This blog is for seniors who have doubts about their financial futures.
When I first started out offering long term comprehensive financial life planning services a couple decades ago, I focused on young people because that’s where I could have the biggest impact.
The ideal candidate for such services was someone who was settled, succeeding in their chosen profession or other line of work, newly married (or relatively so), and maybe with children, though the existence of offspring or even a spouse was not a requirement.
But I was disappointed to find out that the potential clients who met these criteria generally were not thinking about their long term financial security. They were barely coping with having become their parents.
Estate, insurance, Social Security, or Medicare planning were not top priorities. Learning how using the tax laws combined with the miracle of compounding could be used to create millions of dollars in future wealth and income were great topics – but for another time when I’m not so busy.
Instead, I’ve been approached by a number of seniors (generally late 50s and early 60s) who were interested in financial life planning, but with an emphasis on retirement planning.
So I’ve decided to offer a revised financial life planning experience for seniors that has fewer bell and whistles. We won’t discuss some of the issues that face younger clients. Instead we will focus on issues important to clients who are a few years away from transitioning to “retirement,” the meaning of which will be a topic of conversation itself.
Besides discussing Social Security, Medicare, investment, estate, and tax planning, we will put up the Crystal Wall to see how close you are to being able to transition to the next stage of life, whether you call it retirement or something else. The Crystal Wall helps determine whether your goals and resources match and, if they don’t, what we need to do to make them match.
The fee for this engagement is $3,000 ($5,000 for the full plan for younger people). The fee covers all follow up meetings for as long as I’m around.
I want to make something very clear because I find that a lot of clients still don’t understand financial life planning. I am not a money manager. I do not sell financial products. I do not charge a fee that is a percentage of anything. I sell advice. I help people make wise decisions. And although I may make investment recommendations as part of the plan, I do not receive any compensation from those recommendations. I am a fiduciary. A real one. Not a TV one.
Here are links to my website to help you better understand how a financial planner is different from a money manager or financial advisor.
https://www.lotusfinancialsvcs.com/Jims-Journey-to-Financial-Life-Planning.1.htm