What We Do Financial Planning

Your Roadmap to Success

Successful financial planning requires a thorough, workable plan, or road map. In order to design that plan, RightPath™ Investments & Financial Planning uses a six-step process. First, we help you to discover what is important to you about money. From that understanding, we establish a written financial plan that considers both financial and non-financial goals in a manner that helps to define your financial lifestyle. That plan becomes the guide that we follow together.

Our six-step financial planning process takes on different forms for different people. Investors in need of the simplest plans, with one or two specific goals, might be focused on the following items:

• A child's education
• Buying or selling a business
• Funding retirement
• Establishing a philanthropic legacy

Those seeking a more complex, highly integrated plan may be engaged in some of these issues:

• Creating a holistic financial lifestyle that addresses a broad range of needs and personal values
• Integrating their business, employee and personal business considerations
• Long-term planning for a foundation or other investment-driven institution

Most investors will fall somewhere in between the two; our goal is to ensure that your road map suits the place from which you are starting and addresses where you want to go. This map should include six fundamental phases, which, you will find, each logically flow from one to the next:

• Establish, Review or Revise Financial Lifestyle & Goals
  If you are just starting your financial planning, begin with this phase. As mentioned previously, it allows you to define what is important to you about money and establish some goals based upon those priorities. If you are already engaged in financial planning, you will want to periodically return to this phase for two reasons: to see if your feelings about money have changed and to review your goals—and change them if need be—for relevance to your current priorities.

• Gather the Data
  Once you have your feelings, priorities and goals in mind, begin collecting the relevant information. This information will cover several areas:
• current planning status
• personal style and risk tolerance
• goals
• expenses and income
• assets and liabilities
• tax projections

• Analyze the Data
  Having all of the pertinent information in one place permits you to assess it. This assessment is essentially the process of placing your information into context regarding your goals, the limitations and opportunities presented by our economic realities, and the experience you and your planner bring to the table. Once your information is placed in context—for example, how many years you have to reach a desired portfolio size and what return will be required to get there—we can help you set realistic priorities and identify several possible scenarios for achieving your goals. The tools we will use to accomplish this analysis range from sophisticated planning and investment software to fundamental common sense. The results that we achieve from this analysis leads directly into the development of your plan.

• Develop a Plan
  Together, we can apply what we learned from analyzing your data to a realistic plan for accomplishing your goals, by picking the best—and most likely—scenarios from the analysis phase. By establishing timelines and milestones based on your data, you will literally have a map to show you how to get from where you are today to where you want to be in the future. Part of building a good map is identifying both the opportunities and the pitfalls that go hand-in-hand with a given scenario; your plan should prepare you for at least some of the up-and-downs that go along with investing and give you a strong foundation of what to look for as your plan unfolds.

• Implement the Plan
  Now, you will want to set out down the road we have identified in your plan. Embarking will probably mean establishing and implementing a clear, written Investment Policy Statement, that identifies the appropriate asset allocation and money managers for your investments. It may also include making some estate planning and wealth management choices. Regardless of the specific steps relevant to your needs, the plan will help you decide what to do and when.

• Monitor the Plan
  As time passes, are you sticking to your plan? Is your plan leading you where you want to go? Regularly asking such questions and evaluating the answers will help to determine how well your road map is working. Such monitoring also naturally leads you back to a review of your financial personality and goals. You are probably already familiar with some of the methods used here, such as monitoring of periodic reports, checking returns and portfolio rebalancing. We help you to monitor and manage the entire process, from money manager performance to changes in your risk/return profile. That also means helping you to keep track of changes in your estate plan, such as legacy goals, family changes, asset changes, tax law changes, and changes to your choice of fiduciaries.