How We Help

  1. Ask why money is important to you.
    1. Be honest! Knowing why money is important to you will guide you on every financial planning decision moving forward.
  2. Guess where you want to go.
    1. Knowing where you want to go will enable you to ask for the directions.
  3. Know your starting point.
    1. In order to get where you want to go, it’s important to know where you are starting. Your net worth — how much you have in assets, and what your liabilities are is the starting point.
  4. Think of budgeting as a tool for awareness.
    1. Most people base tend to base spending decisions on emotional reasons, and then go looking for evidence to support that decision We should be more deliberate about our purchases. Budgeting can help to turn around bad spending habits, but it shouldn’t be seen as a punishment.
    2. Budgeting should instead be seen as a tool for tracking spending. The process of tracking will equal awareness and awareness will equal behavioral change, leading your spending to align with your goals.
  5. Save as much as you reasonably can.
    1. If you do this early work, where you’ve gotten clear with your values, and you have some awareness, then savings is a natural outgrowth of that.
  6. Buy enough insurance.
    1. People make two mistakes with insurance.
      1. First, they put off buying it — either because it doesn’t seem urgent if their health is good or because it involves having a conversation most people would rather avoid.
      2. Second, they let fear drive their decision when purchasing insurance.
    2. Insurance is about replacing economic loss, not emotional loss, if you view it in that cold hard light, you just have to calculate what that loss will be and find the cheapest insurance to do the job
  7. Remember that paying off debt is a great investment.
    1. People are notoriously bad at calculating the cost associated with borrowing.
  8. Invest like a scientist.
    1. Don’t take recommendations from friends, go with gut feelings or by what you hear in the news without doing your own research.
    2. There is a basic formula for successful investing,
      1. First, diversify your portfolio.
      2. Second, keep your costs low.
      3. Third, recognize the correlation between risk and reward.
  9. Hire a TRUE consultant.
    1. When looking for help, choose someone who is solving your problems, not selling you something, and who is open about conflicts of interest.
  10. Follow your Plan.
    1. Having the plan in the first place will help you stick to your goals. Automating your decisions so you don’t have to rely on yourself to keep making good choices over and over again. Then, be sure to leave your plan alone. “Would you ever plant a tree and then go in every month and dig it up to see how the roots are doing?”