The goal of the Financial Dashboard Plan is to have the same living standard both now and in the future. This concept is called “consumption smoothing” and it’s based on the idea that no one wants to live lavishly today to only wind up being broke in the future – or vice versa.

Consumption smoothing

To calculate the highest sustainable living standard, we use the advisor version of MaxiFi® Planner. Watch this short video that describes how consumption smoothing works (there’s a robust household version of the software available for only $99 for DIYers.)

In the planning process, we listen to your goals and objectives and work with you to build multiple scenarios, like using optional retirement dates, Social Security start dates, and lifespans. Our goal is to build a strategy that maximizes the highest level of consistent, sustainable spending throughout the remainder of your life. Then we just update the plan regularly to make sure you’re staying on track throughout the years.

But financial planning is more than just budgeting. Once we have your information in our database, we then have an idea what your estimated annual income and expenses are. So we forecast your taxable income to identify possible areas we could do some tax planning.

Having a powerful tool is a great foundation, but a knowledgeable and experienced financial planner can see the big picture to help you avoid “gotchas” down the road. Like long-term care. Whether you’re a smaller estate depending on government programs or a larger estate interested in using an insurance policy, we can help determine the most affordable strategy for you. Both have vastly different approaches from a financial planning perspective. You don’t want to be caught down the road incapacitated and without a long-term care plan. We don’t offer insurance and we are not affiliated with an insurance agency, however we can offer referrals upon request.

We’ve worked with hundreds of clients and there’s not much we haven’t experienced. Contact us to see if we can help you.