How Hourly Financial Planning Clients Can Achieve Life-Changing Goals

Financial life planning in the Sawtooth Mountains

I’m up above the Cramer Divide in the Sawtooth Mountains today, and this is episode three of Financial Planning Done Differently. Watch the video here.

How We Approach Goal Setting in Hourly Financial Planning

I want to talk to you today about my favorite thing that I feel really passionate about, and that is how we approach figuring out your goals. I am a Registered Life Planner through the Kinder Institute for Life Planning, and what we do is we use a structured inquiry process over a few meetings and some activities that you do to really work on getting in touch with what’s going on inside you—what’s important to you, what’s meaningful to you, what’s missing in your life, what are your regrets that you’re really wishing you were doing right now.

We want to take a look at this and look at all the potential things that are there and then narrow it down to a focus that’s really driving you and really provides excitement and emotion for you. Then we focus on this over the next year, year and a half, and we work on making these things happen in your life.

Building a Financial Plan Around Your True Priorities

We figure out what the obstacles are—whether they’re financial or not—and then we take all of that, that vision, that torch, and that work towards what the obstacles are into the financial planning that we do. When we walk away with a plan going forward, it’s towards making something meaningful happen in your life over the next year, year and a half—not just at retirement, although we’ll pay attention to that too. We’ll pay attention to the long-term goals, but it’s really meaningful to be able to engage with people and watch them make their life meaningful, watch them get out of the drudgery and engage with the resources that they’re creating and make an energetic life.

Revisiting and Refining Your Life Plan

Then we go back in a year, year and a half, and we take a look again. We say, “Hey, what have we accomplished? Now what’s most important? Now what’s outstanding? Now what haven’t we done?” This process—this life planning process—makes the financial planning, to me, a lot more meaningful.

It brings it home and acts as a catalyst to help change your life towards more energy, more excitement, and more meaning, rather than simply shooting for retirement.