The journal
What a written financial plan holds, and what it should never promise
The sections of a written plan, the questions each one answers, and the promises a plan should never make.
AI-generated illustration. Not a real home or business.
A short document, in plain words
A written plan is a short document in plain words: what you told us matters most, what you have and owe, the decisions in front of you in the order they should be made, and who makes each one: you, your employer's benefits office, your CPA or your attorney. Every assumption it makes is written down and labeled as one.
A plan can be a thick binder of tables that nobody reads twice. A useful one is shorter than that. It is something a household can read at the kitchen table, argue over and act on, and it is written for the people whose plan it is, not for another planner.
The sections, as the questions they answer
Every plan differs in its details. The questions a good one answers are much the same:
What matters most to you?
In your words, not a planner's, and in order. Two goals that pull against each other are written down as two goals, with the tension between them named.
What do you have, and what do you owe?
A list taken from your own documents: accounts, debts, a home if you own one, a pension if you have one, the coverage you already hold. No judgment of any of it, only what it is.
Where does the month go?
What comes in, what goes out, and what is left. This is often the section that changes most once it has been written down.
What decisions are in front of you, and in what order?
The heart of the plan. Each decision is set out with what it depends on and what depends on it, so the order can be seen.
Who makes each decision?
You, a benefits office, a CPA or an attorney. A plan that leaves this out leaves you holding decisions that belong to somebody else, or handing over ones that belong to you.
What does the plan assume?
Each assumption written down and labeled, so you can see it, question it and disagree with it.
What if things go differently?
Savings can fall, a job can end, a parent can need care. A plan says what you would do then, so a bad year is a page you have already read rather than a surprise.
Which questions go to someone else?
Questions for the CPA about a tax return, for the attorney about how what you own would pass, for an insurance licensee about a policy. Listed, in writing, so that they get asked.
Why the order matters more than any one decision
Most money decisions are not hard on their own. They become hard because each one changes the next. Money put toward a long-term goal and then pulled back out for an emergency undoes the first decision and makes the second harder; a debt paid down while nothing is set aside can come straight back with the next bad month. A plan earns its place by putting decisions in an order where each one makes the next easier.
That is also why a plan is written for one household at a time. The right order for two earners renting in Sunnyside is not the right order for a business owner whose income arrives in lumps, even when their goals sound alike.
Why the assumptions are written down
Any plan rests on guesses: how long somebody will work, what a household will spend, what savings will do. The difference between an honest plan and a careless one is not that one guesses and the other does not. It is that the honest one writes each guess down, labels it, and shows what would change if it were wrong.
A written assumption is something you can disagree with. A hidden one is something you only find out about later, usually at a bad moment.
What a plan should never promise
A plan written here never promises a result, a return or a date you will be able to retire by, and this website shows no plan's figures, because a sample with figures in it would be a projection.
Nothing here projects what your savings could grow to, how likely a plan is to work or when you could retire. A projection is a guess about markets printed as a number, and on an adviser's website it is treated as performance.
A plan that names the year you will be able to stop working, or the sum your savings will reach, is telling you about markets that nobody can see into. A plan worth paying for says what you will decide, in what order, and what you would do if the guesses turn out wrong.
Ask for a first meeting
A first meeting costs nothing, gives no advice and asks nothing of you afterwards: about forty-five minutes, at the office or by video. The office replies in office hours.