Hi, my name is Brian Kearns with Haddam Road Advisors. Welcome to a financial plan in 10 minutes. In this short time, I'd like to show you a basic framework that lies at the heart of every plan and it's my hope that this will help you to make better financial decisions for the rest of your life. So let's get to work.
Okay, so let's start at the beginning with a dollar. What are your thoughts when you see this? Personally, I think it's not a lot of money, but it's something I see every day and I use every day to live my life. It is ubiquitous. It is everywhere. So what if you received a thousand dollar windfall, what would you do with it? Would you spend it? Would you save it? How would you want to allocate it? Uh, it's a decent sum, but it's not life changing. So let's make it interesting.
What would you do with a hundred thousand dollar windfall? How would you want to allocate it? Would you want to spend it? Would you want to save it? How would your partner want to allocate it? Would they want to spend it or save it? Uh, could you agree on how to allocate it? Um, in hindsight, if you had received this 10 years ago, what do you think would have been the best way to allocate it, taking into account your future needs, your family's future needs?
Your values, your family's values, your community's values. What if it was 10 times the size? What if it was a million dollar windfall? Um, does that change your thoughts? What if it was part of a family trust? How would you want to see it allocated? Now, whether you have 10, 000 or 10 million, all these questions can be effectively analyzed in the following framework, and I call it the planning grid.
