What Your Financial Plan Should Include
The key to creating a successful financial plan is ensuring that it covers your current and future financial needs. The best way to determine your particular needs is by spending time with your financial advisor considering your options, defining your goals, and evaluating your resources.
The following are some common areas to consider when planning your financial future:
Monthly Budget
Addressing your monthly budget is an important first step in successfully managing your overall finances. Failing to have a clear picture of your regular recurring bills and expenses can dramatically reduce your ability to meet your financial objectives.
Savings
Fundamental to building a secure, manageable future is saving for the unexpected as well as the expected. Saving is easier if you “pay yourself first” and build in automatic savings into your budget.
Risk Management
Risk can take many forms: illness, accident, liability, and natural disasters, to name a few. Failing to manage risk properly can jeopardize your financial future. That’s why smart financial planning evaluates the various levels and types of insurance you carry to make sure they’re aligned with your overall goals and needs. In many cases, insurance can also be used effectively as an alternative revenue stream and a hedge against inflation and riskier types of investments.
Life insurance policies contain exclusions, limitations, reductions of benefits, and terms for keeping them in force. Your financial professional can provide you with costs and complete details.
Education Funding
The costs of education for children and grandchildren can be staggering and are seemingly always on the rise. Education is often one of the largest expenses you’ll incur. Arm yourself with current information about the variety of proactive education savings vehicles that can help you plan your funding goals while manage exposure to big surprises or long-term debt.
Retirement Planning
Social Security benefits, employer-sponsored plans, and personal retirement savings including investments, IRAs, and annuities typically combine to comprise the retirement income for most Americans. Deciding which retirement choices will serve you best can be daunting, but your financial professional can guide you to the options that will support and enhance your overall investment and tax strategies.
Estate Planning
Your legacy is in your hands. Only through diligent monitoring can you be assured that your assets will be transferred effectively and according to your wishes to the people and charities you care about most. Establishing trusts, regularly reviewing your legal documents and beneficiary designations, and examining tax implications for survivors are vital to establishing a plan that provides you and your loved ones with greater confidence and security.
Overcoming Objections to Financial Planning
As you consider contacting your financial advisor to pursue financial planning, you may have thought about the following:
“It’s too much work.”
Your advisor is specially equipped with the tools and experience to help you build a customized plan with the least amount of work for you.
“It’s too expensive.”
The fees for working with your financial advisor to create and monitor your plan are likely to be small compared to the opportunity cost of not managing your money in an effective, long-term manner. Managing your money is much like managing a business, and financial planning is a small investment with the potential to help you achieve your goals.
“It’s too late.”
It’s never too late to start planning. Whether you’re just beginning the accumulation phase of your career or have already gathered a substantial nest egg, financial planning can be valuable. Pre-retirees and those in retirement may find themselves struggling to protect their wealth, and having a plan in place, especially during uncertain economic times, can be comforting and rewarding.
“I can do it myself.”
There are many online resources that will help you get started with financial planning. However, some use a one-size-fits-all approach that doesn’t customize its process for your unique needs. You aren’t able to test models against risks or make any changes based on your situation. Your professional financial advisor has received specialized training and has the tools to prepare an individualized plan that maps your financial future. In addition, a professional financial advisor can guide you through implementing your plan, provide advice on revisions, when necessary, and help you monitor your progress toward making your goals a reality.
Getting Started
Let your advisor know that you want the benefits of financial planning for you and your loved ones and schedule an appointment to begin the process.
The more information you provide your advisor the better. Even if you drop off a box filled with your essential financial records, that’s often enough to allow your advisor to start creating your customized financial plan.
Once your plan has been created, you and your advisor will review it regularly to help you stay on track towards your goals. As life changes, so does your financial situation. Your financial advisor will strategize with you to help you address these changes and keep you on the path to financial success.
Reach out to me for your comprehensive financial planning today!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is no guarantee that the implementation of a financial plan will yield positive results. LPL Financial Advisors offer access to trust services through The Private Trust Company, N.A. an affiliate of LPL Financial.
Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor, member FINRA/SIPC. Genesis Wealth Management, LLC is not an affiliate company of LPL Financial.