At Williams Financial, we work closely with our clients to help manage and plan your finances. In order to meet your goals, we make sure to stay in contact with you during key points throughout the year to stay up to date on life events and financial changes.
ONBOARDING FOR NEW CLIENTS
As a new client, you’ll attend a series of onboarding meetings with our team over a period of two to three months. These meetings are focused on getting to know you, crafting a financial plan that fits your goals, and providing recommendations on investment strategies.
Meeting 1: The Discovery Meeting
The first meeting is an introductory get-to-know-you meeting. We want to learn more about your goals, your lifestyle, how you currently manage your finances, and why you’re interested in financial planning services with us. A discovery meeting is a good starting point to start creating a financial plan that is appropriate and aligns with your goals.
Meeting 2: The Preliminary Meeting
We take the goals you provided during the discovery meeting and quantify them during this session. When building your financial plan, we try to work with specific numbers and percentages. For example, exactly how much of your monthly income goes to pay for health care expenses, travel, or gifting in retirement? We’ll use the information from the previous meeting to come up with attainable figures.
Meeting 3: Financial Plan Recommendations Meeting
You are now about six to eight weeks into your onboarding process, and in the third meeting, we will present you with the proposed, written financial plan. This customized plan is based on the previous two meetings and includes both short-term and long-term goals.
Meeting 4: Investment Recommendations Meeting
It would be irresponsible to give investment recommendations without fully understanding your full financial situation. Only after the first three meetings do we feel comfortable talking about how and where to invest. Remember, our recommendations are meant to support your full financial goals!
OTHER NEW CLIENT MEETINGS
Now that we know your goals and have laid out the steps to help you get there, we’ll still need to address a couple of other areas.
Meeting 5: Estate Planning Meeting
An estate planning meeting comes six months after the investment recommendations meeting. We will address and discuss the various details of your estate. Topics covered might include:
• Instructions on what to do with your financial assets
• Discussing the use of trusts and other asset protection strategies
• Reducing or eliminating estate transfer tax
• Who to transfer your business to in case of an unfortunate event
Meeting 6: Income Tax Meeting
The last onboarding meeting is the income tax meeting. As the name suggests, the goal is to find a way to maximize tax returns. Our job is to ensure that our financial plan is as tax efficient as possible, providing you with maximum returns.
ANNUAL MEETING
One year after the investment recommendation meeting, you’ll move to our annual meeting schedule. The good news is that there’s no need to do a formal meeting every quarter. Each year, we set up three check-ins and a more comprehensive meeting, along with regular email communications throughout the year on market updates and other timely information. Your financial planner will contact you a month beforehand to give you time to think about what you would like to discuss in the annual meeting, such as:
• Did I make any life changes that would affect my financial goals?
• Have my financial goals changed?
• Will there be a big purchase coming up in the future that was unplanned?
We’ll address any concerns you have during the meeting and review action items and answer questions you might have. Of course, if there are no significant changes in your life, there’s no need for a formal sit-down meeting. Simply send us an email to let us know everything is fine, or we can meet and quickly catch up over Zoom.
WHAT’S A SIGNIFICANT LIFE CHANGE?
When you make significant life changes, the amount of money you’re spending or bringing in changes. That’s why it’s crucial to notify us before planned events occur. For example, we might need to adjust your short-term goals, reallocate investments, and recalculate taxes. For example, an out-of-state move means different state taxes and cost of living. These can all affect your financial goals, and therefore, we need to know about them! Other significant life changes include:
• Retiring
• Having grandchildren
• Changing charitable intentions
• Getting a divorce
• Getting married
• Moving
• Buying a vacation home
• Losing your job
• Get a new job
Retirement comes with its own set of meetings. After all, you’re moving on to a new phase in life, and that’s a big deal. Five years before you’re ready to retire, we’ll more heavily focus on that plan as part of the annual meetings to ensure that you are on track. The year before you retire, we’ll do a trial run – a retirement practice year, if you will. Practice makes perfect, and we want to ensure that your retirement transition is seamless.
UNPLANNED LIFE CHANGES
Not all changes are planned, unfortunately. Suppose you experience serious illness or need to go into assisted living. In that case, we will work with your spouse, children, and estate planning attorney to make sure that this transition goes as smoothly as possible.
Williams Financial is here with you every step of your journey. We want to work with you to create a financial plan that evolves and adapts as your life shifts and goals change. If you have further questions about financial planning meetings, contact us here.