What is Financial Life Planning?
Financial Life Planning
Are you getting the best life possible with the money you have? Traditional financial planning often ignores the why behind your financial decisions. So what is financial life planning, and how is it different? Financial life planning is comprehensive financial advice that centers around your goals and values.
Financial life planning might include:
- Sustainable investing to align your money with your values
- Charitable and legacy planning to maximize your impact on the causes you care about
- Early retirement planning to avoid burnout and give you more time with your family
- Business planning to start a passion project
Financial life planning realizes that money is a tool, not a goal. And when you're financially secure, you can focus on what really matters.
Return on Life
Most normal financial plans are all about return on investment. At Natural Bridges, we focus on your return on life. When you focus on your life goals and priorities, everything else falls into place.
The Six Core Values of a Financial Life Planner
- Organization. We will help bring order to your financial life, by assisting you in getting your financial house in order (at both the “macro” level of investments, insurance, estate, taxes, etc., and also the “micro” level of household cash flow).
- Accountability. We will help you follow through on financial commitments, by working with you to prioritize your goals, show you the steps you need to take, and regularly review your progress towards achieving them.
- Objectivity. We bring insight from the outside to help you avoid emotionally driven decisions in important money matters, by being available to consult with you at key moments of decision-making, doing the research necessary to ensure you have all the information, and managing and disclosing any of our own potential conflicts of interest.
- Proactivity. We work with you to anticipate your life transitions and to be financially prepared for them, by regularly assessing any potential life transitions that might be coming, and creating the action plan necessary to address and manage them ahead of time.
- Education. We will explore what specific knowledge will be needed to succeed in your situation, by first thoroughly understanding your situation, then providing the necessary resources to facilitate your decisions, and explaining the options and risks associated with each choice.
- Partnership. We attempt to help you achieve the best life possible but will work in concert with you, not just for you, to make this possible, by taking the time to clearly understand your background, philosophy, needs and objectives, work collaboratively with you and on your behalf, and offer transparency around our own costs and compensation.
How it Works
We meet you where you are, no matter where that is. With a short survey, we will be able to start clarifying your goals for the future. The Return on Life Index survey will let you assess 10 areas of your life:
- Work
- Home
- Achievement
- Learning
- Leisure
- Health
- Relationships
- Purpose
- Autonomy
- Security
Where are you currently satisfied? Where do you want to make progress? We want to practice gratitude for what you already have, and look at areas where you can improve. Together, we will figure out how you can use your money more effectively to make your life as wonderful as possible.
Making the most of what you have, and making sure that your spending is in line with your priorities - that's what a true financial plan should accomplish.
Are you getting the best life possible with the money you have?
This is the key question that true financial planning focuses on, and the ROL Index will help you start to answer that question. It consists of 20 questions that are grouped into three categories: Well-Being, Progress, and Freedom. Based on your responses, the ROL Index creates a measure of your life satisfaction. The results will have a profound effect on how you think about your financial planning and your life.
We invite you to click here and take 5 minutes to complete the ROL Index and receive your free personalized report to see what areas of life you can start improving today. You might be surprised by the results!
