Just as it is important to visit your physician for regular checkups, it is just as important to do a similar examination of your personal financial picture. Unfortunately, our busy lives and never ending list of demands keep us from making time to look at this important aspect of our lives.
We can help you get a better understanding of your personal financial picture by helping to shed light on where you are currently. Working with us, we can illuminate your income and expenses and cash inflows and outflows to identify what resources are available to you to pursue other objectives like retirement, investments and/or insurance. In the same way that your physician refers you to a specialist when there is a need based on the outcome of your annual checkup, we will recommend a specialist to help you with those other objectives. We believe referring you to a specialist, whether it be for retirement planning, insurance needs or investment advice, will best serve you by connecting you with an expert in that particular area. At your request, we can work with that specialist to ensure that their proposal(s) are aligned with your resources before they are implemented.
The first step in the Personal Financial Management process includes getting a clear picture of your current financial health. Businesses, both big and small, use financial statements to understand the financial condition of their business. The financial statements that businesses typically use include a Balance sheet, an Income Statement and a Statement of Cash Flows. Based on the information you provide, we will prepare a set of personal financial statements to help you better understand where you stand and what resources are available to you to pursue your goals and objectives.
The next step involves establishing a budget and a cash plan personally for you. Both of these tools will help you to manage your spending and find discretionary income that can be dedicated to pursuing your goals and objectives.
The final step includes evaluating your progress to see if things are going along as expected. Here we compare the actual spending and cash flow against the budget and cash plan. Depending on this comparison, we may make necessary adjustments to the budget and/or the cash plan.
The process of Personal Financial Management is an ongoing and collaborative process that will help you to better identify where your money is really going and if it is working for you. By working with us and developing a plan and monitoring its progress, you will be well on the road to having more control over your finances and more peace of mind that you are managing this very important aspect of your life.
