By Chris Palabe, CFS®, AIF®
With a world of information at our fingertips, we can find reviews, history, product specifications, and more details than we’ll ever need about anything we want to buy. In other words, before making a major purchase, we can arm ourselves with information to make the best choice possible.
While creating a financial plan is in a different category than buying a car or putting an offer on a home, we believe it’s just as significant of an investment and you should know what you’re getting before you pay a penny.
We develop custom financial plans for each client to fit their lifestyle and their goals. However, we wanted to share what your potential financial plan could look like so you can picture the depth of our analysis and how this understanding can benefit your future financial life. If you choose to work with us, here is a sample of what you can expect.
What Does a Financial Plan Include?
First, you may be wondering about what goes into a comprehensive plan. Financial plans often address a myriad of concerns and goals, from college planning to retirement income strategizing. Depending on your needs, your plan may narrow in on one element or address multiple goals you’d like to achieve over time, such as optimizing your tax situation, maximizing your retirement savings distributions, and creating a lifetime income strategy. Whatever you choose to focus on, your financial plan is designed to serve as your road map, helping you navigate the years before, during, and after your transition to retirement.
We believe a good financial plan should give you a detailed, complete view of your current financial situation, a thorough modeling of where you want to be, and the actions you need to take to pursue those goals. It should address all the pieces of your financial puzzle, from stresses and fears to your values and dreams, and include risk factors, cash flow, retirement, estate planning, taxes, education, and income strategies to help bring you clarity and guidance. It is through our planning process that we can help you prepare for life’s expected and unexpected circumstances.
The result is a simple yet powerful blueprint to guide you toward financial freedom.
Let’s Take a Closer Look
Here is a sample financial plan that reflects our planning process. It looks at a fictional pre-retiree client’s lifestyle income plan and how we developed it, including identifying their goals, creating a balance sheet, reviewing their cash flow, and more.
Keep in mind that this is only a hypothetical plan presented to illustrate what a client’s plan may resemble should they work with us. The characters and circumstances are completely fictional and are for illustrative purposes only. Be sure to seek the advice of a qualified professional for your particular situation and not rely upon any of the information herein to make personal financial decisions.
We provide an overview of your current situation. With just one glance, you can see a big picture of your financial life, including assets broken down into specific categories and short-term and long-term liabilities.
When it comes to investments, we will analyze your current investment holdings and compare your current portfolio with our recommended portfolio to see the difference it could make in the long term.
Because we know firsthand the importance of tax planning and how taxes can eat away at your hard-earned savings, we create a distribution strategy that seeks to maximize your wealth and make your money last longer. We start by analyzing your savings vehicles, dividing them up based on their tax liability.
Then we find strategies to improve your tax efficiency. That may include converting tax-deferred accounts to tax-free accounts, such as a Roth IRA to avoid paying taxes in retirement.
Because the future is uncertain, we use a Monte Carlo simulation to test your financial plan. A Monte Carlo simulation runs 1,000 hypothetical simulations of your plan using different, randomized stock market outcomes to determine the probability of success for your plan. We run an initial test based on your current scenario and then collaborate with you to tweak different variables—like retirement age, goal spending, savings amounts, and others—to come up with a plan that can have a high probability of success and feels good to you.
In addition to a detailed study of each of your goals and a clearly mapped-out plan that leaves no stone unturned, including Social Security claiming strategies and Medicare planning, we also create a risk management plan to cover your bases and give you increased confidence. The end result? An actionable implementation list and a road map for your future.
We also offer a secure mobile app from RightCapital, which allows you to quickly and easily see your progress and check in on your accounts on the go.
Get Started on Your Plan!
If you want to see even more features of our financial plans, download our full sample plan here. Once you’ve taken a look, reach out to us at Palabe Wealth today to schedule a 15-minute introductory phone call or call us at 847-249-6600 to learn if we are the right fit for your financial goals.
About Chris
Chris Palabe is the founder and CEO of Palabe Wealth, a financial planning firm providing retirement plan strategies for businesses and individuals. For 25 years, Chris has been serving his clients with customized plans and a boutique approach. He started his firm because of his passion for making a difference in others’ lives and a genuine desire to build long-term relationships with his clients so they can seek to achieve their ideal retirement and manage risk. Chris is a Certified Fund Specialist® (CFS®) and Accredited Investment Fiduciary® (AIF®) professional and has a degree from Université Denis Diderot (Paris VII). When he’s not working, you can usually find him riding horses and competing in dressage at a national level. He also loves reading, watching movies, and eating out. To learn more about Chris, connect with him on LinkedIn.
Traditional IRA account owners have considerations to make before performing a Roth IRA conversion. These primarily include income tax consequences on the converted amount in the year of conversion, withdrawal limitations from a Roth IRA, and income limitations for future contributions to a Roth IRA. In addition, if you are required to take a required minimum distribution (RMD) in the year you convert, you must do so before converting to a Roth IRA.
All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy ensures success or protects against loss.
This material was prepared for Palabe Wealth, Inc.’s use.