By Kyle Louvar, CFP®, AIF®
Creating a financial plan is an investment in your future. It’s a road map of where you want to be—and how to get there. Many people are overwhelmed by the thought of opening up about something as personal as their finances, but it is well worth it in the end.
Clients are continually surprised by the amount of relief, confidence, and comfort they get once we’ve gone through the whole planning process. And the best part? It’s a dynamic and interactive process that we revisit often, so you can rest assured it will stay up to date with the many changes that life brings.
At Guided Capital Wealth Management, our mission is to develop custom financial plans that help clients work toward and achieve their goals with confidence. Should you partner with us, here’s a reference to help you better understand what your potential financial plan could look like, so you can see the benefits a plan might have on your financial life. Let’s break down what you can expect.
What’s in a Financial Plan?
Financial plans can address a variety of goals, from debt management to asset allocation to retirement distribution strategies. Depending on your needs, your plan may narrow in on one element or address multiple goals you’d like to pursue over time. Whatever you choose to focus on, your financial plan is designed to serve as your road map, helping you pull all the moving parts of your finances together so you can navigate the years before, during, and after your transition to retirement.
We believe a good financial plan should give you a detailed, complete view of your current financial situation, a thorough modeling of where you want to be, and the actions you need to take to reach those goals. It should address all the pieces of your financial puzzle, from stresses and fears to your values and dreams, and include risk factors, cash flow, retirement, estate planning, taxes, education, and income strategies to help bring you clarity and guidance. It is through our planning process that we help you prepare for life’s expected and unexpected circumstances.
The result is a simple yet powerful road map to guide you toward financial freedom.
Preview a Sample Financial Plan
We’ve developed a sample financial plan that reflects our planning process. It looks at a fictional person’s lifestyle income plan and how we developed it, including identifying their goals, determining the probability of success, reviewing their retirement analysis, life insurance, asset allocation strategies, and more.
Retirement Analysis
In the retirement analysis, we review different scenarios to better understand if you are on track for a successful retirement. We look at everything from Social Security age and income distribution to the possibility of selling a business or downsizing a home. We do this to find which recommendations will fit best with the client’s long-term goals and maximize their ability to retire comfortably.
Changing different settings under the “Action Items” drop-down menu will automatically update the plan and show the probability of success based on different scenarios. This allows the plan to grow and evolve as your needs change.
Life Insurance Review
Even if the retirement analysis shows a high probability of success, no financial plan is complete without an insurance review. Proper risk management is a key part in making sure you have enough resources to protect your family if something unexpected were to happen.
In our sample financial plan, we project the future cash-flow needs for an individual’s family and compare it to their current coverage level. This will show whether you have enough coverage, too much coverage, or insufficient coverage based on your current assets and liabilities.
In Matt’s case below, he has more than enough coverage to protect Julie if he were to pass away. Julie, on the other hand, has a shortfall of about $250,000 of coverage. Julie can take this information to make a decision about whether she wants to increase her coverage or find ways to self-insure.
Tax Strategy
Tax planning is an integral part of a financial plan. This is especially true as you enter into retirement, a time when your tax bracket may be changing and there are a lot of opportunities to be strategic. Part of our process is to find ways to convert as much tax-deferred income to tax-free income as possible, usually in the form of Roth conversions. This can add significant value to a client’s retirement plan, as seen below.
Not only do we plan for ways to transform the tax status of your retirement funds, but we also help clients plan for how to withdraw funds in the most tax-efficient way. For instance, withdrawing too much all at once might cause a portion of your Social Security benefits to become taxable. Similarly, withdrawing funds haphazardly from different accounts can cause inefficiencies in your tax liability. Ensuring that you have a tax-efficient withdrawal strategy can add years to your portfolio longevity but minimize unnecessarily high tax bills and leave more of your money to grow.
Asset Allocation
One of the most important aspects of the financial plan is the asset allocation for your investments. As the foundation of your portfolio, it can make all the difference in your probability of success. In order to determine the proper asset allocation for a client, we go through the entire planning process. We take time to understand our clients’ goals, risk tolerance, and cash-flow needs. From there, we will determine what the asset allocation should look like in order to help them achieve those goals. Our investment strategies are tailored to each client based on what they want to accomplish.
Our sample plan shows a side-by-side comparison between a client’s current allocation and their target allocation based on our in-depth planning process. It helps illustrate the changes that need to be made to bring a client’s investments in line with the proposed plan.
Keep in mind that this is only a hypothetical plan presented to illustrate what a client’s plan may resemble should they work with us. The characters and circumstances are completely fictional and are for illustrative purposes only. Be sure to seek the advice of a qualified professional for your particular situation and not rely upon any of the information herein to make personal financial decisions.
We recognize that we are not all things to all people; we are all things to some people. Our client relationships are based on a very specific FIT process, allowing us to partner with those clients we are most suited for. In doing that, we are able to provide an elevated client experience, keeping all the pieces of each client’s financial plan in place. Take a look through our full sample plan here to see how our proven process helps you pursue your goals and financial freedom.
At Guided Capital Wealth Management, we utilize our proprietary process, The Paradigm FORMula, to help you create a dynamic plan that can help you reach your financial potential and keep you on track toward achieving your goals. Schedule a FIT meeting using our online calendar or contact us at (832) 975-0711 or info@guidedcapitalwealth.com to learn if we are the right team to guide you on your financial journey.
About Kyle
Kyle is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional and holds the Accredited Investment Fiduciary® certification. Kyle Louvar is the CEO and Wealth Management Advisor for Guided Capital Wealth Management, a fiduciary financial advisory firm offering fee-based advice, guidance, and education. After seeing the impact that the 2008 financial crisis had on families, Kyle became fully committed to helping his clients develop a financial plan that changes as their lives unfold and their needs evolve. Spending nine years working for one of the largest brokerage firms on Wall Street, Kyle holds a high value for process, expertise, objective advice, and customized solutions. His goal is to help his clients experience confidence in their financial future through a disciplined process of financial planning, investment management, and sound financial decision-making.
Kyle graduated from New Mexico State University, where he was a proud 4-year letterman in football for the Aggies and where he’s sat as an NMSU Foundation board member since 2015. When not helping his clients, Kyle enjoys spending time with his wife, Nicole, and their two daughters. You can often find him coaching his daughters’ softball teams, playing golf, cooking, and traveling. To learn more about Kyle, connect with him on LinkedIn.
The interactive analysis tool used is Right Capital. This report is intended to provide an analysis of a financial plan. It is based on the data and assumptions provided by a sample client and the financial professional including but not limited to asset expected returns, volatility, and inflation assumptions. The report shows comparisons of a sample client’s current plan and a proposed plan. The report shows comparisons of a sample client’s asset allocation and a proposed asset allocation. The report shows the Probability of Success of a sample client’s plan using a Monte Carlo simulation calculated by running the projection 1,000 separate times. Some sequences of returns used in the Monte Carlo simulation will give better results, and some will give worse results. These multiple trials provide a range of possible results. All results may vary with each use and over time. Right Capital generates outcomes that area hypothetical.
