By Missie Berteotti
It’s second-nature to any Proponent Group member that training and coaching golfers isn’t haphazard or random. There’s a logical order to golf-swing diagnostics and there’s a correct sequence to a professional clubfitting session. The same holds true for someone’s financial profile and how it gets treated.
I’ve thought about this for many years as someone who was coached to become a player on the LPGA Tour, as someone who’s passionate about coaching now, and likewise as someone whose other career is financial planning. The latter role is one I pursue as part of the Luttner Financial Group, a Proponent Group partner company.
The mindset of Luttner Financial focuses on the client’s future, long-term, and takes a macro approach toward how to forecast their needs and the appropriate resources. The idea is to examine the full picture of a person’s financial life.
Toward this end, four domains of their balance sheet are considered—not just the two traditional domains, i.e., assets and liabilities. Using a conventional assets-and-liabilities measurement is really a shortcut method, though it’s one used by most advisory firms. It proves to be badly lacking in context because it leaves out the two additional domains of cash flow and protection.
We believe that clients, using our guidance, should pay as much attention, if not more, to their cash flow domain. It’s a discipline with a definitely vital result: We will not need to guess or guesstimate how and when you can retire. Instead we can accurately and confidently forecast it.
This is a time-tested planning formula, proven out by our work with 67,000 financial-planning clients. Part of this discipline is a clear examination of the client’s savings rate. If you haven’t tracked this key data point, we can help you get on the road to trustworthy retirement income by providing you a proper measurement of it. Every client, under our formula, needs and deserves to have this level of education about personal finance.
For additional assistance with your financial planning contact Missie Berteotti at The Hicks Group, a part of Luttner Financial Group, at mberteotti@luttner.com or 412-398-5030.