Co-Create Your Wealth Plan in 4 Actionable Steps

Elderly couple sitting on a bench and talking to one another about their new wealth plan

Table of Contents

The world is a complex place, and you are a unique individual. Combine both of those things, and the idea of creating a one-size-fits all wealth plan could seem impossible, and for good reason! Your story and the strategic plan you need likely depend on countless overlapping circumstances.

Nevertheless, we do not believe that complexity should be an excuse to give up on the idea entirely. Co-creating a personalized wealth plan using the principles laid out in this article can get you much of the way to building the financial future of your dreams.

Whether you are contemplating your first serious financial plan or re-evaluating your existing strategy, here are four actionable principles that we believe could help propel you in the right direction.

Step 1: Assessing Your Current Financial Situation

Magnifying glass on blue background to represent the need to examine your assets and liabilities as part of your wealth plan
Wealth Plan Step 1 - Assessing Your Current Financial Situation​

This first step is all about working out where you are in life, and involves taking a detailed inventory of everything you have (your assets and liabilities), working out where you want to go in future (setting goals), and deciding what will be required to get there (aligning your spending and investment habits with those goals).

However, deciding how you approach this process depends on what stage of life you find yourself in, and requires you to be realistic about your future on that basis.

We believe that a wealth plan created for a 30-year-old entrepreneur should look very different from the wealth plan of an established older couple looking to retire in a year or two. It’s a matter of perspective and of acknowledging your current reality.

Understanding Your Stage of Life

Everyone is different, and the details of those differences matter. Everything from your age, to your gender, to your stage of life can play an important role in determining which wealth plan strategy is best for you.

For example, if you find yourself edging closer to your retirement years, you might be interested to learn about the “go-go,” “slow-go” and “no-go” framework that is gaining traction in the financial planning world right now.

This framework could help you think and plan for the next ten, twenty or even thirty years of your life. If it does not apply to you, feel free to skip ahead to the next subheading, titled Know Your (Net) Worth.

What are your “go-go” years?

Simply put, “go-go” years are the season of life straight after your career has finished, when you still have plenty of energy to travel, see people, and check off the dreams on your bucket list.

These are active years, and are likely to come with a higher level of leisure expenditure as a result.

What are your “slow-go” years?

This is the next stage after the “go-go” years, where your energy levels start to dip, you have hopefully managed to fulfill most of your main life goals, and you are content to spend more time focusing on your family — though perhaps they can start coming to you more often than you head over to them.

Unfortunately, another feature of this season is the increased likelihood of health and mobility issues that come with aging. Of course, these are not guaranteed, but planning for increased health expenditure during this time may be a wise course of action.

What are your “no-go” years?

With advancements in medical technology and increased standards of living in the West, many people are living well into their 80s, 90s, and even 100s! Reaching these milestones is no small achievement, but they may also come with physical and potentially cognitive challenges, too.

We would suggest that the key to navigating this stage of life is to approach it carefully and gracefully: you may not be able to move around the world, around the country, or even around your state as much, but you can take the time to rest and reflect on a life well-lived.

This could be the perfect time to communicate your life story to your loved ones, and to engage with other parts of the Legacy Planning process, if you haven’t already started those in your “slow-go” stage.

Know Your (Net) Worth

Whether or not you were in or close to one of the “go-go,” “slow-go” or “no-go” years detailed above, your first action step will be the same: calculating your (net) worth.

Your net worth is the difference between what you own (your assets) and what you owe the bank or other creditors (your liabilities). There are plenty of free tools online that can help you discover your net worth, including this one.

Once you have worked out what your net worth is, you should have a clearer big-picture idea of your financial health, and any areas that need improvement.

Examining Your Affairs

Socrates said many poignant and profound things throughout his life; one of those sayings is: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Your net worth calculation is a great time to apply this quote.

When you closely examine your net worth and everything that has gone into it, you can ask yourself questions like:

  • What does my financial state of affairs say about what I value most in life?
  • Are my spending habits aligned with my values?
  • Where could I change things to better align those choices with my values?
  • If I were to come back to these in 5, 10, or 15 years, where would I like to see something different?
 

The truth is that we spend money and time on what means most to us — so why not do so more intentionally? When you can tie your day-to-day behavior to your core values, you can live life with a greater sense of purpose and fulfillment.

Remembering Who You Are

Diving into the numbers that describe your financial life can be insightful and helpful, but it could also feel burdensome, discouraging, and distracting. That is why we would like you to remember something very important: you are not your net worth.

