Our Services
Financial Planning
Building A Long-Term Strategy To Achieve Your Dreams
Financial Planning is the foundation of wealth-building. It is so important, in fact, that every Strait & Sound client receives their own unique financial plan, customized to their long-term goals. At Strait & Sound, we believe Financial Planning is an essential strategy for achieving complete financial independence – a top goal for nearly all of our clients. Given their importance, we’d like to take a few moments to explain how we develop and use financial plans.
Financial planners often build a plan, hand it to a client and recommend that they implement it. Building a plan is an important first step to financial planning, but it’s really not the complete picture. A financial plan represents the most accurate information and the best set of assumptions and projections that can be made at a moment in time. But as the old saying holds, time changes everything.
The unique financial plans we build for each client serve as a roadmap to understand where they want to go and how they’ll get there. In this sense, Financial Planning is never really done. A plan that sits on a shelf collecting dust is about as valuable as a roadmap that never gets used. It won’t take you anywhere.
This is why our approach to Financial Planning is to use it much the way a navigator guides a journey. We use the plan all the time, in every way possible. This greatly increases the odds that the plan will actually help our clients achieve their goals. How do we use financial plans?
- Some clients meet with us quarterly or at some other interval (depending on their needs). With every client, we hold a comprehensive annual review to track progress. The financial plan serves as the framework for these meetings to ensure our focus remains on your long-term goals. During these check-in sessions, we review your progress against the plan to see if you are on-track or need to make some adjustments.
- When a client tells us that they’ve been thinking about making a big financial decision, we ask them – “how will this impact your plan?” If they don’t know, we help them analyze a range of possible outcomes so they understand the full impact of the decision.
- When something significant changes in a client’s life, we seek to understand how this will impact their plan and adjust accordingly. Major events can include the birth of a child or grandchild, the passing of a loved one, the inheritance of wealth, losing a job or starting a business, a child graduating from college, divorce or marriage. All of these events can impact a financial plan significantly.
- A financial plan serves as something of a social compact between us and our clients. The plans we develop are based on an in-depth review of what clients tell us they really want to achieve. We use the plans to ask our clients to commit to achieving those goals. We also use the plans to hold our clients accountable to do the things that only they can do – like living within their means, saving, investing and making smart decisions.
Key Take Away
“The unique financial plans we build for each client serve as a roadmap to understand where they want to go and how they’ll get there.”
Our Approach To Financial Planning
We build financial plans for each client after we’ve conducted deep-dive discovery on what matters most to them. During the discovery process, we come to understand everything possible about what a client is trying to achieve and why that matters to them. This means we go well beyond just seeking to understand income sources, expenses, assets, liabilities and cash-flows. These are important inputs into the financial plan. But the plan needs to point to a horizon: the ideal future-life our clients want to live.
This is why the financial plans we develop are based on probabilities of certain outcomes, if our clients follow the plan in full measure. To develop these plans, we practice an inter-disciplinary approach where each client’s situation is reviewed by more than one professional. Our staff have earned advanced certifications including the Certified Financial Planner® and the Chartered Financial Analyst® designations. This inter-disciplinary approach produces a well-rounded set of perspectives that enrich our counsel and benefit our clients.
The projections we develop often create a real sense of excitement about the future in the minds of our clients. They look forward to their future and know that they’ve taken the best possible steps to achieving their goals. This can lead to real peace of mind.
Who Is Your Long-term Partner?
A financial plan is only as good as it is implemented. This is why our clients trust and admire us. They know that we will deploy best-practices to develop the plan and we’ll hold them accountable over time to actually achieve it. This raises an important question. Who is helping you achieve your long-term plans and how confident are you in that process?
We Provide Comprehensive Wealth Management Services For People Seeking Complete Financial Independence
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