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Picking Stocks Using Pictures

Picking Stocks using Pictures

Technical analysts select companies for their portfolio based on patterns in stock prices.  That is, it allows them to enhance their process of picking stocks by using pictures. This approach is very different from some of the others I’ve discussed, as buy and sell decisions are based in large part on these patterns and less on the financial fundamentals of the company. Every technical analyst has a favorite set of graphs he or she likes to review and their own thresholds that determine when to buy or sell a particular stock.

I’ve done just a little trading based on technical analysis, so asked Rick Lage, a family friend who has much more experience with this approach, to help me out. In this post, I will provide some background on Rick and provide explanations of the graphs he uses. I’ll also provide some insights on who I think is best suited for this type of trading.

Rick’s Story

Rick’s Background

“I was first introduced to the stock market in a Junior High School math class. I made my first trade with a stockbroker about 6 years after graduating from High School.

My interest in the stock market never faded. I was always focused on this platform to make money. Unfortunately losing money was a regular occurrence for many years in the beginning, with not many gains to be proud of.

My interest peaked in 1999 when I attended my first stock trading event in Las Vegas, known as the TradersExpo[1]. TradersExpo provides a wealth of information available for the beginner to the pro, including hardware, trading software, classroom instruction and more.

I personally have never been a day trader. Swing trading is more my definition. I do touch base with my stock watch list daily. It’s always managed and checking my technical indicators is a must.”

Rick’s Goals

“I stock trade for the challenge; not so much for the fun or success. If there is success the fun will follow. There will be losses. No doubt. But you learn how to manage those losses. You have no choice. Technical trading is my science.”

Rick’s Advice to New Traders

Rick says, “I have tried hard to never complicate the trade. There are many technical indicators, so don’t get overwhelmed. I pick stocks that have the momentum. Pick your favorite few indicators and go with those.”

Rick’s Tools

Rick’s favorite indicators are

  • Simple Moving Averages using 9 and 180 days (SMA 9 and SMA 180)
  • Price and Volume Charts
  • Relative Strength Index (RSI)
  • Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD)
  • Heikin-Ashi bar chart

I will provide brief introductions to each of these indicators, illustrating each with two stocks – Apple and Shopify. A graph of Apple’s stock prices from January 1, 2018 through mid-May 2020 is shown below. It had some ups and downs in price in 2018 and 2019, followed by a significant decrease and recovery so far in 2020.

Shopify had a steadier increase in 2018 and 2019, but much more volatility so far in 2020, as illustrated in the graph below.

Simple Moving Averages (SMA 180 and 9)

In this context, a simple moving average (SMA) is the average of the closing prices for the past n days, where n is specified by the person making the chart. In Rick’s case, he looks at the 180-day simple moving average and the 9-day simple moving average. For the former, he takes the average of the closing prices for the previous 180 days; for the latter, the average of the closing prices for the previous 9 days.

SMA Charts

Technical analysts add their favorite SMA lines to the chart of the stock’s price. For illustration, I’ve added the SMA 180 and SMA 9 lines to the Shopify and Apple stock price charts below.

SMA Indicators

Technical analysts then look at the crossing points on the chart to provide buy and sell indications. For example, a technical analyst might look at when the closing price line (black in these charts) goes up through the SMA 180 line (blue in these charts) and call it a buy signal or an indication of a time to buy a stock. You can see an example of a buy signal, using this method, for Shopify around May 1, 2019, as indicated by the green circle.  The buy signals for Apple are much more frequent using this criterion, two of which are indicated with green circles.

Similarly, a technical analyst might look at when the SMA 9 line (yellow/orange in these charts) goes down through the SMA 180 line and call it a sell signal. Using this criterion, there was a clear sell signal for Apple in early November 2018, as indicated by the red circle.

Every technical analyst has his or her favorite time periods for SMA lines. In addition, each technical analyst selects his or her own criteria for buy and sell signals based on those SMA lines. The shorter the time period associated with the SMA, the more often buy and sell transactions will be indicated. When I use SMA graphs to inform my buy and sell decisions, I use fairly long time periods as I am a long-term investor. By comparison, some people trade in and out of stocks several times a day, so use very short time periods, such as minutes or hours.

Price and Volume

A price and volume chart shows plots of both the price of a stock and its volume on a daily basis, color-coded to indicate whether the stock price went up or down each day. The graph below is a price and volume chart for Shopify.

The upper chart has rectangles (called boxes), sometimes with lines sticking out of them (called whiskers). The combination of the boxes and whiskers is often called a candle. There is one candle for each trading day.

Price & Volume Indicators

A red box indicates that the price was lower at the end of the day than at the end of the previous day; a green box, higher. Green boxes can be interpreted as follows:

  • The bottom of the box is the opening price.
  • The top of the box is the closing price.
  • The bottom of any whisker sticking down from the box is the lowest price on that day. If there is no downward whisker, the lowest daily price and the opening price were the same.
  • The top of any whisker sticking up from the box is the highest price on that day. If there is no upward whisker, the highest daily price and the closing price were the same.

