Cash flow, investments, retirement income, protection, taxes, and your estate all affect one another. We look at how those pieces work together and build one plan around what you want your money to support.
We start by understanding what you want your money to do and what you want the next stage of your life to look like.
That gives us something real to plan around. From there, each part of the financial plan has a job.
Once we know what the plan is for, we look at four areas in order of priority. Each one builds on the one before it.
What you want your money to support, now and later. Every decision is measured against it.
Making sure what you spend and save can support that life over time. Strategies can improve things, but they can't fix a plan that's out of balance on their own.
Guarding against what could knock the plan off course, like a disability, an early death, a lawsuit, or a major emergency. Protection has to be in place before it's needed.
Building a reserve you can reach for emergencies and opportunities, so a surprise doesn't force you to sell investments at a bad time.
Investing for the long term, efficiently, for the goals further out.
That doesn't mean one step at a time. We work on all four together, because each one affects the others.
Every plan touches the same areas. What changes is how much attention each one needs in your situation. Here's what we look at, and the thinking behind it.
Cash flow gives us a clear picture of how your money is working today. We look at income, spending, saving, debt, and the cash you need available for the things you know are coming.
From there, we look ahead. We call the income your plan is designed to support over time your Future Cash Flow. We build a year-by-year picture of where that income may come from and how your savings and investments can help support it.
We also look at how much should remain available in cash so you have flexibility without keeping more on the sidelines than your situation calls for.
We start with the lifestyle you want to keep, adjusted for inflation. We don't assume your spending will drop just because you retire.
Taxes are part of what your life costs, so we count them from the start instead of treating them as an afterthought.
When a big expense ends, like a paid-off mortgage, we decide together where that money goes next, so it doesn't quietly disappear into everyday spending.
We also like to keep a reserve for emergencies and opportunities: money you could use without pulling the rest of the plan off course. Money that's already producing your income doesn't count, even if you could get to it.
A financial plan needs to account for what happens when life doesn't go as expected. Protecting your income, your family, and the assets you've worked to build is an important part of making the entire plan work.
We look at the risks that could materially affect your financial future and build a strategy to address them. That includes reviewing the coverage you already have and determining where life insurance, disability insurance, long-term care insurance, or other protection strategies fit into your plan.
Insurance is an important tool in financial planning. Used appropriately, it can help protect your family, preserve assets, and keep an unexpected event from changing the financial future you've been working toward.
Protection comes before growth. Certain risks can change a family's financial future overnight. We want protection in place before it's needed.
Coverage should be based on what you're trying to protect. We look at the income that would need replacing, the obligations that would need covering, and the financial security you want for the people who depend on you.
Some risks make sense to handle with your own savings. Others could have a significant impact on your financial plan, and insurance can be an effective way to transfer those risks.
Long-term care deserves its own conversation. We look at how potential care expenses could affect your income, your spouse, and the assets you want to preserve. From there, we evaluate insurance, setting aside assets, or a combination of the two.
When insurance is part of the plan, we can help coordinate its implementation through an affiliated insurance agency. Our advisors may also act in a separate insurance capacity and receive commissions for insurance products.
One Life Advisory does not receive insurance commissions. You may purchase any recommended coverage through an agent or company of your choice.
Retirement brings a different set of financial decisions. Your savings and investments may need to help replace the paycheck you had while you were working.
We look at Social Security, pensions, investment withdrawals, cash reserves, and other income sources that may be available to you. Then we look at how those pieces can work together over time.
We also test the plan under different assumptions for markets, inflation, taxes, spending, and longevity so we can understand where there may be room to adjust.
We look at every piece of income you have coming in, like Social Security, pensions, and other sources: when each one starts, how long it lasts, and how it changes over time. Then we look at what the rest of your portfolio needs to produce to support the life you want.
The order you draw from your accounts matters. Which accounts you use, and when, can change how much tax you pay and how long your money lasts, so we plan it year by year instead of following a fixed rule.
There's more than one way to turn savings into income. We compare approaches, from portfolio withdrawals to options designed to pay for life, and combine them when it makes sense.
Your investment strategy should reflect what the money needs to accomplish, when you may need it, and how much risk makes sense for your situation.
We start with your goals, time horizon, income needs, and comfort with risk. From there, we build and manage the portfolio around the role those investments have in the broader financial plan.
As your life or the plan changes, we can revisit the investment strategy with it.
Every dollar gets a job. Money you may need in the next few years is invested differently from money meant to last for decades. Your income needs, timeline, and comfort with risk shape the mix, not your age alone.
Our starting point is broad diversification, with close attention to cost. We don't try to predict which company, sector, or market will lead next. We'd rather follow a disciplined, long-term process than react to forecasts and headlines.
From there, we tailor the portfolio to your situation. That can mean working around investments you already own, managing the tax cost of making changes, choosing which accounts should hold which investments, or adjusting the approach for a specific need.
Diversification doesn't eliminate the risk of loss. We'll walk you through how we plan and prepare for difficult stretches before they arrive.
Many financial decisions have tax consequences. We consider those consequences when we evaluate things like retirement withdrawals, Roth conversions, Social Security timing, charitable giving, investment changes, and other planning decisions.
Your CPA or tax professional remains responsible for tax advice and preparing your returns. When it makes sense, we can coordinate with them so the financial planning and tax work are based on the same information.
We look at taxes from a planning perspective. Preparing and filing your returns stays with your CPA. Our role is to help set the direction, because taxes touch so many other parts of the plan: your income, investments, Social Security, giving, and what you leave behind.
We look at taxes across your lifetime, not just this year's return. A move that lowers this year's bill can raise future ones, and the reverse can be true too.
Many retirement taxes are easy to miss: how much of your Social Security gets taxed, Medicare premiums that rise with income (known as IRMAA), and required minimum distributions (RMDs) that can push your income higher later on.
Opportunities often compete for the same room. Each year, we weigh choices like Roth conversions, realizing gains, and charitable giving together, instead of one at a time.
Lowering taxes isn't the only goal. A strategy that saves on taxes but leaves you with less flexibility or more risk isn't necessarily the better choice.
Legacy planning starts with understanding who and what you want your money to support.
We review beneficiary designations, account ownership, and how your financial accounts fit with your existing estate documents. We can also help you think through what you want your family to know and how you would like assets handled over time.
Your attorney remains responsible for legal advice and drafting estate documents. We can coordinate with them so the financial pieces of the plan reflect what you are trying to accomplish.
Leaving a set amount to family, leaving whatever remains, giving during your lifetime, and supporting causes you care about are different goals, and each one is planned differently. We start by understanding which ones matter to you.
Some people want to share their wealth while they're alive and see the people they love benefit from it. We can build that into the plan too.
Small details can quietly override your wishes, like how an account is titled, an outdated beneficiary, or a missing backup beneficiary. We check those against what you want.
If giving is part of your life, we look at the most effective ways to give. The goal comes first; the tax benefit follows.
Cash flow can affect investments. Investment decisions can affect taxes. Insurance can change how much risk the rest of the plan needs to carry. Estate decisions can affect how accounts should be owned or who should be listed as a beneficiary.
We look at those decisions together because changes in one area can affect several others.
That is what financial planning looks like to us.