What to Expect from the BYH Financial Planning Process
What you want out of life, what you value, and what's most important is unique to you. That means the precise work you do with your financial planner may look different than the next person, because you're working with different variables. But it's scary to leap into something that has the ability to transform your life, like financial planning, without any tangible idea of what that process will look like.
Use this high-level overview to get a feel for the steps we'll take together in our financial planning programs.
This financial planning process is designed to help you start making better decisions and allow you to use your money as a tool to live the life you want. This is the framework that will take you from second-guessing whether you're making all the right moves to the clarity you need to create, build, and keep wealth.
Get Organized
You have a lot of financial accounts: bank accounts, investment accounts, retirement accounts, health savings accounts… the list can go on and on. You also have credit cards, mortgages, student loans, insurance policies, employer benefits -- and that doesn’t even get into whether or not you have the estate plan you need, college savings for your kids, and more.
That’s a lot of financial stuff, and it’s easy to lose track of exactly what everything is, where these accounts are, and why you have them. It's also easy to miss opportunities to add zeros to your net worth if things slip through the cracks. We get organized first because we don't want you to lose any advantage you have when it comes to growing wealth.
We’ll take a look at what you have (and don’t have) to understand your current financial picture. This allows us to examine where we need to make adjustments in order to achieve what you want with your money -- and again, to identify all the opportunities to maximize your money that you may not be taking advantage of right now.
Set Priorities
Goal-setting can sound a little tedious and mundane. This step is anything but. We're talking about your priorities, what you want to enjoy more of, and what you want to have in your life.
We’ll discuss your thoughts and ideas and explore your opportunities for doing more with your money. Next, we’ll identify what matters most to you and determine how we can leverage your money as a tool to get closer to what's most important. Then, we’ll decide which of your goals gets top priority and which ones you’ll focus on in the future.
Don't have specific goals, or a solid idea of exactly what you want to do? That's okay. Financial planning is designed to help you enjoy more of what you love. You don't need a list of goals. You just need to know what you value. And we can work through that together so we can then build a specific plan for your finances that allows you to get in action.
Create a Strategy
Now you’re ready to get into action and take specific, deliberate, strategic action to go from where you are today to where you would rather be right now and into the future. We’ll look at the various paths you could take to enjoy more of what you want, then choose the one allows you to spend on what you care about right now while also building wealth for the future. We’ll make decisions like:
- How to manage your cash flow to get more from your money
- What your spending plan includes
- How to best repay existing debts
- Where you should be saving (and how much you should be putting away)
- How to invest to meet your goals and grow wealth
- What opportunities you should take advantage of to increase your net worth
- What accounts you need to open or close and which policies you need to update or change
We also evaluate what adjustments you need to make in your financial life to set you up for success.
Explore Additional Opportunities
You need to know how to best use your money to achieve what you want and grow your wealth. We’ll explore various tools and solutions that you can use to help accelerate your progress to financial freedom, including financially savvy ways to use health savings accounts, Roth IRAs, investment accounts, different insurance policies, employee stock purchase plans and other compensation or benefits, real estate, and more.
When we discuss opportunities that are relevant to you, we’ll create an investment strategy that meets your needs while balancing factors like your time horizon and appetite for risk.
Implement and Make Progress
You now have a financial foundation and a process to use moving forward. This is where we get to flip the “ON” switch and start implementing your financial plan. Together, we’ll take actions that include:
- Opening the right accounts
- Setting up automatic contributions and transfers
- Providing guidance when you have questions or run into an obstacle
- Investing to grow wealth (and ensuring you stay on track even when markets get turbulent)
- Plugging into a pre-vetted network of CPAs, attorneys, mortgage brokers, and other experts to help you accomplish every step of your financial plan
Beyond Your Hammock provides the accountability, guidance, and coaching you need to get out there and play your best financial game. Not only will your advisor give you actual advice, but feedback, too. Just like a personal trainer pushes you to get more from every rep in the gym, your advisor will coach you to get more from every dollar you use or invest.
Review and Adjust
If there’s one thing we can guarantee, it’s that life changes. Financial plans should evolve and change, too. We’ll periodically review and adjust your strategy so that it remains in line with your current views about the present and the future.
Whether something unexpected happens or you simply change your mind, we want to ensure the actions you take always move you toward your goals and financial freedom.