How the Grace Lane financial planning process works

How It Works

“Do you remember the first time you realized money was a real thing?”
“If money were no object, how would your life change?”

These are the first questions we ask when commencing working together. Your answers help us understand how ideas of money and expenditure or saving were formed for you at an early age, and create a picture of your ideal goals.

The better we understand who you are and what is important to you, the better we will be at helping you develop plans and strategies to tackle the complicated parts of your financial life. We build your dreams into our financial plan so that you can achieve them with the confidence of knowing that it will not create financial havoc in the future.

Visibly watching someone’s stress decrease and their confidence grow as a result of our help and guidance is what drives us every day. We’re here for the long haul, helping to set a course for your goals, and ensuring you stay focused and on track. We breathe easy knowing our clients are headed for success, and love to be a part of it.

ACCESSIBLE
APPROACH

We articulate complex financial topics in everyday language and equip you with tangible resources and tools to reframe your relationship with money.

DISTRIBUTION
MINDED

Your assets are protected against market volatility with our distribution framework so you are prepared for the inevitable rise and fall, no matter how scary.

LIFE-CENTERED
PLANNING

We make an inventory of what’s important to you and what your goals look like. We carve out space in our plans to help keep your bucket list items being ticked off.

Unraveling your financial story

To help us unravel and understand the full breadth of your financial story, we present you with three leading questions that cover your past, present and future, and address problems from each of those.

#1. How did I arrive at my perspectives on money?

The first question looks at who or what were the key influences on your current perspectives around money, what helped form your relationship with money, and any issues that might need addressing that are rooted in the past.

#2. Am I managing my money in a way that is improving my life?

We then take a focused look at your financial present. What does life look like for you right now in comparison to how you would like it to look? What changes do you need to make in order to get the most out of your life today?

#3. Am I financially prepared for life’s big transitions?

Finally, we look at how best to manage your money into the future. This goes beyond merely accumulating wealth, instead looking at how best to allow you to enjoy your money TODAY, and use it as a tool to live well now, as well as tomorrow.

OUR CLIENTS

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Getting Organized

We start by creating a secure financial web portal for you, which helps you aggregate your financial world into one spot where it can be seen and updated in real time. It’s dynamic, so changes as their accounts change, everything stays up to date. Your portal also has a secure vault, which allows encrypted cloud storage of your important files, and easy and safe sharing of reports and documents.

Gaining Perspective

Next we ask you to take two online surveys. The first, Fiscalosophy, helps us understand the experiences that have shaped your perspectives on money. The second questionnaire is our Return on Life Index, which enables us to learn and track how well you are using your money to live your best life possible.

First Pass

We now analyze your current financial position and look for any urgent issues that need to be addressed. We then build an inventory on what’s important to you, and help identify any problems you might have with your money behaviors. This helps us to craft a financial life plan that has resilience, and will allow you to reach your goals despite any unplanned events that may have otherwise derailed things.

Developing Your Goals

Next we schedule a meeting to discuss our First Pass, review the Fiscalosophy and ROL Index and to begin developing goals and transitions. We use the assessments to probe areas that we feel we should better understand, and begin our deep dive into your history. We help identify likely transitions, and discuss your goals and bucket list items to ensure your plan supports their achieval.

Sculpting Cash Flows to Align with Goals

We now meet in person or virtually to present a modeling of your cash flows and current financial position, with each of your goals in separate planning scenarios. We display your plan in our online Decision Center, which allows us to toggle planning scenarios on and off and to easily make on-the-fly adjustments based on our outline of your full financial situation.

Playbook and Initial Financial Report Delivery

We present your Playbook report for the year ahead, detailing each of your goals that have been built into the plan. We use a scorecard in which we rate your current financial position in several financial areas based upon level of development from 0 to 5, then provide our observations for each of those areas. We then outline your action plan for the current year and the next 5 years, including any major milestones.

Action Plan Support

Throughout the remainder of the planning year, we interact as we work through your action plan. There may be some you need to complete, such as rebalancing your retirement investment account or engaging an estate planning attorney to execute a will. We’re here to remind you of such things and help you stay organized and on track.

Ongoing

We encourage you to include us in any and all future financial decisions that might arise, especially if they might affect your overall plan. These requests may include questions about refinancing your home mortgage, or whether to buy or lease an automobile, etc. We also provide regular annual maintenance, which includes:

Clean Up: We start the new planning year by reviewing your financial portal and have a brief meeting for updates to cash flows and accounts.
ROL Index: We send a link to take the Return on Life Index and a link to view our calendar and schedule your annual review meeting.
Annual Review Meeting: We review your ROL Index assessment, comparing your answers to the previous year. We then ask additional, open-ended questions to reveal any additional history and perspectives. Finally, we present your updated Playbook for the year.
Action Plans: We execute the Playbook throughout the remainder of the year.
Investment and Asset Allocation Updates: Depending on your plan, we reach out as often as quarterly to communicate the results of our economic analysis. This generally includes market outlook and any changes that we might be considering.
Ongoing Communications: You will receive an annual ‘Letter to Clients’ at the beginning of each year and an electronic newsletter every month.

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