A Man is Not a (Sound Financial) Plan
“A Man is Not a Plan!” It sounds like a very dated statement, but a guide on a recent trip I took told me about a conversation he had with one of his nieces about her finances. They were talking about how she could improve her financial situation by building a sound financial plan. As they were talking, one of them came up with the slogan, “A Man is Not a Plan.” He suggested I use it as the title for one of my posts. So, here it is!
In this post, I will talk about the key components of a sound financial plan. A financial plan provides the structure to help you organize your financial information and decisions. I’ll provide brief explanations of the things to consider about each component, what you need to do and, for most of them, links to posts I’ve written that provide much more detail. I’ll also provide insights on how to know when you need help and who to contact.
Sound Financial Plan
A sound financial plan includes the following sections:
A list of your financial goals – In this section, you’ll want to identify your three to five most important financial goals.
A list of your current assets and liabilities (debts)
Your budget
Your savings and investment strategies to help you attain your goals, including
Short-term savings
Designated savings
Retirement savings
Desired use of debt, including re-payment of current debt
Your giving goals
Risk management strategy, i.e., types and amounts of insurance to buy
Understanding of your income tax situation
What you want to have happen to you and your assets when you become incapacitated or die and related documents
You will likely be most successful if you create a formal document with all of these components of a sound financial plan, such as by using Financial IQ by Susie Q's Personal Financial Planner. You’ll want to review and update your financial plan at least every few years, but certainly any time you have a significant change in your finances (e.g., a significant change in wages) or are considering a significant financial decision (e.g., buying a house, getting married or having children). Of course, a less formal format is much better than no plan at all, so you should tailor your efforts to what will best help you attain your financial goals.
Budget
A budget itemizes all of your sources of income and all of your expenses, including money you set aside for different types of savings. It provides the framework for all of your financial decisions. Do you need to change the balance between income and expenses to meet your goals? Can you make a big expenditure? How and what types of insurance can you afford? How much debt can you afford to re-pay?
I think that a budget is the most important component of a sound financial plan and should be the first step you take. Everyone should have a good understanding of the amounts of their income and expenses to inform the rest of their financial decisions. While some people will benefit from going through the full process of creating a budget and monitoring it, others can be a bit less detailed.In the text section of your financial plan, you’ll want to include a list of your financial goals as they relate to your budget and how you plan to implement them. You can include your actual budget in your financial plan itself or as a separate attachment.
Savings
I generally think of savings in three categories (four if you include setting aside money for your kids): emergency savings, designated savings and retirement savings. You will want to address each of these types of savings in your financial plan. The information you’ll want to include for each type of savings is:
How much you currently have saved.
The target amounts you’d like to have saved.
Your plan for meeting your targets.
For what you’ll use it.
How fast you’ll replenish it if you use it.
How much you need to include in your budget to meet your targets.
Your investing strategy.
A list of all financial accounts with location of securely stored access information.
Emergency Savings
Emergency savings is money you set aside for unexpected events. These events can include increased expenses such as the need to travel to visit an ailing relative or attend a funeral or a major repair to your residence. They also include unexpected decreases in income, such as the reduced hours, leaves of absence or lay-offs related to the coronavirus.The general rule of thumb is that a target amount for emergency savings is three to six months of expenses. I suggest keeping one month of expenses readily available in a checking or savings account that you can access immediately and the rest is an account you can access in a day or two, such as a money market account.
Designated Savings
Designated savings is money you set aside for planned large expenses or bills you don’t pay every month. Examples might include your car insurance if you pay it annually or semi-annually or money you save for a replacement for your car you are going to buy in a few years.
To estimate how much you need to set aside for your designated savings each month, you’ll want to look at all costs that you don’t pay every month and figure out how often you pay them. You’ll want to set aside enough money each month to cover those bills when they come due. For example, if your car insurance bill is $1,200 every six months, you’ll want to put $200 in your designated savings in each month in which your insurance bill isn’t paid. You’ll then take $1,000 our of your designated savings and add $200 in each month it is due to pay the bill.
Retirement Savings
Saving for retirement is one of the largest expenses you’ll have during your working lifetime. There are many aspects of saving for retirement:
Understanding how much you will receive in retirement from government programs, such as Social Security in the US or the Canadian Pension Plan in Canada.
Estimating how much you need to save each year to meet your retirement savings goal.
Deciding what are the best types of accounts in which to put your retirement savings – taxable, Roth (TFSA in Canada) or Traditional (RRSP in Canada).
Determining in what assets (bonds, stocks, mutual funds or ETFs, for example) to invest your retirement savings in light of your risk tolerance and diversification needs and how those choices affect your investment returns.
