The “Now and Then” Exercise That Creates Better Financial Decisions

You see, some clients, perhaps they've been, uh, referred to us or, uh, have, have, have just really got in touch to find out a wee bit more about what financial planning really looks like and whether it can help them.

When they have to answer the questions along the lines of, "Well, what, what is it you're trying to achieve? What is it that's important? Why is it important?" Sometimes due to certain circumstances, uh, answering those questions is extremely difficult, and there's a bit of ambiguity around, you know, what exactly needs to be achieved over the next five years and then why is it really important or, you know, what the goals even are.

And without having clearly stated or, or, or clearly written down objectives or outcomes or goals that are important, extremely difficult to give any kind of recommendations to, uh, strategies that could be deployed to help achieve those outcomes or, uh, you know, a, a, a roadmap to help get them from where they are now to where they've said they want to be.

That can mean that going through the whole financial planning process would be a, a big use of time, but, uh, will it really get the outcomes? I, I'm not convinced.

It, it might instill some new disciplines.

It, it might inspire some new change, sure.

But I, I think really, really successful financial planning, it needs to begin with the end in mind with clearly stated objectives.

If they aren't present before the planning process has really started, there are some tools that we can use to he-help define what those are.

I'm going to share that in this week's episode, uh, perhaps as a, a useful resource for people to reflect on and, and perhaps listen to again later in their own space.

For listeners that are listening to this driving along in their car, perhaps it'd be difficult to really dive deep into, uh, some of the, the exercises we ask people to go through to help define these goals.

But it, it's not only for people that are starting out planning, uh, for the first time.

This often, uh, arises with clients when major changes have happened in their life.