If you haven’t worked with an advisor before (or if you have and it wasn’t the best experience), a question I imagine you have is “what the hell is financial planning?” The term itself is kind of obvious, but it’s also really vague.
What is a “Financial Plan?”
I try to think a lot in analogies, so the best one I have is…
“If your money was a video game, financial planning is your strategy guide.”
Our initial planning process at 1Up culminates with me giving you a physical plan.
This “plan” essentially outlines where you currently are financially and where you want to be. To create your plan, we’ll start at the finish line.
For example, Ocarina of Time is my favorite game, so if you think about beating Ganondorf – Link knows he can’t just stroll into the castle and beat him. You have to go around Hyrule to become stronger and pick up the right items.
Same with your money. Think about what beating the boss looks like for you – in other words what do you WANT out of the next 10 years? Do you want to buy a house? Have savings to pay for your kid’s college? What would make you PSYCHED to look at your bank account?
We’ll start with those goals, and work backwards to figure out what “items” you need to get there.
How We Get There – Meeting Process
To be less analogous, it usually takes us 4-5 meetings over the next 3-6 months to come up with your plan. This gives us time to cover topics like:
- Managing your income & cash flow
- Retirement planning (early retirement, if you’re so keen)
- Business planning
- Healthcare & Insurance
…just to name a few.
In my head this feels a little intangible though…so it’s really important to think about one tangible thing you’ll get – the actual PLAN.
**I have a sample one-page financial plan that you can download from the video description on YouTube.
ONE PAGE? Yep. I’ll be doing another video in the future to show you what it all means. At a lot of other firms, your plan could actually extend 70+ pages. Are we doing less work than them? Nope.
I think my job as your advisor is to be able to summarize in one page for you exactly what you need & what we’ll be doing. Trust me, I love finance and I can’t even get myself to read a 70+ page plan.
How do the Meetings Work?
So to give you a taste of this process, if you look on our website, you’ll see the “Schedule a Consultation” button.
If you were to click this, it’ll take you to my Calendly page where you can set up a free intro call.
This is just the first step, and we don’t even typically get into numbers. We’ll talk about what you’re looking for in an advisor, as well as your goals for life, family, and business.
After that meeting, if we decide that we’re a good fit to work together, we’ll schedule a Discovery meeting. This is where we’ll start at the surface of your money and start drawing up potential strategies to match your goals.
From this point, you’ll become a client and we’ll get this show on the road. After those two initial meetings, we’ll get into actually building your plan.
What Happens After That?
I’ve also talked about the plan a lot up to this point…what happens after?
That is when you’ll transition to our ongoing planning – we’ll meet 2-4 times over the next year, where we can reevaluate your plan and make any changes. We all know life is RNG, so the changes are coming – Sponsorship or other cool offers? Baby on the way? New house and mortgage? We’ll find the right path for you.
If you’re interested in getting started there are a few options for you…
- You can set up a free intro call
- Check our Services page
- Sign up for the monthly newsletter at the bottom of this page!
Let’s take your money to the next level. Together!