Debt
Debt can be used for any number of purchases, ranging from smaller items bought on credit cards to large items purchased with a loan, such as a home. Whether you have debt outstanding today, use credit cards regularly and/or are thinking of making a large purchase using debt, you’ll want to define your goals with respect to the use of debt.
For example, do you want to never have any debt outstanding (i.e., never buy anything for which you can’t pay cash and pay your credit card bills in full every month)? Are you willing to take out a mortgage as long as you understand the terms and can afford the payments? Do you have a combination of a high enough income and small enough savings that you are willing to use debt to make large purchases other than your home? Do you have debts you want to pay off in a certain period of time?
As you think about these questions, you’ll want to consider what debt is good for you and what debt might be problematic. A sound financial plan includes a list of your debts, how much you owe for each one, your target for repaying them, and your strategy for using debt in the future.
Credit Cards
Credit cards are the most common form of debt. Your financial plan might include the number of credit cards you want to have and your goals for paying your credit card bills. As part of these goals, you might need to add a goal about spending, such as not buying anything you can’t afford to pay off in a certain period of time.
Student Loans
Many people have student loans with outstanding balances. In your financial plan, you’ll want to include your goal for paying off any student loans you have. Do you want to pay them off according to the original schedule? Are you behind on payments and have a goal for getting caught up? Do you want to pay off your student loans early?
Car Loans
In a perfect world, your car would last long enough that you could buy its replacement out of your designated savings. However, the world isn’t perfect and you may need to consider whether to take out a loan or lease a car.
Your financial plan will include your strategy for ensuring that you always have a vehicle to drive. How often do you want to replace your car? What is your goal with respect to saving for the car, loans or leases? How much will it cost to maintain and repair your car? Your budget will include the amounts needed to cover the up-front portion of the cost of a replacement car, any loan or lease payments and amounts to put in designated savings for maintenance and repairs.
Mortgages
Most homeowners borrow money to help pay for it As part of creating your financial plan, you might include your goal for home ownership. Are you happy as a renter for the foreseeable future or would you like to buy a house?
If you want to buy a house either for the first time or a replacement for one you own, you then need to figure out how to pay for the house. How much can you save for a down payment? Can you set aside enough in designated savings each month to reach that goal? What is the price of a house that you can afford, after considering property taxes, insurance, repairs and maintenance?
Once you have a mortgage, you’ll want to select a goal for paying it off. When a mortgage has a low enough interest rate, you might make the payments according to the loan agreement and no more. If it has a higher interest rate or you foresee that your ability to make mortgage payments might change before it is fully re-paid, you might want to make extra payments if you have money in your budget.
Paying Off Debt
If you have debt, you’ll want to include your goals and your strategy for paying it off in your financial plan. You’ll first want to figure out how much you can afford each month to use for paying off your debts. You can then compare that amount with the amount needed to meet your goals. If the former is less than the latter, you’ll need to either generate more income, reduce other expenses, put less money in savings or be willing to live with less aggressive goals. These decisions are challenging ones and are a combination of cost/benefit analyses and personal preference.
Giving Goals
Many people want to give to their community either by volunteering their time or donating money. If you plan to give money or assets, you'll first want to make sure that you can afford the donations by checking your budget and other financial goals. It is also important to make sure that your donations are getting used in the way you intended, as not all charities are the same. A Dime Saved provides many more insights about giving in her Guide to Giving to Charity.
Insurance
Protecting your assets through insurance is an important part of a sound financial plan. The most common types of insurance for individuals cover your vehicles, residence, personal liability, health and life. There are other types of insurance, such as disability, dental, vision, and accidental death & dismemberment, that are most often purchased through your employer but can also be purchased individually.
As I told my kids, my recommendation is that you buy the highest limits on your insurance that you can afford and don’t buy insurance for things you can afford to lose. For example, if you can afford to pay up to $5,000 every time your home is damaged, you might select a $5,000 deductible on your homeowners policy. Alternately, if you can afford to replace your car if it is destroyed in an accident, you might not buy collision coverage at all. Otherwise, you might set lower deductibles as your goal.
For each asset in your financial plan, including your life and health which can be considered future sources of income or services, you’ll want to select a strategy for managing the risks of damage to those assets or of liability as a result of having those assets.
A financial plan includes a list of the types of policies you purchase, the specifics of the coverage provided and insurer, changes you’d like to make to your coverage and your strategy for insurance in the future. You’ll also want to attach copies of either just the declaration pages or your entire policies to your financial plan.
Car Insurance
Car insurance can provide coverage for damage to your car, to other vehicles involved in an accident you cause and injuries to anyone involved in an accident. The types of coverages available depend on the jurisdiction in which you live, as some jurisdictions rely on no-fault for determining who has to pay while others rely solely on tort liability.
