Our first step in working with you is to help you articulate and organize your unique set of questions. We accomplish this in three steps:
Have an initial (strictly confidential) meeting in which we discuss your family, work, lifestyle, plans for the future, hopes, dreams, and resources
After this initial meeting, we gather and analyze the “primary source documents” of your financial life, seeking to understand your current arrangements and what other options you might have available
We meet again to review our findings, which we express as your personal set of questions; should you choose to hire us to help with your financial planning, the main “deliverable” of our work is to identify the optimal answers to your questions, given your unique financial situation and how you want to live your life
Here’s an example of the actual set of questions we identified for one of the families we work with:
1. How much money are we spending each year, how is it allocated across different categories of expenses and what changes, if any, do we want to make?
2. How should our retirement Gameplan look, feel, and operate?
3. How can we most optimally provide the financial foundation that our sons will need to grow into educated, productive, and well-adjusted adults?
4. How can we maximize the value that we derive as shareholders in a private business partnership?
5. How should our contingency plans for various financial risks (such as death or disability) ideally look, and what role should various types of insurance play in these plans?
6. How can we minimize our overall tax burden, both short-term and long-term?
7. What sort of estate documents should we have, what should they say, and what do we need to do once they’re executed?
