Your “Interactive Financial Plan” – the Only Way to Answer Your Life Questions

Have you received a free financial plan from your bank, or paid for a plan from a fee-for-service financial planner – but still don’t know the answer to your life questions?

If a financial plan does not tell you what you want to know, it is probably either because:

1. It is a “fake financial plan”. Uses rules of thumb, such as you need 70% of today’s income to retire or you will spend 20% less starting at age 80. A sales pitch in disguise. A quick & dirty job to say they did some planning and now let’s start talking about investments.
2. It is not an “Interactive Financial Plan”. One retirement option only.

A “fake plan” or non-interactive plan means you don’t have control of your future. When you get to retirement, you will just have to settle for whatever you get.

Don’t accept a retirement that you settle for. It’s your life. “This ain’t no dress rehearsal.”

Get the freedom you want. Be confident if your future. Get your “Interactive Financial Plan” and design exactly the life you want!

What is an “Interactive Financial Plan”? What is the process of creating it? Why is it the only way for you to get exactly what you want out of life?

What is an “Interactive Financial Plan”?

An “interactive financial plan” means you work interactively through many possible life scenarios to choose the one that is best for you. It allows you to make your life choices with full knowledge of how they will affect you. It takes into account the exact lifestyle you want to retire with, how soon you can have the option to retire, how much you save, what investment methods you use, what financial strategies you use, etc.

The 10 most common life questions people that come to us want answered are:

• When can I retire with the lifestyle I want?
• How much do I need to have to retire confidently?
• What is the smartest thing to do with my money? What should I focus on?
• How can I pay the least lifetime tax?
• How much should I contribute to my RRSP or TFSA or something else?
• How do I setup my retirement income most effectively, reliably & tax-efficiently?
• Can I achieve a type of FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early)?
• Can I afford something special I want to do, such as retiring early, lots of travel, buying a vacation property, or helping my kids?
• When should I start CPP, OAS, my pension, and convert my RRSP to RRIF? How can I avoid the clawbacks on the government pensions?
• Is there a hack or creative or more aggressive solution I’m missing that will help me?

To answer your questions, you need an “Interactive Financial Plan”. Look at many life options you might want. It is the only way for you to get exactly what you want out of life.

“Interactive Financial Plan” Process

The clearest wat to understand what an “Interactive Financial Plan” is and why you need one is to see the process.

With an “Interactive Financial Plan”, we help you look at many possible scenarios until you find the one that best suits your life.

For example:

• You are thinking to retire at 60, but what would you have to do to retire at 55?
• What do I have to do if I want $20,000/year for travel all my life, instead of just $10,000/year?
• How much difference does it make if I do invest more or do some strategy?
• To retire one year earlier, what specifically would I have to give up from my retirement lifestyle?

We can show you how any scenario you are thinking will affect your life in seconds.

An “Interactive Financial Plan” let’s you be creative about all your life options and decide what is really most fun or fulfilling for you.

Here is the process. It usually happens in one effective, engaging 4-5 hour meeting:

Setup Process:

1. Identify what is important to you about money.
2. Make sure we clearly understand your existing financial picture.
3. Help you imagine your desired retirement and work out in detail how much money you want per year for each expense to have your desired retirement lifestyle.
4. Ask when you would like to be able to retire and show you how close you are with what you are doing now.
5. We show you how to optimize everything you are doing now with your existing lifestyle, optimizing how to use each dollar you save, minimizing tax, investing most effectively, etc.

Interactive Process:

• If what you are doing does not achieve the financial freedom you want (most common), you have 4 options, plus many combinations of them:
  • Work longer.
  • Save more now.
  • Retire on less – and specifically which lifestyle item to reduce.
  • Do a creative/more aggressive strategy.
• If you are ahead of your goal by more than a margin of safety, then we expect you will have more money than you need for to life the life you want. We discuss with you what you really want to do with your life.
  • Same 4 options in reverse:
    • Retire sooner?
    • Save less and spend more now?
    • Retire more comfortably?
  • What do you want to do with your extra money that is the most fun or meaningful for you?
  • Do you just want to have the confidence and freedom of knowing you have more than you need or do you want to change your retirement goal?
• We show you the effect of each option you are considering. Our software allows us to show you many scenarios within seconds. For example:
  • What’s the effect if I work 1 or 2 or 3 more years?
  • What if I invest $200/month or $500/month or $1,000/month more?
  • What if I reduce my retirement travel from $20,000/year to $15,000/year or $10,000/year?
  • What’s the effect if I invest more aggressively or do a strategy like the Smith Manoeuvre, Rempel Maximum, Lifecycle Investing, or 8-Year GIS Strategy?
  • What’s the effect on my life with any combination of these?
• You decide on your financial independence/retirement goal that best suits your life, balancing the detailed lifestyle you want, how soon you get there, how much you contribute each year, and what strategies you do.
• We answer all your other financial questions, such as what are the smartest things for you to do, what is the optimal amount for you to contribute to your RRSP and TFSA, how can you pay the minimum tax, can you afford a fun expense like more travel or a cottage, what is the soonest you can retire, etc.
• We educate you on the long-term return & risk of various investment classes. Note the long-term return & risk are completely different from the short-term return & risk the investment industry preaches. Investing most effectively makes a huge difference to having the life you want.
• We look at all your other life goals and financial planning issues, including understanding how you spend your money, how to structure your debts, how much to save for your kid’s education, the emergency fund you need, the cheapest adequate insurance to protect you, and estate planning.

After the meeting, we give you a few days to think about it and sleep on it. Your eyes will be open on what is and is not possible for you. Your head may be spinning because we normally cover so much ground and answer so many questions in our meeting.

Your Financial Plan

Then our team gets together and brainstorms your Financial Plan to optimize all the details, work out the most effective use for all your contributions, work out how you can pay the lowest lifetime tax, and work out the optimal way to implement any strategies you want to do.

Then we have a second 1-2 hour meeting to read through your Financial Plan, answer all your questions, and discuss next steps. It will have 8-10 pages custom-written for you plus 10-20 pages of all the details. You can then choose to implement it yourself (all the details are there) or work with us “Full Service” to implement your Financial Plan and work with you over the years to make sure you get there.

Your “Interactive Financial Plan” gives you a new freedom because you now know the answers to all the possibilities in your life. You have a new confidence because you know exactly what your retirement lifestyle can be, how soon you can have the option to retire, and exactly what you need to do to get there.

Why is an “Interactive Financial Plan” the only way for you to get exactly what you want out of life?

The interactive process is the key. You don’t just get one scenario. You can think through your life options by testing retiring at various ages, investing various amounts each year, and seeing how much you can add to your fun activities like entertainment & travel when you retire.

We have helped many people that previously paid for a financial plan from a fee-for-service financial planner and still did not know what to do. They had a 1-2 hour meeting to ask what their goals are, and then received a financial plan in the mail a few weeks later with only the one option and saying they need to invest a huge amount like $3,000/month more to achieve it.

This is not an “Interactive Financial Plan”! It does not answer your life questions. What if you choose a different option, such as working longer or retiring on less instead? How can you balance all the options to get exactly what you want?

Don’t accept a retirement that you settle for. It’s your life. “This ain’t no dress rehearsal.”

Get the freedom you want. Be confident if your future. Get your “Interactive Financial Plan” and design exactly the life you want!

Ed