The Plan Or the Planning Process?

Early this year, we began focusing intently on creating complete and comprehensive Financial Blueprints for our new clients. While we’ve always done financial planning before choosing investments and financial product solutions, the blueprint is a complete deliverable, meaning we package ALL of the planning elements and supporting materials into a single lengthy document.

The benefit of a blueprint for the families who hire us to build one, is the ability to pore over the analysis, findings, and recommendations, resulting in meaningful questions that otherwise may have been missed during meetings. The advantage for us is the inherent requirement to ensure that all of the pieces fit together, resulting in more confidence in the recommendations we offer. This process is truly game-changing for us and for the families we serve, because it ensures more complete understanding of the nuances of various retirement planning strategies.

While all of this is good, I have to admit that we had a problem recently that made me sick to my stomach. While reviewing the completed blueprint, an error was discovered by the client. Yes, I’m human and certainly anything but infallible…I’m well aware of that. The part that bothered me most was the fact that I’d spent a dozen hours crafting this blueprint, ensuring the analysis was sound and the recommendations were of the highest quality. To discover a data entry error of mine, that created confusion for the family…well, that didn’t and still doesn’t sit well with me. Confusion, in fact, is the very opposite of what we want the Financial Blueprint to accomplish. The desired effects are clarity and confidence.

Interestingly, as some time has passed, I realized something about that error that I’d missed. The fact that the client discovered the error meant they understood what they were looking at clearly enough that they knew something was amiss. In other words, the process of working with us to build the blueprint – the discovery, education, analysis, contemplation, and review – taught them enough about retirement planning to allow them to spot the problem! The process had created a more informed, more confident retiree-in-the-making.

As I consider this experience, I’ll continue to be very uncomfortable with errors. That doesn’t simply go away, and it shouldn’t. What I’m very excited about is the realization that engaging people in a collaborative and comprehensive planning process is as valuable as the completed plan itself. It reinforces the fact that sometimes a plan is only as good as the process that was used to create it.

As we continue building Financial Blueprints for those who seek clarity before making major financial decisions, we’ll do everything in our power to strive for 100% perfection. We’ll also respect the power of the process itself in creating engaged and empowered families. That’s a win-win if I’ve ever seen one.

All the best,