Getting Started

Financial Planning

For most of our services, we ask clients to fill in the “client data packet” as well as they can.

The packet consists of the following:

  • A document list — this is a fairly comprehensive list of all sorts of documents which will be helpful in reviewing your overall financial situation.  It includes things like recent statements from all of your investment accounts, recent paystubs from your employer, wills, trusts, etc.  Not everyone will necessarily have all of these things, and some of them we just want to make sure you have, even if you don’t bring them in with you
  • General questions - several pages worth - including all your basic contact information, as well as some “essay” questions (i.e., “what are your goals?”), and information about your income, investments, familiarity with investing, etc.
  • And finally, a couple of worksheets — a “family balance sheet” and a “family cash-flow worksheet”.  These are basically spreadsheets (an Excel copy is linked to below, and we also have it as Apple Numbers).  The balance sheet is really for your own “rough draft” — and serves as a great list of accounts — but we’ll usually either tighten up that data, or aggregate it into components for plans and goals, or reconstruct it “live” in the Personal Financial Dashboard.  The cash-flow worksheet is mainly for your own convenience - we don’t really usually need all the details of your spending unless you really want to walk through it with us.  We’re usually more interested in your overall level of spending, and a few big-ticket items (i.e., mortgage, property taxes), as well as items which are of limited timespan (i.e., child-care)

Click here to download a PDF copy of the Client Data Packet.

Or

Click here to download an Excel copy of the Client Data Packet

Tough Questions To Ask Your Advisor

David S. Meyers, CFP® is a NAPFA-registered financial advisor.
NAPFA, the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, is the country's leading professional association of Fee-Only financial advisors. To be a NAPFA-registered advisor, not only must the professional be truly fee-only (meaning he or she receives no income from commissions for selling any products), but also take a Fiduciary Oath (and renew it annually), get regular ongoing continuing education, and also prepare a financial plan for presentation and approval of other NAPFA professionals. This last is especially important to demonstrate not only that a financial planner knows the details and technical information, but also how to bring it all together and present the plan to clients.

NAPFA has assembled a handy questionnaire which they recommend anyone interested in working with a financial advisor have that advisor fill out. Note that “financial advisor” is a very broad term which encompasses everything from insurance salespeople and commission-based brokers to financial planners and fee-only advisors. Simply being a NAPFA-registered advisor answers about half the questions in the questionnaire (i.e., those related to being “fee-only”).

We are pleased to say that several clients and prospective clients have asked us to answer the questions and for convenience have prepared these responses and notes.

Please click here to download a PDF copy of Tough Questions To Ask Your Advisor



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