing in specific products. The actual returns of a specific product may be more or less than the returns used in Goal Planning & Monitoring. It is not possible to directly invest in an index. Financial forecasts, rates of return, risk, inflation, and other assumptions may be used as the basis for illustrations. They should not be considered a guarantee of future performance or a guarantee of achieving overall financial objectives. Past performance is not a guarantee or a predictor of future results of either the indices or any particular investment.
Goal Planning & Monitoring results may vary with each use and over time.
The images [and/or screenshots] are reproduced from the Goal Planning & Monitoring financial planning software, ©PIEtech, Inc. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
