Our Process

At Consolidated Planning, our overall process is designed to:

1. Protect you today in case something catastrophic happens tomorrow
2. Teach clients how to become world-class savers*
3. Prepare a structured approach to saving to accomplish the client's short, intermediate, and long-term goals.
4. To tackle debt and help you become debt-free.

At the end of the process, we provide clients with a detailed plan and tasks to help accomplish each goal. Then we achieve each objective in stages depending on the client's specific goals and complexity.

We understand that each client is unique, and financial planning is not one-size-fits-all. So, while we do have a process that we trust to prepare our clients for any situation, regardless of complexity, clients should rest assured knowing that we routinely make adjustments for individual needs.

Our process is often laid out as follows:

The Vision Builder

In this meeting, we will explain how our planning process works and also share our philosophy on the financial world. Most importantly, we will take the time to more clearly define the goals that you and your family would like to achieve during your lifetime. It is this list of goals that will guide the rest of your planning process.

The Data Clarifier

In this meeting, we will bring your entire financial picture into focus. By clarifying the financial data you’ve gathered, we will come to a place of common understanding about exactly how and why your financial world is structured - allowing us to populate your financial Snapshot. This provides a clear starting point to assess where you are now financially to where you’d like to be in the future.

The Protection Analysis

In this meeting, we will take a closer look at the Protection domain of your financial world. Our goal is to make a very frank assessment of how well you are protected from several Eroding Factors. From there, we’ll measure how that level of Protection will impact the other domains of your financial world.

The Strategy Alignment

In this meeting, we will examine your current path about the goals you initially laid out for us in the Vision Builder meeting. This will serve as our basis of comparison as we measure the effectiveness of other potential financial strategies. We will weigh factors like protection, flexibility, risk tolerance, tax consequences, and inflation as we simulate various scenarios unfolding across your financial timeline.

The Tactical Alignment

Once a strategy is settled upon, we will move from the big picture to the details and implement the tactical changes needed to make the strategy work. The nature of this meeting is always dictated by the strategy that precedes it, but it will routinely include tactical changes to various insurance and investment programs or execution of legal documents as examples.

The Impact Evaluation

To cap the initial planning process, we will sit down to assess how far we’ve come through the course of our work together and evaluate the success of our progress towards achieving your goals. Upon successful completion of the process, we hope to have the opportunity to share your experience with others who you believe are a good fit.

What You Can Expect From Us:

At Consolidated Planning, we show our commitment to our clients by committing to the following actions/behaviors that are in their best interest:

• We work with your current assets and cash flows without asking you to change your lifestyle
• Maintain strictest security, privacy, and confidentiality at all times
• Seek to keep a similar risk tolerance level to that which you currently carry
• Track your financial updates using our proprietary financial tools
• Provide collaboration with your CP representative and support team at any time
• Help build protection from loss into your plan
• Make your goals our goals and help you achieve them
• Respect your contacts and references

What We Expect From You:

• Please respect our time by being on time for appointments and coming prepared, having completed any work agreed upon.
• Understand how we are compensated.
• Should you choose to do so, you can take what you learn throughout our time together, and use those tools to implement any financial strategies that work well with your overall goal.
• Build your impact network by introducing us to the people you care most about only if you have benefited from the process

*Guardian considers someone who saves at least 15 to 20% of their income to be a World-Class Saver.