This is exactly why we put (net) in brackets. Your worth as a human being is not determined by the numbers on your bank balance. 

It could be easy to get caught up in those numbers, to start measuring your success in life against them, and to chase after higher numbers (or “more stuff”), but we would caution against that.

Getting realistic about what you have and what you owe is a healthy life marker, but for our purposes, it is also just a starting point on your financial journey: a place for you to pause, examine, and plug in your values on the front end.

In other words, before you even embark on your financial journey, you can know that you are a priceless gift to the world, and your ultimate value can never be quantified. 

Instead, the values you carry within you will determine how you use and align your resources going forward.

If stewardship is a key value for you, meditate on that, and let that influence how you see your net worth now, and how you want to proceed. 

If it is self-control, or self-discipline, think about it through that lens, and let that guide your next steps. The purposeful possibilities are endless!

This way, you can tie what comes next — goal-setting — to a sense of personal meaning that is not dependent on numbers alone. The numbers can instead serve a higher purpose, as your goals act as an expression of your values…

Step 2: Setting SMART Financial Goals

Neat goal review plan with chart and pens to represent goal-setting in the wealth plan process
Wealth Plan Step 2 - Setting SMART Financial Goals

Your goals and values will be as unique as you are, which is why it is important to give them the attention and planning they deserve. Ambiguity is not what we’re looking for here; instead, we suggest you set goals for your wealth plan using the SMART framework:

  • S: Specific — e.g. something like “I will save $10,000 for a downpayment on a home, within the next three years.” A vague goal, by contrast, would be something like “save more.”
  • M: Measurable — ensure that you are using quantitative, accountable language, with specific numbers, time frames and with a mention of any relevant people.
  • A: Achievable — set realistic goals that clearly connect to your current life circumstances (e.g. we would advise against “magical goals” like “winning the lottery”).
  • R: Relevant — goals that serve your values and ensure you will have the innate motivation to see them through.
  • T: Time-bound — where you have an end date in mind, by which you would like to have achieved your goal.

Specificity is Your Friend

Although the SMART framework carries some restrictions, we believe it can actually offer a more effective way to get you from where you are now to where you want to be, as it can help you create a clear financial “bridge” that will stand up, regardless of how unique your goals are.

Greg Liszka, IPF’s founder, likes to use this bridge metaphor when sitting down with clients in face-to-face meetings:

“Here’s my job: my job is never to tell you you can’t do something (unless it’s so obviously unattainable); my job is to figure out how to make it happen for you. I’m not going to rain on your dreams. I’m here to fix problems.

Normally, all our clients have are two points, but there’s a bridge missing. So it’s my job to construct this bridge and figure out: how do I get them from point A to point B? We’ve just got to do the math.”

Setting SMART goals that make sense of where you are now simplifies the process: you’ve just got to “do the math” to start moving in the right direction on your wealth plan.

Staying Accountable

Greg also consistently highlights the need to be realistic, to work with what you have:

“Sometimes those conversations are very difficult, because that bridge may be very long and very steep.

If you tell me, “I’ve got $100,000 but I want to retire in 15 years, and I want $150,000 a year in retirement.”

Then I’ll say something like, “Well, in that case, you’ll need to save (for the sake of example), $350,000 a year, starting now.”

“But I only make $80k a year…”

Not to be harsh, but I have to say, “Figure out the rest, man! You’ve got to fix that goal, because it’s impossible with what you have and where we are.”

Nobody wants to hear that, and I don’t want to say it, but facts are facts. You can’t paint unrealistic pictures. You have to set the right expectations.

But if we can do it, then I can tell you, “Alright, you need to save another $8,000 a year. That’s $675 a month. Then we can get you there. We’ll also need to change your allocation, and hopefully, we get a little luck… And then you have to do what you can.”

Like we said: no magical thinking. Crafting a wealth plan involves detailed, value-driven planning and self-discipline to head in the right direction.

Step 3: Creating a Plan to Achieve Your Goals

Page with abstract planning boxes to show the planning stage of the wealth plan process
Wealth Plan Step 3 - Creating a Plan to Achieve Your Goals​

With a clear vision and defined targets, your next step will be charting a course of action that will bring these goals to life.

Budgeting and Saving Strategies

The first thing we recommend you do here is to implement a strict budget. This budget will help you track your progress towards your goals on a weekly and monthly basis. You can find some great, free budget templates here.

Investment Planning

The second part of this third stage involves crafting or updating your investment portfolio to align with your wealth plan (all of those values and goals we talked about earlier).