Homeowners Insurance
Homeowners insurance (including renters or condo-owners insurance) provides coverage for damage to your residence (if you own it), damage to your belongings and many injuries to people visiting your residence.
Umbrella Insurance
One way to increase the limits of liability on your car and homeowners insurance is an umbrella insurance policy. An umbrella also provides protection against several other sources of personal liability. If you have money in your budget for additional insurance, you might consider purchasing an umbrella policy.
Health Insurance
Health insurance is likely to be one of your most expensive purchases, unless your employer pays a significant portion of the cost. Whether you are buying in the open market or through your employer, you are likely to have choices of health insurance plan. Selecting the health insurance plan that best meets your budget and goals can be challenging.
Life Insurance
There are many types of life insurance, including term and whole life. Some variations of whole life insurance provide you with options for investing in addition to the death benefit. Once you have compiled the other components of your financial plan, you’ll be better able to assess your need for life insurance. If you have no dependents and no debt, you might not need any. At the other extreme, if you have a lot of debt and one or more dependents, you might want to buy as much coverage as you can afford to ease their financial burden if you die. To learn more specifics about buying life insurance, you might review this post.
Annuities
An annuity is a contract under which you pay a fixed amount (either as a lump sum or in installments) in exchange for a future stream of payments. Some annuities provide income from the designated start date until you die. These annuities protect against longevity risk, i.e., the risk that you will outlive your savings. This post contains more information about annuities.
Income Taxes
Some of your financial decisions will depend on your income tax situation.
Do you want your investments to produce a lot of cash income which can increase your current income taxes or focus on appreciation which will usually defer your taxes until a later date?
Is a Roth (TFSA) or Traditional (RRSP) plan a better choice for your retirement savings?
Are you having too little or too much income taxes withheld from your paycheck?
Do you need to pay estimated income taxes?
How will buying a house, getting married or having children affect your income taxes?
Will moving to another state increase or reduce your income taxes?
As you consider these and other questions, you’ll want to outline at least a basic understanding of how Federal and local income taxes impact your different sources of income as part of creating a sound financial plan.
Legal Documents
Although it is hard to imagine when you are young, at some point in your life you may become incapacitated and will eventually die. There are a number of documents that you can use to ensure that your medical care and assets are managed according to your wishes. You can either include these documents as part of your financial plan or create a list of the documents, the date of the most recent version of each one and where they are located.
Powers of Attorney
There are two important types of powers of attorney – medical and financial.
A medical power of attorney appoints someone to be responsible for making your medical decisions if you are physically or mentally incapable of doing so. You can supplement a medical power of attorney with a medical directive that is presented to medical personnel before major surgery or by the person appointed to make medical decisions that dictates specifically what is to happen in certain situations.
A financial power of attorney appoints someone to be responsible for your finances if you are physically or mentally incapacitated. The financial power of attorney can allow that person to do only a limited number of things, such as pay your bills, or can allow that person to do anything related to your finances.
Trusts
There are several forms of trusts that can be used to hold some or all of your assets to make the transition to your beneficiaries easier when you die. Trusts can also be used to hold money for your children either before or after you die. While I am familiar with some types of trusts, I don’t know enough to provide any guidance about them. If you are interested in them, I suggest you research them on line and/or contact a lawyer with expertise in trusts.
Your Will
If you die without a will, your state or provincial government will decide how your assets will be divided. In many jurisdictions, your spouse, if you have one, will get some or all of your assets. Your children or parents may also get some of your assets. Most people want more control over the disposition of their assets than is provided by the government.
A will is the legal document that allows you to make those specifications. Your will can also identify who will become legally responsible for your minor children or any adult children who are unable to take care of themselves. That responsibility can be split between responsibility for raising your children and responsibility for overseeing any money you leave either to their guardian(s) or for them.
How to Know When You Need Help
As you can see, there are a lot of components to a sound financial plan and many of them are interrelated. There are many resources available to help you develop and refine your plan. Many of those resources are free, such as the links to the articles I’ve published on relevant topics. There are also many other sources of information, including personal stories, on line.You can also get more personalized assistance. There are many types of financial advisors, a topic I’ll cover in a post soon. Many financial advisors provide a broad array of services, while others specialize in one or two aspects of your financial plan.
Sources of Advice for a Sound Financial Plan
The table below lists the types of obstacles you might be facing and the types of advisors that might be able to help you create a sound financial plan.
Clearly, a financial planner can help with many of these questions, but sometimes you'll need an advisor with more in depth expertise on one aspect of your financial plan.
