See a Sample Financial Plan
By John Benedict
With a world of information at our fingertips, we can find reviews, history, product specifications, and more details than we’ll ever need about anything we want to buy. In other words, before making a major purchase, we can arm ourselves with information to make the best choice possible.
While creating a financial plan is in a different category than buying a car or putting an offer on a home, we believe it’s just as significant of an investment and you should know what you’re getting before you pay a penny.
Because we develop custom financial plans for each client, it’s no easy task to provide one without working with you extensively. However, we wanted to create something that could help you better understand what your potential financial plan could look like so you can see the benefits a plan could bring to your financial life. If you choose to work with us, here is a sample of what you can expect.
What Does a Financial Plan Include?
First, you may be wondering about what goes into a comprehensive plan. Financial plans often address a myriad of concerns and goals, from tax planning to retirement income strategizing. Depending on your needs, your plan may narrow in on one element or address multiple goals you’d like to achieve over time. Whatever you choose to focus on, your financial plan is designed to serve as your road map, helping you pull all the moving parts of your finances together so you can navigate the years before, during, and after your transition to retirement.
We believe a good financial plan should give you a detailed, complete view of your current financial situation, a thorough modeling of where you want to be, and the actions you need to take to reach those goals. It should address all the pieces of your financial puzzle, from stresses and fears to your values and dreams, and include risk factors, cash flow, retirement, estate planning, taxes, education, and income strategies to help bring you clarity and guidance. It is through our planning process that we can help you prepare for life’s expected and unexpected circumstances.
The result is a simple yet powerful road map to guide you toward financial freedom.
See a Sample Financial Plan
Here is a sample financial plan that reflects our planning process. It looks at a fictional client’s lifestyle income plan and how we developed it, including identifying their goals, creating a balance sheet, reviewing their cash flow, and more.
Keep in mind that this is only a hypothetical plan presented to illustrate what a client’s plan may resemble should they work with me. The characters and circumstances are completely fictional and are for illustrative purposes only. Be sure to seek the advice of a qualified professional for your particular situation and not rely upon any of the information herein to make personal financial decisions.
We provide an overview of your current situation. With just one glance, you can see a big picture of your financial life, including assets broken down into specific categories and short-term and long-term liabilities. We also include a detailed breakdown of all your financial resources and track your cash flow.
Our financial planning is goals-based. This means we help you develop specific budgets for your future goals and needs—pre and post retirement. This approach allows us to more accurately predict your future spending needs and accommodate for how those needs will change over time. Our advanced planning software allows us to bring all these things together in a comprehensive way that makes sense.
When it comes to investments, we will analyze your current investment holdings and compare your current portfolio with our recommended portfolio to see the difference it could make in the long term.
Because the future is uncertain, we run a risk assessment and use a Monte Carlo simulation to test your financial plan. A Monte Carlo simulation runs 1,000 hypothetical simulations of your plan using different, randomized stock market outcomes to determine the probability of success for your plan. We run an initial test based on your current scenario and then collaborate with you to tweak different variables—retirement age, Social Security strategy, goal spending, savings amounts, and others—to come up with a plan that has a high probability of success and feels good to you.
In addition to a detailed study of each of your goals and a clearly mapped-out plan to get you there, we also create a risk management plan to cover your bases and help give you increased confidence. The end result? An actionable implementation list and a road map for your future.
Get Started on Your Plan!
If you want to see even more features of our financial plans, download our full sample plan here. Once you’ve taken a look, contact us at J2 Capital Management today to schedule a meeting online or reach out to us at info@j2cmonline.com or 248-641-4444.
About John Benedict
John Benedict is CEO, investment advisor representative, and portfolio manager at J2 Capital Management, a boutique financial advisory firm specializing in in-house custom financial planning, tax, estate, and investment management. With over 20 years of experience, John is passionate about helping clients navigate uncertain markets, reduce risk, and plan for a sound future. John combined his talents and passion in statistics and technical analysis to create J2’s tactical strategies, managing them since the beginning of the organization. He is known for being a visionary and continually looking for ways to improve J2’s services and strategies to better serve his clients. John graduated from Central Michigan University with a degree in business administration and finance, and his thoughts on markets and technical analysis have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Investment News, and on Moneyshow.com. He was also a contributor to the book The StockTwits Edge: 40 Actionable Trade Set-Ups from Real Market Pros.
When he’s not working, you can find John boating or participating in water sports and spending time with his wife, Janine, and his three children, Jack, Alexis, and Saraphina. To learn more about John, connect with him on LinkedIn. You can also register for his latest webinar on What Makes J2 Capital Management Different From Other Financial Advisors.