Cost: $1,200

This is a no-frills, straightforward retirement planning process aimed at making informed choices about the important decisions you face right now, such as:

• Am I saving enough? (only if you’re not yet retired)
• How much can I spend?
• How much can go toward other goals like college or a new home?
• Where should I keep my money?
• How much investment risk should I be taking?
• What investments should I use?

It would be great if the future were exact enough to know exactly how much to save (or how much we can spend if retired) and how much investment risk we need to take to make it all work. Since we can’t pinpoint those answers, our decisions inevitably result in some degree of either over-planning, which results in unnecessary sacrifices now, or under-planning, which results in unavoidable sacrifices later. Both have real costs.

The Baseline Retirement Plan strikes a manageable balance between the likelihood you are over-planning vs. under-planning, maximizing comfort and confidence while minimizing unnecessary sacrifices. It also establishes a baseline from which you can make decisions, monitor progress, and course-correct in the future.

Together, we will gather the necessary details about your financial resources, goals and values in order to arrive at answers, custom tailored to your own priorities concerning spending goals, desired timeframes, investment risk, and estate planning goals. From all this, I’ll create cash flow models and stress-test them to find just the right mix between the likelihood of over-planning and the likelihood of under-planning. You’ll receive:

• A recommendation on how much to save, or if you are retired, how much you can spend
• A recommended personal investment policy, including asset allocation, asset location, and investment selection
• Specific investment and account recommendations

The advice is delivered in a subsequent two-hour meeting which will include presentation of written recommendations.

To get the most benefit out of a Baseline Retirement Plan, you really need to have a good understanding of your current finances, such as you ability to adjust your saving and/or spending and knowing what your short-term financial needs are. If you are not sure about these things, you should consider starting with a 2-Hour Financial Planning Tune Up.

Lastly, this is not an all-you-need, one-time solution to retirement planning. The recommendations are only relevant if you plan to regularly update and adjust the baseline plan as necessary. I recommend this be done annually. Don’t purchase this service if you have no intention of updating your plan. A deposit of $500 is due upon engagement, and the remaining $700 is due upon delivery of the recommendations.

Need more? We can build on to this process with a customized engagement to answer other questions or address other issues.

Baseline retirement plan update

Cost: $600

Since I recommend that you update your baseline annually, I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer you a way to do this. We’ll get together for a 2-hour meeting in order to discuss what has changed and gather updated information so I can update re-test the plan and establish a new baseline. I’ll email you the results along with any recommend changes. This service is only available to clients who have already established a Baseline Retirement Plan. The $600 fee is payable at the end of the meeting.

If you are interested in a Baseline Financial Plan, please visit my How to Work with Me page.