At Sensible Financial Planning, we take a holistic and highly personalized approach to financial planning. Financial planning necessarily involves working with numbers; a financial plan you can actually use requires numbers that are relevant to your life.

We strive to understand your current situation, aspirations and interests so that we can produce a plan that provides specific savings and investment recommendations, and insurance and estate planning guidance. The plan may need to address several potential scenarios (you may be considering buying a house, or working part time – scenarios help us outline the financial impact for you). Getting to the heart of your immediate concerns, your future goals and your priorities is, in our view, the foundation of a superior and practical financial plan.

As we start your integrated plan, we ask you to share your goals and financial resource information with us. Our in-depth kickoff meeting allows us ample time to cover the issues with financial implications that are important to you. We analyze both your goals and your financial information to create a preliminary plan. We review the plan with you, and incorporate your views about investment risk. Then we propose solutions – specific recommendations that will help you accomplish your plan. Finally, we act with you to put the plan into practice.

SHARE. We begin with a two-part kickoff meeting, either in person or by telephone (it may be inconvenient for you to come to our office). First, we ask about your life goals and their financial implications. We identify the issues you want the plan to focus on – the reasons you came to us. Often, we suggest scenarios to illuminate the issues – we will use those in the plan we develop for you. Second, we review the information you have sent us about your financial resources (income and assets) and the calls on those resources (expenses and debts). After the meeting, we follow up with a request for the rest of the information we need.

ANALYZE. Once we have all of the information we need, we organize it in our framework. We send you a set of assumptions summarizing the issues you want the plan to address, your financial information and the scenarios we will develop to illuminate your financial issues. Once you approve the assumptions, we develop a preliminary plan that estimates your sustainable living standard (the amount you can spend every year from now through the end of retirement) for each scenario. We determine how much you need to save each year, the risks to the plan, the likely growth of your assets, and the implications for your estate. We assess your current investment portfolio from the perspectives of likely return, risk and cost, and compare it to several alternatives on those dimensions. Then we meet with you to review the preliminary plan. We incorporate your views on the scenario and the asset allocation you prefer, and finalize the plan.

PROPOSE. We begin with the investment options in any 401(k), 403(b) or similar account(s). We select the most cost effective, then move on to accounts where your choices are not restricted. Consistent with your target asset allocation at the end of the previous step, we recommend a diversified and efficient set of investments to help you accomplish your plan. If you wish, we can also recommend sources for any indicated insurance.

ACT. If you wish, you may retain Sensible Financial to support you as you implement the plan, and to manage your assets on an ongoing basis. In addition, we can refer you to insurance resources to address insurance requirements identified in your plan. We also have a list of tax and estate planning professionals who can assist you in those important areas.