WHAT IS MISSING FROM YOUR FINANCIAL PLAN?

I spent a full day last week sitting in a conference room listening to someone who made a lot of sense – Stephanie Holmes-Winton. She spent time in her career managing money for some very wealthy people and as her career progressed, she discovered that the upper, middle and lower classes have something in common other than all requiring oxygen to survive.

It may sound simple, but all people require a debt management plan and a spending plan yet most have neither. The upper class likely has a retirement plan or wealth management plan. Some of the more progressive middle class will too and likely even a smattering of the lower class. But given that almost 70% of people are retiring with debt of some sort, it is a safe bet to say that she is right.

I spent the day listening to common sense - common sense that most of us fail to use. I know that for many years I have been working with my clients trying to get them to gain the knowledge of where they are spending their money. I have been professing that cash flow management should be at the very core of every financial plan despite the fact that so many advisors do not spend more than a minute looking at your pennies.

What Stephanie teaches in her “MoneyFinder Bootcamp” has given me a way to work with my clients, and future clients, to address their cash flow management properly and to help them become debt free long before their neighbours unless they refer me to them. In order to do justice to what I learned, I would need to write a book here as opposed to an entry in my blog so I will summarize the key points instead.

First, learning to classify your expenses is important. There are many expenses that we incur that are inevitable and there are many expenses that we incur that are under our control and learning what is what and then putting it into her proprietary categories will allow someone the ability to allocate their pennies properly.

Second, it is important to use an all-in-one program for your mortgage. The one that has become most prominent in Canada is Manulife Bank’s Manulife One which a number of my clients have been using with great success. The way that Stephanie uses the all-in-one to allocate funds for important expenses that people incur and still maintain a decreasing debt flow is incredible.

Third, once you have discovered the means to reduce your monthly costs (i.e. you have developed a spending plan), it is important to apply some, if not all, of the freed up money to reduce your debt systematically.

Instead of going on indefinitely about the benefits of employing her philosophies, if you are an advisor then I would strongly encourage you to take her Bootcamp and if you are a prospective client who wishes to reduce their debt without reducing their life, send me an email and we can arrange to set up your spending and debt management plan together.