Your Money, Your Plan!
When you take control of your finances, rather than letting them control you, you can live life more fully. Regardless of your age or life stage, you can make financial decisions that move you toward your goals.
How We Work
At Financial Plan Advisors, financial planning begins with a CFP® professional listening and conversing to understand the current investment course and the ready financial resources. A professional examination is necessary to understand concerns, resources, goals and needs. Then, after we identify the important elements, we assemble our experience and resources to distill an individual's financial situation, even complicated financial situations, into a simplified financial plan. We give clear advice and counsel about the best ways to alleviate concerns, with a balance of maximizing resources, prioritizing goals, and meeting essential needs. For investments, we develop an investment plan model for every client account based on an investment policy statement distilled from each client's unique financial situation. Then, we craft a unique investment portfolio for the client based on the client's investment plan model.
By having an investment plan model for every account that we manage and timely downloads of account holdings, we are able to systematically monitor every investment portfolio for misalignment with target allocations of the investment plan model. Periodically, and as conditions warrant, investment portfolios are rebalanced to acceptable course limits of the investment plan model. To best meet client needs, we provide advice on a fiduciary basis and also provide services to preserve wealth in dealing with income, taxes, estates and claiming social security.
We find that questions from clients abound, but the most searched for answers often revolve around the retirement threshold and the right time to retire. Financial planning in the early years can more often than not, lead to more definitive answers. Our approach to retirement is one where we practice the art of "guiding clients toward objectives and dreams through simple financial plans." This is especially true where we show clients how to use simple techniques to grasp important concepts, such as the time value of money, return on investment, and/or perpetual income generation. For example, encouraging investments in the early years to promote a 401k and wealth accumulation can lead to more retirement options. While college funding, in a tax favorable College 529, generally must take high priority in the early years, serious retirement funding cannot be deferred until the later years without negative consequence. If financial planning aimed at retirement funding, is not done in the early years, some of the strategies for claiming a pension or maximizing social security may be lost because of inadequate savings or growth. In later years when the retirement threshold is better sighted, the elements of net worth begin to settle out. Balances in employer tax deferred accounts, like a 401(k) or 403(b), can be better quantified for a future lump sum rollover. Liabilities and mortgages can be reduced, or paid off. Business valuations, charitable bequests, and any inheritance money can be better estimated. Therefore, the right time to retire is a personal choice about preparation, lifestyle, and retirement options.