Red boxes can be similarly interpreted, but the opening price is the top of the box and the closing price is the bottom of the box.

The lower section of the chart shows the number of shares traded each day. If the bar is green, the stock price went up that day, while red corresponds to down.

Technical analysts use these charts to identify trends. A really tall green bar in the lower section green is an indication that a lot of people think the stock will go up so are buying. Many technical analysts consider this a buy signal. Similarly, a really tall red bar is considered by some to be a sell signal. My sense is that you need to be very quick to respond using this type of strategy, as you don’t want to sell a stock after everyone has already sold it and the price has dropped or buy it after the price has increased.

Relative Strength Index (RSI)

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is intended to measure whether a company’s stock is in an over-bought or over-sold position. If it is over-sold, it is a buy signal; if over-bought, a sell signal. The RSI is one of a broad class of measures called oscillators, all of which are intended to evaluate whether the market is over-bought or over-sold.

The RSI is determined based on a moving average of recent gains and the moving average of recent losses. The value of the RSI is scaled so it always falls between 0 and 100.

The RSI was developed by J. Welles Wilder. He considers the market over-bought when RSI is greater than 70 and oversold when it is below 30. There are many other ways in which the RSI chart can be used to identify trends and inform trading decisions that are outside the scope of this post.

The chart below shows the RSI for Apple (blue) and Shopify (orange).

The red horizontal line corresponds to RSI equal 70, Wilder’s over-bought signal. The green line is Wilder’s over-sold signal at RSI equals 30.

In this chart, there are several times when both stocks were over-bought. That is, the RSI for both stocks goes above the red line. Apple was considered slightly over-sold a few times, when the blue line crossed below the green line. By comparison, Shopify’s RSI came close to indicating that it was over-sold a few times, but never went below the green line.

Moving Average Convergence Divergence

The Moving Average Convergence Divergence indicator (MACD) is similar to the Simple Moving Average indicator discussed above. However, it uses an exponentially weighted moving average (EMA) instead of a simple moving average. A simple moving average gives the same weight to each observation. An exponentially weighted moving average gives more weight to more recent observations. MACD can use any period – minutes, hours, days, etc. For this illustration, I will set the period equal to a day. If you are trading more often, you’ll want to replace “day” in the explanation below with “hour” or “minute.”

The MACD was defined by its designer as the 12-day moving average (EMA 12) minus the 26-day moving average (EMA 26). MACD is compared to its own 9-day moving average to determine buy and sell signals. As with the simple moving average, the MACD crossing its 9-day moving average in the upward direction is a buy signal. When MACD falls below its 9-day moving average, it is a sell signal.

MACD Charts

The graph below shows Shopify’s daily closing prices along with the EMA 12 and EMA 26 lines in orange and green, respectively, starting on February 1, 2020.

This next chart shows the corresponding values of MACD (black) and its 9-day moving average (green).

If you compare the two graphs, you can see that MACD goes below the 0 line on the second chart on April 1, 2020. This transition is consistent with the orange line crossing above the green line on the first chart on the same date.

MACD Indicators

When Shopify’s MACD is bullish, its MACD is greater than its 9-day moving average or the black line is above the green line in the second chart above. This situation has been seen several times in the past few months – for short periods starting on February 11, March 23 and May 4 and a longer period starting on April 9.

The Apple MACD chart, shown below, has gone back and forth between bullish and bearish (black line below the green line) much more often in the past few months. It sometimes changes from bearish to bullish and back again on almost a daily basis.

The “convergence” and “divergence” part of MACD’s name refers to how the MACD behaves relative to the price. The relationship is somewhat complicated, so I suggest you refer to one of the sources I mention below if you are interested in this feature of MACD charts.

Heikin-Ashi bar chart

Also known as a Heikin-Ashi candlestick chart, the Heikin-Ashi bar chart is similar to the price part of the Price-Volume chart described above.   However, instead of using the actual high, low, open and close prices, all four of the points on the candle are calculated in a different manner. The purpose of the adjustments is to make a chart that makes identifying trends easier. I refer you to one of the resources below to learn the details of how these values are adjusted.

Heikin-Ashi Charts

The charts below show the Heikin-Ashi charts for Shopify and Apple for the past six months.

As mentioned, they look a lot like Price charts, except the boxes corresponding to the adjusted open and close and the whiskers corresponding to the adjusted high and low. The boxes are colored green when the adjusted close is higher than the previous adjusted close and red otherwise.

Heikin-Ashi Indicators

Here are some of the indicators people review when using Heikin-Ashi charts:

  • Longer boxes are indicative of trends. In the charts above, you can see that the Apple chart tends to have longer boxes than the Shopify chart.
  • When there is no whisker on one end of the box, the trend is even stronger. For example, neither the Apple nor Shopify charts have upward whiskers on the red boxes from mid-February to mid-March 2020. This time period corresponds to the time period highlighted by the red arrow on the chart below when both stocks’ prices were going down.

Similarly, almost none of the green bars in the last month of the Heishen Ashi chart have downward whiskers, corresponding to the time period in the price chart indicated by the green arrow.

