Gather Little by Little

A few weeks ago, I shared with you a great service I found for creating a financial plan. I also shared the importance of having a plan and how if you didn’t you were basically driving around without knowing where you’re headed. Having a financial plan in place can make a significant difference in whether or not you achieve your financial goals or not.

One of the main responses I received from you on that article was that you were unwilling to spend the money for a product you couldn’t see. Fair enough. I contacted the great folks at eFinPlan and asked them if they could provide me with an eFinPlan sample report I could share with my readers. They did and below I’ll breakdown the personalized financial plan they created for John and Mary Jones. If you want to skip straight to the plan, scroll to the very bottom of this article where you’ll find a download link.

John and Mary’s financial condition

The first real section of John and Mary’s financial plan starts on page 5 where eFinPlan has provided a summary of John and Mary’s financial condition. The plan summarizes their finances including assets, liabilitis, and net worth. It then lists their goals followed by some analysis information: They are moderate investors, long-term care assets at risk, estimated life insurance needs, etc.

The analysis then provides detailed actions that need to be taken in order to meet their financial goals and not run out of money before their life expectancy. While this seems like basic information (and is really), this is information that so many don’t have. Many people are heading towards retirement, saving away, but don’t have a clue whether or not they are saving enough.  Per eFinPlan, John and Mary need to:

• Increase their rate of return on investments.
• Increase their annual savings by $12,500/year ($1,042 month).
• Reduce their retirement spending needs by $14,800 to $62,346/year ($5,192/month).
• Defer their retirement by about 5 years.
• Shorten their life expectancy assumption.
• Examine Section 5: Your Spending for measures to increase the amount of money available for investing.
• Combine a portion of any of the above will improve your retirement analysis.

The eFinPlan report then provides a very detailed breakdown of John and Mary’s financial condition that includes an asset allocation breakdown (with graphs), personal assets and liability breakdowns, retirement benefits summaries, and much more.

Future Goals

The next section of the eFinPlan report analyzes each of your future goals and assists with developing a very detailed plan to accomplish each of them. One of the key features of John and Mary’s plan I liked was the life expectancy to money graph that predicts whether they’ll have enough retirement savings or not. The graph was contained in their section for their retirement goal. Here’ the graph:

The plan also helped John and Mary work out detailed plans for their other goal: funding their children’s eduction expenses. This is an incredible informative section and I’d recommend taking some time to read it just for educational purposes, as it’s chalk full of great information.

Investments

Section 3 of the eFinPlan report discusses investments, and in particular: asset management, risk, the asset pyramid, and asset classes. Don’t worry if these mean nothing to you, the plan contains all kinds of great introductory material to explain each of these. The plan also discusses 3 ways to make money and breaks each of these “ways” down using a question/answer format. Using these 3 ways, the plan then looks at your current investments and how analyzes and reports on how you’re doing in these “3 ways” including providing a current analysis graph and a suggested graph to help you with making the necessary changes.

Risk Management

Risk management is an incredible important concept that many overlook, but fortunately eFinPlan doesn’t let you. Section 4 is dedicated to risk management and looks at the following areas:

• Emergency Reserves
• Property and Casualty Insurance
• Life Insurance
• Disability Insurance
• Long Term Care Insurance

Each section not only analyzes your current situation, but also provides educational information on each of these topics along with very specific action steps you should take to “beef up” your risk management. John and Mary unfortunately have some pretty serious risk management work to do.

Spending

In Section 5, eFinPlan analyzes John and Mary’s spending including: Debt Analysis, Credit Ratings, Transportation and commuting, and Taxes. Seems this is a big problem area for John and Mary: They have way too much debt, poor credit and spend way too much money.

Fortunately the plan provides some very specific action items for them to take to fix this problem and get their debt and spending under control.

Legacy Planning

Legacy planning is something we none of us like to think about, but is critically important. Per John and Mary’s eFinPlan legacy planning is:

the process of arranging your financial affairs in a way that reflects your main priorities and values

Legacy planning involves:

• Providing for surviving spouses and children
• Gifting family members while they are alive
• Transferring businesses you may have created
• Charitable concerns
• Transferring important values, beliefs and history to the next generation

eFinPlan provides information on devices that help you address each of these needs, information on the pros and cons of addressing (or not addressing) legacy planning, and specific action items that should be taken based on your personal needs and priorities.

Implementation

Now that eFinPlan has provided us with all of this great information and actions items, what do we do? Section 7: Implementation of the plan addresses this very question. The plan assists you with action items, engaging “trusted advisers” to further help you with more detailed and complicated areas including legal assistance and insurance advisers.

eFinPlan example plan

To download the eFinPlan example financial plan for John and Mary, just click on the following download link:

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While the data used for this report is fictitious, the report itself is a real eFinPlan report and very characteristic of the report that would be generated for you.

To create your financial plan and report: click here and follow the instructions. Enter the coupon code: glbl10 to get a 10% discount!. It’s really that easy and eFinplan offers a free 30-day money back guarantee!