Personalize Your Financial Journey: Goal-Based Planning Explained
By Chad Chase, JD, CTFA
Are you ready to take control of your financial future and pursue your dreams? In this video, we explore the concept of goal-based financial planning and how it can help you create a personalized road map to success.
This video provides valuable insight into:
- What exactly is goal-based planning?
- Current trends
- Strategies to help you pursue your goals
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TRANSCRIPT
Introduction to Goal-Based Financial Planning
Hi, I'm Chad Chase, Senior Financial Advisor at CGN Advisors. By now, I'm sure you know that there are several strategies for managing wealth. One of the most effective strategies is called goal-based financial planning, and today I'm going to dig into what it really is and why it works so well.
What is Goal-Based Financial Planning?
So, what is goal-based financial planning? Put simply, goal-based financial planning means you organize your plans around specific financial goals and milestones. Many of the clients I work with think about their finances this way. They think about their money in terms of long-term goals.
How Goal-Based Financial Planning Differs from Traditional Approaches
Keep in mind that goal-based financial planning differs from traditional financial planning, which often prioritizes gaining as much wealth as possible and then strategizing expenses later. With goal-based planning, instead of focusing solely on optimizing returns, you can customize your wealth planning to take into account your specific situation, your values, income and assets, risk tolerance, your dependents, and what safety nets you'd like.
For example, maybe you're looking to send a kid to college, start a business, or retire at age 65, 55, or even next week. Then, you can reverse engineer an investment strategy around those goals.
The Latest Trends in Goal-Based Financial Planning
What are the goal-based planning trends I'm seeing? Here's what I'm noticing. More and more clients are looking beyond rates of return to better align their financial goals and life goals. They want more realistic, satisfying, short and long-term investment options that correspond with their expenses and savings milestones. They want to focus on setting achievable long and near-term financial goals that allow them to build and tap into wealth at any point in their lifetime.
How CGN Advisors Personalizes Financial Planning
How does CGN Advisors help you personalize your financial planning? When you're investing for a specific goal, and not just to build as much wealth as possible, it takes the emotion out of investing. And that's a good thing. Even better? By shortening the time window for how long and how much to invest, you have more flexibility to determine your risk tolerance and asset allocation.
I typically ask questions like, "What do you want to accomplish?" Then I turn those goals into financial outlooks by calculating what it costs to accomplish each goal.
The Importance of Deadlines in Financial Planning
Another important note—deadlines are essential for goal-based planning. Financially, they inform your investment and risk management strategy. Emotionally, they make the goals real. For example, "buy a house in five years" is a tangible, achievable goal in a way that "buy a house someday" is not.
Adapting Your Financial Plan to Life Changes
One final thought, your life and goals typically change over time, so your financial plan needs to change too. So reach out when you're ready to turn your life events into tangible financial strategies.
CGN Advisors is here to help. Schedule a meeting by calling our office in Manhattan, Kansas at 785-340-3434 or our Rogers, Arkansas office at 479-335-1034.