Time periods when the boxes are short, have both whiskers and change color often are indicators of changes. For example, the Apple Heikin-Ashi chart from mid-January to mid-February shows several bars of alternating colors. Apple’s price changed from an upward trend to a downward trend in this period, as shown in the purple circle in the chart below. Identifying turning points is very important in deciding when to buy and sell stocks.

Who Can Use Technical Analysis

Technical analysis isn’t for everyone. It requires people who (a) have the ability to focus on markets fairly closely every day in the case of swing traders or all day in the case of day traders, (b) are happy with growing their portfolio with a large number of small “wins,” and (c) have a solid understanding of the charts being used.

Time Commitment

Unlike many other investment strategies, many day traders and swing traders do not consider a company’s financial fundamentals in their buy decisions. Instead, they monitor the patterns in their charts. Without the comfort of believing that the companies they own have sound fundamentals, it is important that they follow their charts consistently so they can quickly sell any positions that are not meeting expectations.

Lots of Small Wins

In my post on financial fundamentals, I talk about Peter Lynch’s concept of a 10-bagger – a stock whose value is at least 10 times what you paid for it. In that paradigm, the goal is to attain better-than-market-average returns by getting average returns on most of the positions in your portfolio and big gains on one or two positions.

By comparison, the goal of day traders and swing traders is to make a very small amount of money on every trade, but to make lots and lots of those trades. If you earn 0.1% on average on every trading day, it compounds to just over 20% a year!

For many of us, buying and selling with gains of less than 0.1% per security seems really small and might not seem worthwhile. As such, you need to be willing to be happy with lots of little wins rather than a 10-bagger if you want to be a day trader or swing trader.

Understand the Charts

One of the requirements of using technical analysis is to make sure you understand how to interpret the charts correctly. For example, Southwest Airlines (ticker: LUV) has done very poorly recently from the impact of COVID-19. The plot below shows its closing stock price from February 15, 2020 through May 20, 2020.

As can be seen, the last stock price on the graph (about $29) is almost exactly half of the stock price in mid-February (peaked at $58.54). As such, while it has had a few days on which the price increased, the overall trend has been down.

The RSI chart is shown below. Remember that an RSI value of less than 30 is an indication that it might be time to buy the stock.

In this example, there was a buy signal when the RSI crossed below the green line (30) on February 25. The closing stock price on that day was $49.66. If you had bought the stock on that date, you would have lost 41% in the subsequent three months as the stock was at $29 on May 20, 2020.

As you can see, interpreting charts takes time and expertise. If you are willing to invest the time to learn all of the nuances of each type of chart and monitor your positions, technical analysis might be the right investing strategy for you.

There’s a lot more to know about each of these indicators than I’ve provided in this post. Here are a few links to other sources of information to learn more.

  • Stock Charts
  • Technical Analysis for the Trading Professional by Constance Brown, McGraw-Hill Education, 2nd Edition, 2012.
  • Investopedia

How I Use Technical Analysis

I primarily rely on analysis of the underlying fundamentals of a company when I purchase individual stocks. Once I make the decision to buy a stock, I look at the charts to evaluate whether the timing is good for a purchase. If the consensus of the charts I review indicates that the position is over-bought (i.e., price is too high), I will wait to see if the price decreases before buying.

In addition, I use technical analysis in my Roth IRA, where there are no capital gains taxes on trades so more frequent trading isn’t adversely impacted. I follow a large handful of industry ETFs using technical analysis and buy and sell them as each one appears to be doing well. Because I am trading in industry exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and not individual stocks, I feel comfortable looking at my positions once a week. My thought is that industries aren’t likely to experience sudden weaknesses not seen throughout the market in shorter time frames.

When I pay sufficient attention to the positions in my Roth IRA, I tend to get about or slightly above market-average performance. However, when I don’t look at my positions and re-balance regularly, I find that my performance suffers which just confirms my first point in the previous section that using technical analysis requires time and diligence.

[1] There are now TradersExpo events held regularly in many cities (subject to change by the coronavirus).

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A Man is Not a (Sound Financial) Plan

A man is not a 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. 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.
    • Setting your retirement savings goal.
    • 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.

    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

    The table below lists the types of obstacles you might be facing and the types of advisors that might be able to help.

    ObstaclePossible Advisors
    I can’t figure out how to make a budget or how to set aside money for emergency or designated savings.Bookkeeper, accountant, financial planner
    I can’t make my budget balance.Bookkeeper, accountant, financial planner
    I have more debt that I can re-pay.Financial planner, debt counselor, debt consolidator
    I don’t know what insurance I should buy.Financial planner, insurance agent or, for employer-sponsored health insurance, your employer’s human resource department
    I’m not sure I’m saving enough for retirement.Financial planner
    I have questions about how to invest my savings, including whether I am diversified or need to re-balance my portfolio.Financial planner or stock broker
    I don’t understand how income taxes work.Accountant
    I need help with a Trust, Power of Attorney or Will.Wills & estates lawyer

    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.