Our Process- Agile Financial Planning
If you've gone through a traditional financial planning process, your experience may have gone something like this:
- Fill out a lengthy data form
- 2 to 3 hour meeting covering every detail of your financial life
- You may have felt overwhelmed by questions you didn't know the answer to, can't remember or haven't even ever thought about
- Wait 2 weeks and receive an excessive document (often times 100+ pages) that covers the next 30+ years of your financial life
- Paralysis by analysis- You may have felt overwhelmed by all the action items on your list and often times nothing is implemented
- Plan potentially becomes obsolete if not updated regularly, as your life may look completely different than it did at your initial meeting
In most cases, you will experience some level of change as we are designing and implementing your financial plan. You could lose a job or get a new one. You could inherit some assets. You or a family member could become sick or even worse, die prematurely. You could have a child or even decide to start a new business. Is your financial plan flexible enough to adapt?
What if instead, we first explored all the possibilities the future could hold, THEN set goals based on those possibilities and finally ranked those goals according to priority? We could then determine which objectives could be accomplished in a specific, short time frame and focus entirely on those tasks.
We call this Agile Financial Planning and we borrow from Agile Principles used in the tech world. Cloud-based financial planning portals play a huge role in making this a dynamic, collaborative and interactive experience. Ultimately, we still need to have an initial "Fit" meeting, spend time Getting organized, exploring the possibilities and setting goals. However, after that, we would follow a specific flow, which we have loosely borrowed from an Agile framework known in the tech world as Scrum.
Our Agile Financial Planning Process
- Sprint - Determine top priority action items, then set specific and concise period of time (2 weeks to 6 months) where we focus intently on our those priorities
- Stand-Up - Depending on the length and complexity of the "Sprint" we could schedule a virtual check-in to discuss what we have done so far, what we still need to do, and address any roadblocks
- Sprint Review - Look back on what was accomplished, what, if any, issues arose and how they were solved. Look back at the Possibilities list to determine if it needs to be adapted based on changes in your situation.
- Sprint- Get ready to start another Sprint!
Although this isn't a perfect process, we believe that it has many advantages over traditional financial planning. We are continuously working to uncover a better way to develop financial plans through doing it and helping others do it.