How to Prepare for our First Financial Planning Meeting

The Process

For many, the gathering of the information needed to create your own, personalized set of projections, can be the most daunting part of our work together. The good news is, you will only have to do this one time!

• The goal for our first session is to get a good overview of your financial situation today.  This can be either 100% accurate up to the current period, or it could be estimates based on where you were at year end, for example.  We’ll get to the nitty gritty in the end, but we don’t need to start there to get an idea of your financial health for our first meeting.
• Do the best you can to begin this work.  I will send you a link to a secure client portal where you can enter in the numbers. Starting is usually the hardest part, but once you get going it is fairly simple.
• At our first meeting we will talk through your situation, questions you may have, and discuss the goals you have for our work together. At the end of our meeting we will review what you have submitted.  I will use this for the first pass at your long term financial plan.
• When we meet next to review that plan, we will troubleshoot the figures and you will help me make sure all relevant information is included and accurate.

Data Gathering via a Secure Client Portal

• I will send you an invitation via email, to create your own, unique, private registration for my client portal. This is where you will enter in your numbers.  The client portal is a great system not only for data gathering, but also can be used by both of us to share reports, data, and summaries.
• Please feel free to watch the video below to get a sense of the capabilities of this system.
• You can use this to link accounts including bank accounts, mortgages, investment accounts etc. About anything you can access via a website, can be linked to this system.
• The advantage of this is that the values will be kept up to date on a daily basis. Therefore, I will not need to get updated account values from you in the future. This will all stay up to date automatically, and this information is pulled into our planning software!  

This is the method I recommend highly for our long-term financial planning work together.

The Goal is to Make this Process as Simple as Possible

I am here to help you get control over your numbers in the most easy and simple way possible. If you have any questions while you are gathering your information, please do no hesitate to call me.    I look forward to helping you work towards your financial goals.