Financial & Lifestyle Planning

By Jill Dolan and Katie Gardner

It has been a full year since we rolled out our enhanced Financial Planning with EMoney as part of our inclusive services and we could not be more pleased with the response we have had from you—our clients! We have learned so much about your lives and are grateful that you entrust us with such a personal process.

We have found that only a part of our planning with you has to do with dollars and cents. We’ve realized that we are not only focusing on a story of numbers but also a number of stories that make up the lifestyle you have worked hard to create and want to protect. True lifestyle planning goes beyond financial projections. It allows you to prioritize what is important to you and your family. Every family has a different income and balance sheet, but also different sentiments regarding money, goals, and priorities.

We understand that starting the process of financial planning can be intimidating. It is common to be a little bit nervous to look at your overall situation. Taking an inventory is an important first step that will allow us to build a strong foundation for your plan together. We are here to help keep the process on track and in small achievable phases, which helps to decrease feeling overwhelmed. We’ve asked clients who have completed planning with us in the last year for feedback and they are sharing some of their thoughts.

Informed and Empowered Decision Making

Let’s face it, transitions are hard, and life is full of them. Emotions run high during stressful times, and these feelings can cause impulsive decisions that might not be in line with your goals. A common scenario is feeling that you have worked diligently to create the lifestyle you have achieved but you find yourself asking, ‘What if…?’. Perhaps, you begin thinking about transitioning into retirement or deciding whether to downsize. Maybe you begin to witness your parents or spouse age or lose capacity. Or you are firmly in your working years wondering what level of savings it will take to fund a college education, retire at a certain age, or plan your bucket list trip.

With ever changing IRS tax rates, brackets, and the upcoming sunset of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) at the end of 2025, financial planning is playing a bigger role in how to protect and pass on your assets. Depending on your goals, we can build different scenarios into your plan to utilize current federal lifetime exemptions and finetune gifting strategies. Additionally, as IRAs are becoming a larger part of one’s estate, we can clearly see the effects that ROTH conversions will have on your plan. With the introduction of the “10-year rule” for IRA beneficiaries, we find that heirs have a larger tax burden to bear. Building in annual conversions during your lifetime to keep you in the same tax bracket can have a double benefit: This strategy will reduce the required taxable amount you have to take from retirement accounts during your lifetime, and also provide more funds to your beneficiaries tax-free.

Lifestyle planning is not about your planner or advisor telling you what you “can” or “can’t” do with your money. It is our job to partner with you, listen and educate you, and allow you to see the potential effects of making different decisions. We find the value in these projections is often not in one scenario, but rather in the comparison between scenarios. Seeing the effects of different choices provides you with a tool that you can use to evaluate difficult decisions based on your personal priorities and needs.

“Recently we have been working with TCV to help with our decision-making process regarding the purchase of a new home. EMoney provided a comprehensive view of our financial plan, including a cash flow model to help us decide how much we could afford when purchasing a new home after we retired. EMoney allowed us to work with TCV to see how different decisions and assumptions regarding the sale of our current home and the price of a new home 5 Jill Dolan Katie Gardner affected our overall retirement plan. The ability to change various variables and see the changes reflected in our cash flow projections was really helpful.”

Changing Your Focus

Looking at projections and seeing the outcome of different scenarios is the first step in the decision-making process. The second is changing your focus from the bottom-line dollar and shifting to how the outcome of the projection makes you feel. The emotional reward from making a decision often far outweighs the dollar value saved as a result of the projection.

“We are both around 60, and retirement talk is pretty popular among all our siblings and peers, but we had no idea where it would fit in our timeline, so the talk was just stressful. But once we met with you, and understood what information was needed to crunch some numbers, the timeline became a real thing, something we could actually see and manipulate. A huge relief.”

\How you feel when looking at the outcome of your projections and by comparing scenarios links directly to your meaning and your values; these are measurable to you and your family alone. Exploring questions you have through lifestyle planning allows you to be proactive when your lifestyle may be heading toward a transition. Your circumstances may change multiple times over the course of your lifetime. By practicing focused decision making you can more easily evaluate decisions as your situation changes.

Peace of Mind

You may not have a big decision to evaluate, but the goal of planning is simply—Peace of Mind. Planning is extremely individual and often the plan you want to see is not only about projecting the return on your investments but ensuring that the lifestyle you are accustomed to will be maintained during turbulent times. This is often true for our clients in the later stages of life —there may not be much change on the horizon, but it is important to confirm that you are secure for the rest of your lifetime. This feeling can be a huge relief and allow you to enjoy retirement with less stress.

When making decisions, looking at the outcome of your personal lifestyle plan does not mean you have to commit to a course of action right now, but can give you the peace of mind of knowing you have the information and tools to do so when the time comes.

“Creating a financial plan gave both my wife and me a sense of peace that we would be financially secure under a variety of scenarios. From an estate planning perspective, we were both relieved and informed about the best way to manage finances after the primary earner passed away. This was the capstone to our estate planning. We are deeply grateful.”

How do you feel about your future? We hope you are at peace, but if you have questions about how your lifestyle may be affected by various circumstances, you not only have a planner at TCV, but you have a dedicated partner who is there to help.