Financial Independence Planning

Financial independence is that point in time where you have accumulated enough resources to maintain your lifestyle as you define it, for the rest of your life. Absent planning early enough, you may have potentially exposed your family to several concerns, such as your premature death or disability, and your savings to spending goals. With retirement often lasting more than twenty years, many of our clients are afraid they may outlive their money, especially with challenges such as higher inflation, uncertain markets, or a looming health issue. We’ll help you choose the appropriate techniques to accumulate wealth for retirement and offer sound alternatives for asset allocation and income distribution following retirement.

We frequently find couples who are income rich, but asset poor. If one should die, then the pension or social security portion of their wealth disappears. We built a model consisting of the assets and liabilities, income, and spending of a non-married couple. Both wish to leave their assets to their children of earlier marriages, but they also want to take care of their significant other. The financial model enabled us to test different assumptions, such as one dying too soon while the other lived too long or got sick. What this revealed is that they need each other to live for ten more years, or there won’t be enough money.

• We find the gaps in your planning, then bring you ideas and recommendations that we have tested, many of which you may not have already thought about.
  
  
• Our clients already have other trusted advisors, such as accountants or attorneys. We get everyone working on the same page, with the same level of understanding, so you have a coordinated team working on our behalf.
  
  
• None of this matters if you do not implement the changes recommended by your financial plan. We stay with you until the most important, to act as your catalyst to get things done.
  
  

We enable you to talk about your wishes and dreams, then help you figure out which you can achieve. We design a strategy for you to achieve these goals. We coordinate and collaborate with your other advisors, such as attorneys, brokers, and accountants, to implement these recommendations.

We help people figure out if they’re going to make it, how they’re going to make it – and what “making it” even means. We get them to discuss their dreams of “living in retirement,” take a stab at converting these dreams into goals, draw the roadmap for achieving these goals, and identifying the tradeoffs necessary along the way.

We test this plan using Monte Carlo simulation to provide you with the probability of success, and we give you recommendations on how to improve this probability. We then help you monitor your performance, 24-7 to make sure you can live your life with confidence.

The KeyAMS Strategic Planning Process™ enables you to reduce stress and find greater joy by aligning your goals with your values.

• Engagement
  
  
• Discovery
  
  
• Strategy
  
  
• Destination
  
  
• Implementation

Engagement - We help you uncover your hopes and fears in what we call “The Second Conversation,” the deep dive into your values and those issues often left unsaid.

Discovery - We discover and document all your financial information, from assets to liabilities, income sources, and expenses.

Strategy - We help you analyze your financial life, provide a visual representation of your life so you can see the effect of tradeoffs. This is where we provide an early view of your financial plan.

Destination - We provide recommendations to help you achieve your goals., and craft an action plan to help you take the steps toward achieving your goals. This is where we provide a final report with an implementation plan.

Implementation - We stay with you to implement every one of the recommendations, then we create an interactive model to track your progress along the way.

We all operate under an implicit set of values. This means we make decisions that either feels good or causes stress. Although we may not explicitly acknowledge our values, we know when a decision does not feel right, which means we are not in alignment with these values.

One of the steps in the KeyAMS process is to identify values and identify which goals reflect these values and which are in conflict. When working with couples, we help each partner identify their unique set of values, to understand the biographical history of the other partner, and to reach an understanding when values differ. This helps both partners understand it is conflicting goals that they need to change, it is the values. And that is a lot harder to overcome.