Planning for Success
The Importance of a Financial Plan
by Catherine Eagan
Financial plans create the foundation of good long-term financial well-being. With them, you have visibility into your current financial standing, and an evolving working model for realizing your future financial goals. Financial plans help you balance the demands of your short-term financial needs and wishes and long-term needs and wishes. If a stable retirement can be thought of as the destination, then the financial plan is the road map to help you get there.
Developing a Written Plan
by Catherine Eagan
Writing the actual financial plan is more straightforward than it might seem on the surface, there are some simple steps to take that will result in the creation of the plan.
Financial Plan Worksheets
by Catherine Eagan
The cornerstone of the financial plan is the financial plan worksheet, typically an electronic spreadsheet that houses all the critical information on expenses, income and goals. There are numerous examples of these available on the web, and a quick Google search will yield a number of different free or low-cost alternatives.
How Do I Get Back On Track
by Catherine Eagan
As the saying goes, “life is what happens when you are busy planning for something else.” There is truth to this statement and it has relevance to your financial planning habits. Things don’t always go according to plan, and sometimes we fall behind on achieving our goals. Sometimes our spending gets out of control, sometimes we unexpectedly suffer a job loss, or a medical condition.
Your Annual Financial To-Do List
by Catherine Eagan
While critical issues, like a job loss, will require you to review your financial plan immediately, the absence of big changes does not mean it’s not a good idea to review your plan on a regular basis. An annual review of your financial plan and associated worksheets is a great idea to make sure you stay on track and surface any new risks to the achievement of your goals.
How To Select a Financial Advisor
by Catherine Eagan
Many financial planners agree that references and recommendations from your friends, neighbors, and relatives may not be enough. Certainly, recommendations can be useful from those who have had good experiences; however, because a good experience with a financial advisor is determined over a long period of time, it sometimes is not always easy to tell how well one adviser does as compared to another
How Involved Do I Need to Be With a Financial Planner?
by Catherine Eagan
To some extent, one’s level of involvement with a financial planner is a matter of personal choice; some people like to be very involved and are interested in financials, others are less so inclined be involved. However, there is a base level of involvement you can and should expect with your financial planner in order to safeguard your finances and insure that you are getting the level of service that you are paying for.
Importance of Due Diligence
by Catherine Eagan
There is no question or debate about the importance of conducting due diligence on any prospective financial advisor. And there is similarly no question about how potentially devastating avoiding this step can be to your financial well-being. High-profile cases of advisor fraud have amounted to investor losses in the billions of dollars in recent years.
Management Fees vs. Transaction Fees
by Catherine Eagan
A recent trend in mutual fund fees has major financial firms, advisors and financial planners offering their services to individuals with no sales commissions and, in some instances, with no annual 12b-1 fees. Instead these firms impose an annual asset-based fee, which range from 0.5-2.0% of assets, depending upon the size of the portfolio. These fees are known as asset-based fees, portfolio management fees, etc. Regardless of the name these fees go by, investors should realize that this type of fee is a separate fee for managing one's portfolio; they are in addition to the normal operating expenses of the mutual funds within the portfolio.