Financial Overview Meeting
- Review of your goals and current financial situation lasts about 1 hour
- Your main areas of concern are explored
- We can usually provide some constructive advice in this introductory meeting
- Our fee for this financial overview meeting is $150
Not everyone that meets with a financial planner needs ongoing service. In this meeting, which lasts about an hour, we will review the main areas of financial planning in light of your situation. These areas may include cash flow management, investing, insurance, taxes and estate planning. We try to be as specific as we can with our advice when that is possible. Due to time constraints, or if further analysis is needed, this tends to be the “overview” we call it. We will be able to tell you what steps we would recommend you take to pursue your goals. This is done without any expectation on our part that you will choose us to do further work. For example, we may not be able to tell you if you can retire in ten years, but we can assess the progress you are making and suggest the steps you can take to determine when you can retire.
In our experience, perhaps 30-40% of families that we meet do not need an immediate close working relationship with a planner. For example, a few people bring very sophisticated projections that they have run and simply want to make sure they haven’t missed something. Others want a second opinion about a financial plan they have had professionally prepared. Others would like to establish a relationship that their surviving spouse will be able to turn to. And, we have a number of clients who like to have this overview meeting once a year or so just to make sure they are on track.
The other 60-70% of families can usually reap significant rewards working with a planning firm. Their circumstances may be sufficiently complex that doing it on their own is simply unrealistic. Or, they may simply not want to take the time to do something on their own that they can hire someone to help them with. All of our long-term relationships have begun with this overview meeting.
We tend to be enthusiastic about helping people with their finances. So if we believe we can be of help and that we could have a good working relationship, we’ll let you know that! Our fee for a financial overview meeting is $150.