.jpg)
Living by Design
March 1, 2025
7
min. read
There are many important things to consider and actions to take when it comes to your financial life, but what’s THE most important?
Many spend countless hours attempting to construct the perfect portfolio. Searching for that one little thing that will give them an edge to “beat the market.” There are countless TV shows, websites and articles that will bait you with the next big thing.
But here’s a little secret: None of this matters. It’s all noise.
What is the most important thing you can do to live an intentional, organized life without worry about money?
Have a plan.
You simply cannot build a purposeful life-driven, goal-focused portfolio without a plan.
And you sure as sh*t should not make important financial life decisions without one either.
In order to build a financial plan, tailored to your life, the first step is meeting with us for a Comprehensive Annual Review.
The critical importance of the annual review has never been more evidenced than over the last several years.
It is crucial for us as your advisor to understand what is most important to you, your changing lifestyle, and upcoming needs in order to build your plan.
An annual review is 60 to 90 minutes of your life once a year to lay the foundation for an intentional, fulfilling life, free from worry about money, the markets, or any other “crisis” that is hitting the headlines.
It’s living by design, not default.
It’s saving and investing with purpose.
It's discussing if you are on track and what could go wrong.
It's so much more than money.
So, let’s go through exactly what we cover in our Gg Comprehensive Annual Review:
We start by outlining the areas that we discuss in our annual review and assign a score. Green check marks are the goal, yellow question marks indicate we need to have a deeper discussion and clarify some questions. A red X means we're either missing information, there are outstanding actions that need to be addressed or we have concerns about that area of your Financial Life Plan.
You have to crawl before you walk, and walk before you run. We start any meeting with helping to clarify where you are today and how we can best help you right now. We identify what wealth means to you and help you clarify what’s most important in your life today.
Once we've established a baseline, then we help you design your ideal life.
What specific actions do you want to take over the next 12 months?
What about the next 3 to 5 years?
Are there any bucket list items you want to discuss?
We brainstorm and identify your long term life aspirations and build a literal story board of your ideal life. Its not a budget, its your life. It can center around your finances, but we also look at broader life and health needs, wishes for your family, career options or philanthropic desires.
We then do a deep dive on your full current financial situation. We ensure you have an adequate emergency fund, review your portfolio, other assets, debts, and everything in between.
We do a deep dive on your entire portfolio and ensure that all your assets are aligned with your respective timeframe and purpose. We walk you through exactly what you own and why you own it and answer any questions you have about your portfolio.
Here we answer the question "Are we on track?" We review your savings and/or spending to ensure it is aligned with your life goals.
We provide a clear one page summary on what your life in retirement looks like from a future cash flow perspective and answer the question and what could retirement look like and what if any changes or adjustments need to be made.
Here we address "What keeps you up at night?" and “What can go wrong?"
While this is not always the most fun part of our meeting, it’s absolutely critical in financial life planning to address.
What happens if you died tomorrow?
Is your financial life in order right now?
Are your insurance coverages appropriate?
What’s missing?
We examine event driven, health, life, capital access, portfolio and debt risks. We stress test your life and your finances to provide you actionable advice and clear actions to take to deliver you the ultimate financial peace of mind.
Lastly, we review your will and other estate documents, ensuring you have proper power of attorney and healthcare directives. Having done an estate plan is a great start, but we make sure the plan is implemented throughout your financial life. We ensure all beneficiaries and account titles are in-line with your wishes and updated accordingly.
In addition to all of the above, we update you on new services we offer, introduce you to our newest team members and additional opportunities that may result from what we learn in our meeting with you.
This may include identifying the Gg CMA as a great option to earn 4.2% (as of 2/26/2025) on your cash, an opportunity to save money by refinancing or even connecting you with a travel advisor or home organizer.
As your life changes, adjustments and course corrections are needed. We take copious notes and within 24 hours of the Gg Comprehensive Review we provide you a written, detailed, custom financial life update that provides a clear summary of what’s most important (in your words), your goals as well as a list of action items for you and for us.
The Financial Life Update serves as a written, living financial life plan that we work through for the remainder of the year and is constantly updated and tailored to you. We set meetings, add calendar reminders, and get to work on the actions we discussed in the meeting to get you on track for your financial life.
As our client, you get all of that for 60 to 90 minutes of your time once a year.
It is the guide for everything we do and what course corrections are needed. It serves to keep you accountable to what you said was important as well as focused on what matters most.
So, in your life right now...what’s most important?
Are you doing everything you can to design the life you want to live today? Tomorrow? Do you have concerns keeping you up at night? Are there questions you'd like to have answered about your portfolio, or finances in general?
We can help.
The Gg Comprehensive Annual Review is BY FAR the most important thing when it comes to living the life you desire.
On your terms.
Without worrying about money.
All in all, it’s a 60 to 90 minute deep dive into your financial life once a year. It provides you the best of our professional guidance specifically geared to help you live the life you want and protect those who you care most about. Our meetings are constantly tweaked and improved to deliver you the best, most current, most relevant financial life guidance we have to offer.
If you’re not meeting with us, you’re missing out and potentially leaving a lot of money (and life) on the table.
If it’s been a while, or you’ve been putting it off because you don’t think you're “ready”…
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good..
Any progress is still progress.
Getting started is the hardest part.
And there’s no time like the present to get you back on track and on the calendar.
Reach out to us today.
