As we have held our annual planning meetings with clients I have been impressed by the power of having a plan. There is something about taking the time to reconnect with what is really important about money and projecting that into the future.

During the plan design and review process I have starting wondering if I could answer the question “what are you planning for?” for each client. With most clients I have been able to come up with at least one goal that defines why we are planning in the first place.

Answering the question, “What are you planning for?”, has the potential of changing things. It is really a fairly basic principle:

When you connect on a personal level with things that are really important you start to identify goals.

When you identify a goal, it becomes a focus.

When you have something to focus on, other things start to become less important, and the decisions that you make NOW become much more clear.

Lets say it is really important for my wife and I to make sure that we have the resources to provide our kids with amazing educational experiences. If we then design a plan to make sure that we hit that goal, by defining all of the variables, we arrive at a number that we need to save to hit that goal. If we are then faced with day to day choices about spending it becomes much easier to say no, because we have a much bigger yes.

So:

What are you planning for?