Working with me moves through a few clear stages: a free call with no pressure attached, gathering your full financial picture, building the plan itself, walking through it together in plain English, and putting it into action. From there, you decide how, or whether, to keep working together. Here's what each stage involves.
Most people who could use a financial planner never book the call. Not because they don't think it would help, but because they don't know what happens once they do. So they put it off.
The first conversation isn't a pitch
The first call is free, and it's short. Its only job is to understand the questions you've been sitting on, and whether I'm the right person to help answer them.
Nothing gets decided on this call. I'm not going to hand you a proposal at the end of it or ask you to sign anything. If it's not the right fit, I'll tell you directly. And if you'd simply rather work with someone else, that's a completely fine outcome too. Most of the call is just me asking questions and listening.
Getting the full picture
Once we decide to move forward, the next step is building the full picture, not a partial one. That means account statements, debts, income, existing insurance, any documents that matter, and the goals you're working toward, not just the number you started with.
This part matters more than it sounds like it should. A plan built on half the picture gives you half-right advice, and half-right advice about your money isn't much better than none. If you've read anything else I've written about financial planning, you've heard this before: your accounts don't operate in isolation, and neither can a plan that's supposed to cover them.
What happens between meetings
Once I have what I need, I spend time building the plan itself: modeling your cash flow, stress-testing it against different scenarios, checking how your accounts interact for tax purposes, and shaping recommendations around the goals you came in with, plus anything else the full picture turned up.
It's built around your specific numbers and goals, not pulled from a template.
Walking through it together
Then we sit down and go through the plan together, not a binder handed over for you to decode on your own time. Every recommendation gets explained in plain English, including why it's there and what it's meant to do.
If something doesn't make sense, that's on the explanation, not on you. I will always slow down and make sure you understand a recommendation rather than have you nod along and act on something you don't.
Putting it into action
A plan that stays on paper doesn't do anything for you, and isn't worth much until it's put into motion. So the next step is implementation: opening or adjusting accounts, adjusting how you're contributing or withdrawing, coordinating with your CPA or attorney if the plan touches taxes or estate documents.
You're not left holding a list of things to figure out on your own. If a step needs to happen, we talk through who's doing it and by when.
What happens after
Where things go from here depends on what you came in for.
Some people came in with one specific decision, stock that was vestingThe schedule on which stock or retirement benefits actually become yours to keep, rather than something you'd forfeit if you left., a pension election, a home purchase, and once that's answered, they're done. That's one decision. Others wanted a complete plan built once, something to work from on their own going forward. That's a one-time plan. And some want to keep going: reviewing the plan regularly, adjusting it as life changes, having someone to call when something unexpected comes up. That's ongoing planning.
All three are legitimate ways to work together, and none is the "right" one. You can see how they're structured, including cost, on the services page.
None of this is something I made up for this post. It's the CFP Board's own seven-step financial planning process, the standard every CFP professional is trained on, described here in plain language instead of industry terms. If you want to see the formal version, the CFP Board lays it out here.
If you're still on the fence
None of this requires you to have it figured out first. You don't need a clean spreadsheet, a specific question, or a sense of how much money you have to justify making the call. The first conversation exists precisely for people who aren't sure yet.
