When you meet with me, I have several goals. Obviously, I have to help you decide if it makes sense to hire me. To do that, I have to know what your financial resources are and what you hope to achieve over time using those resources. From this, we can define the financial planning and related legal work that needs to be done. Sometimes, there are items you may want to do yourself, not just to save a fee but also to stay in touch with your own finances. Other times, the issues get complex and you need an expert to create the strategy and implement it for you.
After I give my “verbal resume” to describe who I am, I ask people to start by telling me about yourselves and how you got to where you are today. We then talk about what you want to achieve: retirement, college funding, estate planning, tax savings, cash management, etc. From there, I ask questions about you cash balances, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, 401(k) plans, IRAs, home value, mortgages, other debts, life insurance, etc. This gives me a sense for how close you are to
meeting your goals, how you think about what you have and how best to quantify the goals so we can devise the best strategies. I may ask you to provide me with brokerage or retirement plan statements, for example.
The second meeting is the plan presentation, where we begin by reviewing the balance sheet that I created from your information. From this, we cost out your goals, such as retirement and college education, and evaluate your insurance. We use the review of your asset allocation to tell you if the investment program you have will fund the goals. Then we delve deeper into our strategy recommendation for your situation, keeping in mind how you approach personal finances. At the
end of this meeting, we created a “to do” list, identifying what we will do and what you will do to implement your financial plan.