When it comes to this stage of the wealth planning process, it’s important to factor in your risk tolerance (e.g. in the kind of asset diversification and allocation you choose).

Risk Management

And, speaking of risk, this is also where factoring in strategies like an emergency fund, or special types of insurance, can be useful for safeguarding against the natural volatility of life.

With this kind of protection in place, you can keep working towards your goals and living out your values, even through potential setbacks.

Step 4: Implementing and Monitoring Your Wealth Plan

Typewriter with the word "review" to show the review stage of creating a wealth plan
Wealth Plan Step 4 - Implementing and Monitoring Your Wealth Plan​

A plan without action is just a nice idea. This final step is all about careful execution and diligent oversight.

Tools for Tracking Progress

There’s a lot of great, helpful, and sometimes even free technology out there that can help you monitor the progress you are making on your wealth plan.

Whether you use the app or online portal provided by your bank, or you look on the App Store for an external solution, these tools help you stay transparent and aware of what’s going on.

Adaptability and Flexibility

And life has a way of ensuring that there is always something going on! That means your wealth plan will likely need to adapt and change in big and small ways, depending on your circumstances.

But before you enact changes, you need to make sure they are needed and fit those circumstances — which is where regular review comes in.

These reviews should be designed to check whether your plan is still fit for purpose: whether it is serving your values and specific goals well.

It might also be helpful to conduct reviews like this with a certified financial advisor, or someone else that you trust, who understands your situation and can speak with expertise into your financial affairs.

Having a second pair of eyes and a second brain can help you see things that you’ve missed, and come up with solutions you would not otherwise have thought of on your own.

Inviting those you trust into this part of the wealth plan process shows accountability, humility, and a desire to learn and grow — all admirable traits (and maybe they even overlap with some of the values you wanted to plug in at the start).

Summary

So there you have it: the four principles you need to create (or co-create, if you want help) your very own wealth plan.

  1. Getting realistic about your current financial situation;
  2. Setting SMART goals that suit your situation;
  3. Placing those goals within an overall plan that you will implement; and
  4. Using that plan as a basis for reviewing your progress.

The Iron Point Difference

If you happen to live in one of the Greater Pittsburgh, Grove City, Greenville, Erie, Cranberry Township and Boardman, OH areas, and you would like some help co-creating a bespoke wealth plan, why not reach out to Iron Point Financial today?

Our focus is on providing comprehensive financial care to you and your family by aligning our wealth management services with your specific life goals and values. We will work with you to help you make informed decisions and navigate whatever is standing between you and your financial aims.

Here’s what you can expect if you work with us:

  • A rigorous evaluation process, where we develop a deep understanding of your needs not just as a client, but as a human being.
  • An analysis of your investment objectives so that we can co-create a comprehensive strategy for achieving your financial targets.
  • A tailored investment portfolio that will help you pursue both your short- and long-term objectives.
  • Constant monitoring and adjustment of your portfolio: we gauge performance based on progress towards your unique goals, not a market index.
 

Clients who work with us are more than just clients: they become our friends. If you choose us for your wealth planning needs, that’s how we will treat you: as a friend. And if you ask our other clients what they think of us, they will tell you about the way we care for their financial and whole-life needs, and recommend solutions with those needs first and foremost in mind.

If you enjoyed this article about co-creating a wealth plan, why not sign up for regular email updates from our blog, so that you don’t miss future posts?

Iron Point Financial is here to empower you to secure a brighter tomorrow. We operate physical offices in Grove City, PA and Greenville, PA. 

We primarily serve residents of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Florida but we also have security registrations for 22 other states across the continental USA.

Further Reading

 

Disclosures

  • The individuals and situations depicted here are hypothetical only, and do not represent the actual performance of any particular investments or strategy. 
  • All investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. There is no assurance that any investment strategy will be successful.
  • For a comprehensive review of your personal situation, always consult with a tax or legal advisor. 
  • Neither Cetera Advisor Networks LLC nor any of its representatives may give legal or tax advice.
  • The views stated are not necessarily the opinion of Cetera and should not be construed directly or indirectly as an offer to buy or sell any securities mentioned herein.
  • Due to volatility within the markets mentioned, opinions are subject to change without notice.
  • Information is based on sources believed to be reliable; however, their accuracy or completeness cannot be guaranteed. 
  • Past performance does not guarantee future results.
  •  The opinions are those of the writer, and not the recommendations or responsibility of Cetera Advisor Networks LLC or its representatives.

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