Our Financial Planning Process For High-Earners

1. Identify Goals.
2. Assess your current financial position.
3. Identify your income sources and assess the reliability of each.
4. Assess tax plan and its efficiency.
5. Evaluate risks including liability, healthcare, estate, and investment.
6. Present financial plan and walk through online dashboards.
7. Onboard Investments
8. Update and review your financial plan, budget, and goals at least once per year to ensure your success.

Here’s more detail for each step:

1. Identify goals. – The first step in working with any financial planner is to set goals. This typically includes short-term (1-5 years), mid-term (5-10 years), and long-term (10+). This may include buying a rental property or a second home, paying for children’s college, retiring at 45 years old or or or. Whatever your financial goals may be, we’ve probably helped other people reach them before you. We’ll make sure that all the most up-to-date tax code is incorporated into your financial decisions at every step.
2. Assess your current financial position – We’ll want insight into every part of your financial life. This will include your employer benefits, employer equity, savings, spending, debt, earning ability, insurance, estate documents, and expected inheritances. The reason being is, that we need to understand where you are financially before we can help you identify your strengths, areas of opportunity, threats, and most importantly, your weaknesses.
3. Identify your income sources and assess the reliability of each – A huge assumption that many financial planners make that may or may not be accurate is the reliability of your income. High-earning individuals are the most likely to be laid off from any group because you’re an expensive asset for your company to employ. The minute things get bad for your company… you could be out of a job. We’ll help you to plan for losing your job and when it happens, we’ll help you find the right one and negotiate for the appropriate salary as well.
4. Assess tax plan and its efficiency – If you earn well over $300,000 a year, you probably know how big your tax bill is every year. In addition, the hard truth is, even if you work with a CPA, you probably are missing out on tax planning opportunities because your CPA is incredibly unlikely to help you plan for your future (they don’t give forward-looking advice… that’s a financial planners job). Once a year, we’ll review your 1040, planned purchases, and goals and as part of this, we’ll help you understand the most tax-efficient way to plan for your future and your today.
5. Evaluate risks including liability, healthcare, estate, and investment – We live in expensive and litigious times and it’s important to prepare for this. One lawsuit, healthcare emergency, poor investment, or untimely death and you could cost yourself and your family more money than what you’d like. We’ll help you to understand how to make these risks most efficiently.
6. Present Financial Plan, Implement the Plan, and Walk Through Dashboards – Once we’ve gathered all your data and created your plan to remain tax efficient, low risk, and have a stable income, we’ll present the plan to you and walk you through the steps you’ll have to follow to reach financial freedom. Your tasks will be all included on your dashboard on our financial planning software and budgeting software.
7. Onboard Investments – Once we’ve agreed to your financial plan, we’ve created an implementation plan and walked you through each dashboard that tracks and monitors your progress, we’ll discuss the next steps with onboarding your accounts. Our online account setup process is incredibly simple and easy to go through. In 5 minutes your accounts are set up and your transfer has been initiated. You’ll be able to view your accounts via mobile app or on the website.
8. Update and review your financial plan, budget, and goals at least once per year to ensure your success. – Arguably the most important step in any financial plan is monitoring. Your life, goals, earning ability, family, and financial position will change and we want your plan to change with it.

Pricing for Wealth Management and Financial Planning, combined:

• 1% of the account value is the only fee you’ll pay us and the % fee goes down as your net worth increases.
• In exchange, you’ll have a team of professionals to ensure that your financial life is managed properly and your retirement is affordable, your taxes are prepared and optimized and your financial life is managed as perfectly as we can.

If you’d be interested in learning more about how we can help, click on the link below to schedule an appointment.

Why We Use The Financial Planning Process That We Do

Your financial future is impossible to tell. You could have a perfect, inexpensive future and win the lottery so everything is affordable but more likely than not, you will probably have some obstacles throughout your life that you may need help overcoming.

Our process is set up to serve you whether you have a perfect future, a normal one, or a tragic one so your financial plan can help you pivot as your life changes. We’ll meet up at least twice a year to discuss your budget, your health, your plans, and your goals to make sure that you’re on track to afford each step of the way as tax-efficiently and simply as possible.