The financial plan is your road map as you travel through retirement.  Life is filled with twists and turns and this roadmap helps you stay on track to achieve your financial goals.  As you approach retirement, your goals need to be clarified and may change along the way.  Once retired, it is important to understand that the planning does not stop.  Monitoring the different areas of the financial plan becomes essential to ensuring that you continue to meet your day to day needs and future goals. 

You cannot make decisions in one area of your financial world without impacting other areas.  Our financial plan will allow you to make informed decisions with confidence and full understanding of all of the ramifications of those decisions. 

There are 5 steps to our financial planning process:

	1. Establish Engagement – We first determine what you hope to achieve from your financial plan.  From this we determine areas of most concern to you and to establish your priorities.  This better enables us to customize your planning experience to provide you with the greatest value.  We establish our responsibilities to you and your responsibilities to us, which includes a discussion about the cost of the financial plan.  We always fully disclose the maximum cost of the plan.  Often, however, the plan uncovers a need for a financial product.  Should you decide to make this purchase within our firm, we will discount the cost of the plan by the net commission generated.  All commissions are fully disclosed.
	2) Information Gathering – We then gather information about you and your family. This information includes: • Identifying your current needs and establishing your future needs; • Taking stock on what you own and what you owe in your investments, real-estate, insurance, and business; • Discussing your work situation and any pensions you may have. The list of financial information required will be provided to you with the Letter of Engagement.
	3) Develop & Present Financial Plan – After reviewing your financial information, we develop a first draft of your plan. We review it with you to ensure accuracy and to make any changes or modifications, if necessary. This is a very critical testing stage which allows you to ask those important “what if” questions. We can test different scenarios to reveal potential pitfalls that may lie ahead.
	4) Recommendations & Implementation – In Stage 3, we finalize our recommendations. We will provide in-depth advice and develop an action plan to improve on your current situation or bridge any future income gaps which may exist. If you require financial products – such as investments, loans or insurance -to help meet your goals, we will assist you by researching the best product with the highest benefits for the cost.
	5) Ongoing Maintenance – An initial financial plan may help you put measures in place to secure your financial future – but, it is never really finished. It is a dynamic process which should be refined and updated as changes occur throughout your life and as you re-define your personal goals. We will be available to assist you with any future financial decisions, exploring with you all the possible options available and implications of those decisions.