When it comes to financial planning, a lot of Wall Street firms have products they’re trying to sell. At Heritage Wealth Advisors, everything we do starts with the plan we create together. Our clients’ goals and priorities are always front and center. And once we’ve established those goals, we build forecasts and use data to help them optimize their resources to not only meet those goals — but in many cases, we’re finding efficiencies and opportunities our clients’ previous advisors haven’t identified, often allowing clients to get even more out of the resources they already have.
Financial planning isn’t just about preparing for retirement — it benefits people in every stage of their lives, from planning for a vacation home, to creating additional income streams for yourself, to legacy planning in your golden years. It’s more than an action plan for growing your wealth; it’s about making all your financial decisions from a strategic and educated place. The planning process also focuses on protecting your wealth through entity planning, reducing your taxes, proper insurance, implementing savings and distribution plans, and more.
Read on to learn the various ways that engaging in our holistic planning process has benefited our clients across generations.
Reason #1: Goal Achievement
According to the Huffington Post, just the simple task of writing down goals increases the odds of those goals being achieved by 42%. That can be truly life-changing — and that’s just the second step in planning. The possible impact jumps even further when we go beyond writing goals down, to include building specific projections and scenarios, running informed calculations, and incorporating expert coaches to help facilitate conversations — to consistently ground all decisions to those goals and the plan, and to improve accountability.
Reason #2: Confidence Levels
The dramatic increase in confidence is another big reason why financial planning can be beneficial. According to the CFP Board survey, 52% of those with a plan feel “very confident” about managing money, savings, and investments — while just 30% of those without do. This means you have a significantly higher chance of feeling very confident about your finances when you engage in planning.
Reason #3: Increased Happiness
We hear the refrain “money can’t buy happiness” often. But what about planning — where you’re setting goals and creating a plan to achieve them? There’s quite a bit of research that shows planning does make a difference in happiness levels. For example, 66% of those working with a financial advisor self-identify as “happy,” while only 34% of those DIYing their finances say the same.
The ‘Happiness Gap’
This trend is even more prevalent when it comes to higher-net-worth folks. The 2021 Consumer Financial Behaviors Study found that individuals with assets over $1.2 million that had an advisor displayed far more satisfaction than those that did not. Interestingly, the level-of-happiness increase driven by planning went up with higher net worths: By the time household assets reached $6 million or more, the “happiness gap” between customers with and without advisors was higher than at any other level.
A psychologist involved in the study said this gap stemmed from anxiety resulting from “decision paralysis,” because people with more assets have more options available in using those assets, from things like vacations to goods to philanthropy. And that’s what they call the paradox of choice: According to Harvard Health Publishing, while we think we’re happier when we have more choices in front of us, we’re actually less happy the more choices we have. We second-guess decisions we make after having made them. But the bottom line here is that data shows people that engage in formal goal-based planning are significantly happier than those who don’t.
Reason #4: Generational Growth
Lastly, financial planning can have positive effects not just on one individual person, but throughout entire families. The only thing that makes a bigger impact than planning is when it happens across generations — if you haven’t started already, there’s no better time to begin planning for your financial future, or your children’s.
Our goal is to offer an experience that’s different from what you’d typically find with more mainstream financial firms. From our team of specialists that focus on every part of our clients’ financial pictures, to being an independent firm where everything we do is centered on a client’s plan rather than pushing products—we’re committed to providing actionable, goal-based advice that’s anchored in a deep, personal understanding of our clients’ needs and expectations. If you’d like to learn more about how our team can help simplify your financial life so you can focus on the things that really matter, click here to request a free consultation today.
