Financial Plans and Investment Advice to Help You After Your Divorce
As financial planners, our goal is to help people figure out their finances, especially those who may have recently experienced a life changing event, such as a divorce, death, job change or even an unexpected inheritance.
Recently, we were contacted by a 54 year old client, Susan, in Oakland who had been through a difficult divorce. She ended up with about $900,000 in cash from the divorce settlement, but still had to help her two children with college expenses and owned no property. She works as an independent consultant. She basically did not have enough in assets to help her reach life expectancy past 86 years old. First and Main Financial provided Susan with a comprehensive financial plan and investment advice to give her direction and goals to achieve a solid financial future.
Like most people, Susan was hesitant to work with a financial planning and investment advisor. Susan also wanted to work with a female financial planner and someone who could relate to her situation. Our initial meeting with Susan was to establish our relationship, fully understand her current finances and explain the financial planning process. Once engaged, we worked with Susan to gather her financial documents such as bank statements, trust documents and budget information. We also helped her use our financial planning software, eMoney Advisor, where our clients can connect their accounts simply and upload documents to a secure Vault where we share information.
Once all information was loaded into eMoney, we were able to provide a base case scenario for Susan showing her current financial situation. We then generated a variety of “What If” scenarios, such as changing her retirement age, increasing the age at which she would take social security, helping her children pay for college with different types of loans, or even buying a new house in which she could build equity value. We also provided her with some ideas on how to increase her retirement assets, such as a SEP IRA. Within each of these scenarios, we projected a “probability of success” of reaching an age over 90 with enough assets to live on; her base case scenario was at a 28% probability, but by changing various assumptions and adding in various scenarios, we were able to show her a potential probability of 94%. In addition to producing a model that showed Susan her potential portfolio assets and net worth, we reviewed her insurance (Life, Disability, Auto, Renters/Home, Medical, etc.) to assess if she maintained enough coverage.
After presenting a financial plan to Susan, she asked First and Main Financial to manage her money. We offer a tiered fee schedule for our clients, which Susan appreciated; like most of our clients, she considered this a good deal compared to the industry averages and starting rates usually charged by other firms. We also provide clients like Susan with quality and individual attention as well as complementary guidance on existing 401(K) money.
If you are looking for some financial guidance, whether it be for a one time financial plan or continuing advice on your investments, we invite you to meet with the First and Main Financial advisors for a free consultation. We would be more than happy to sit down with you, assess your current financial situation, and review with you our services to help you navigate your own financial future.
