How to prepare for your Initial and Second Meeting
The Initial Meeting
Have you ever felt uncertain about your financial future? It’s common to miss out on key strategies simply because you don’t know what you don’t know. Our comprehensive Fundamental Assessment process can help you uncover hidden opportunities and move forward with confidence.
In our Initial meeting, we want to answer any questions you have about your current situation, your goals and your concerns, and any other questions you may have about us and our process of planning: what do we actually do to help our clients.
Most new people we meet have questions and concerns about their planning and some may even have a presenting problem that needs to be solved. A lot of the times, those issues or problems are just symptoms of deeper planning issues that need to be solved. So our goal in the first meeting is first, to listen and seek to understand what you are confident about and what concerns you the most. What are you thinking you need to gain more control of your financial life?
As a Fiduciary, we want to understand what you think about your current planning situation and what concerns and questions you have. We then can fill in the blanks and ask questions that will allow you to understand more about your planning issues and also make sure you get answers for questions you should ask a financial advisor when you start talking to them - for example, how the process works and how the advisor get paid for what they do.
The Initial meeting is a great time for us to meet new people, who are usually the friends or family of our existing clients, and start a meaningful process that will make an impact on their lives.
The opportunity we’ve created in our initial meeting process allows someone to meet with a Fiduciary Financial Advisor, who does not have “an axe to grind”; who is not there to “sell you” any financial products, but there to teach you about planning. This advisor also works with people you know and trust so there is always a high level of trust as we get started. Then after collecting information about what is important along their timeline, and a current snapshot assets and income, the advisor creates a Current Financial Plan that acts as an X-Ray of their current situation as if the advisor never touched it. The advisor can show the strengths and weaknesses of that plan as well as all the opportunities that are available for them in their situation. From there, the advisor can show Financial Planning strategies that will allow for a more efficient pathway to their goals. All of this for no cost or obligation- just an investment of time. People who have been through this process have told us the last meeting in this process is the best financial planning meeting they have every had in their lives. It really spells out to them, sometimes for the first time in their lives, where they are financially and what they can do to get on a stronger path for retirement.
To prepare for this meeting, think of all the things that are important to you, what goals you have and what in your life you want to know more about, and get your hands around for your future. We want you to be very selfish in this meeting- it is all about you. We also want to answer any questions you have about us, our process and how we do what we do. Everything is on the table. And just in case you don’t ask all the questions you should about us or the process, we will fill in the blanks for you anyway, as a Fiduciary advisor, that is what we do.
The initial meeting is a fun meeting and we meet some great people in that meeting thanks to our amazing clients.
Preparing for the Second Meeting
The second meeting is a working meeting. There are 2 main goals with that meeting.
We want to discuss the goals and dreams you have in detail and how you see them today.
- We want to address the questions and concerns you have about those goals. We address your timeline and the things that are important to you so we can understand where you are today and what you are looking to do short term and into the future. Just knowing what you want to do in general is a great first step in our journey together.
- Next, we need to collect all the information we can about your finances so we can match them to your goals. We will send you an email after the first meeting so you can collect all of this information before our second meeting.
When it comes to your goals or your finances, more information for us is better for your planning.
When talking about your goals and dreams, we want you to visualize your future and from here, what do you see? For example, when are you going to retire? Are you going stay here or move to another state? Are you going to travel more or spend more money on you hobbies, like golf. What is your income plan? And more…
We really want to visualize this together so we can see how we can get you there. Also, as you can see today, what do you think is helping you or holding you back to achieving that goal. As we understand your point of view, we can fill in the rest with how planning can help you adjust the path you are on so you can be laser focused to your success.
This meeting sets the stage for our third meeting; the meeting we want you to remember for the rest of your life.