How do you know if you’re on track to reach your financial goals if you don’t have a clear view of them? It can be hard to zoom out enough to create your goal plan, but it’s vitally important because every decision you make now will either take you closer or farther from those goals in the future.
Come along with us and create your goal plan today, or schedule an appointment with us and we can do it together:
1. Defining Your Goals
It’s time to get to know yourself and what’s really important. Use our questionnaire to help you determine what matches your reality and what you value. You can find it here.
If you’re having trouble picturing your goals, our dream book exercise is a great way to start brainstorming. Every week, take about 15 minutes to sit down with a notebook and think back about all the things you’ve ever pictured doing. Did you once have a dream of visiting Ireland? Write it down! Over a few months you’ll compile your dream book and we can work with you to fit it into your goals for retirement. See some of the goals our other clients have achieved here, or email us if you’d like some more dream book inspiration.
2. Expense Goals
You have a list of all your dreams, but how much will it cost to achieve them? Time to put on your investigator hat and dig into researching the cost of each dream, so you can really evaluate what is reasonable and what is not. If you’re looking at retirement, then write down your current expenses and how they are likely to change in the future.
3. Number Crunching
With the grand total of each dream in hand, let’s break down how you’re going to fund those dreams. What assets do you have now? What are you planning on saving in the future? If you’re doing this on your own then you’re likely going to have a lot of number crunching. For our clients, we use an in-house software platform to calculate your predicted success in several different scenarios, so we can find the plan that’s just right for you!
4. Drafting a Plan
After we find a scenario we think fits, we create your initial plan draft – emphasis on draft. More often than not, you’ll want to change something to make this plan more comfortable for you.
5. Understanding Your Plan
Here’s where we tweak your plan until we’re all confident. For our clients, we use our in-house software to formulate your probability of success, but what does that success mean? How much should you rely on this success probability? We’ll adjust each scenario with minor changes to show you how it changes your overall success probability until you fully understand how certain changes can affect your future.
6. Your Goal Plan in Action
You have to remember that this plan is a living breathing document. Life is always subject to change, and your plan should reflect that. Update your plan every few years or even annually depending on how many changes you’re making.
Our Goal Plan Process gives you a clear view of what decisions match your reality with your expectations as closely as possible. Let’s get started!
