Personal Financial Planning

Our Process

Chat:

The chat should only take about 30 min and the purpose is to get to know what motivates you and for me to describe what it is that I do and determine if we should continue to talk.

Issues & Concerns:

This is where I find out what issues you have concerns about so that I can determine if I can actually be of service to you.

Data Gathering:

Based on what your issues and concerns are I will gather information from you and begin the actual planning.

The Reveal:

This is simply the starting point which reveals how your financial future may unfold given your current situation. You will discover your attainable retirement age, attainable lifestyle resources and the rate of return you are required to achieve given the data. I will also back test your information over the past 100 years of historical data to discover the possibility of achieving full income throughout your lifetime as well as the possibility of depleting your assets before.

Education:

This is where we talk about the dangers, opportunities and the strengths inherent in the plan to this point and explore potential for improvements.

Your Plan

RETIREMENT PLANS (“RP”):

PRE-RETIREMENT: Earned income entries such as salary and rental property income must be entered. They are used to calculate maximum annual RRSP contributions. Otherwise, VisionWorks is concerned only with non-registered (open) portfolio savings and registered plan contributions such as for TFSAs and RRSPs. All other pre-retirement income is assumed to be spent.

POST-RETIREMENT: VisionWorks is concerned with general expenses. Have clients accumulated sufficient income-producing assets (non-registered, TFSA, and RRSP portfolios for example) to fund their desired retirement lifestyle?

RETIREMENT AND ESTATE PLANS (“REP”):

Similar to RPs, REPs have a retirement focus and also include the terms of wills in the financial forecast, as well as an estate analysis. Wills are the cornerstone of estate planning. REPs also calculate life, disability, critical illness, and long-term care insurance needs.

Because mass-affluent and HNW clients should be comfortable in retirement, estate planning is very often their primary issue. If clients are in a second marriage and have a blended family, estate planning can be extremely important. For example, if assets are left to children from a previous marriage, there can be a profound impact on the financial circumstances of the surviving spouse / partner.

FINANCIAL PLANS (“FP”):

These plans are cash-flow based and take a “whole-life” approach (as compared with RPs and REPs that have a retirement-only focus). The degree of detail in an FP depends on your client’s expectations. An FP does not need to be overly detailed, however, the more detailed the more accurate any forecasting can be.

LIFE PLANS (“FP”):

While FP’s are focussed on hard data LF’s explore the changes that can occur in one’s lifetime and ask questions that require clients to think about the effects of changes that may happen. We make a connection between your plan and the values you consider most important in your life by having a values conversation.