Three Key Questions
My name is Jody Apple. My wife, Evelyn, and I are part of 1847Financial, a network of 1000's of financial professionals representing The Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company and its affiliates. Penn Mutual has been serving people like you since 1847.
Here's how we serve our clients.
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We start by answering three key questions:
- How do you define financial success?
- What is your ultimate financial goal?
- How do you make financial decisions?
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The answer to the first question, "how do you define financial success," will vary from one person to the next.
Why? Because we are often in very different financial places.
Somebody making $50,000 a year will probably define financial success quite differently than someone making $500,000 a year.
The point: We can not help you meet your definition of financial success without knowing where you are ... and why.
To do so would be foolhardy.
That's why we ask pivotal questions. Your answers to these questions help us understand what success means to you.
And it helps us create a game plan, a model, to make that happen.
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Which leads us to the second question, what is your ultimate financial goal?
- In answer to the first question, how do you define financial success, it's easy to say, "I want to be a millionaire."
- But becoming a millionaire might not be what defines success for you.
- Why? • Because reaching your ultimate financial goal might require more, maybe even less, than one million dollars.
- We won't know that without identifying the specific goals en route to reach your ultimate financial goal.
- Some of those goals might be:
- Creating an emergency fund of $50,000 (or more)
- Eliminating bad debt
- Paying off your home • Buying a second home
- Funding college tuition for kids or grandkids
- Being free to travel wherever and whenever you want
- Having a retirement plan where failure is not an option
- Creating cash flow that never runs dry
- Answering the second question, "what is your ultimate financial goal?," requires tackling several lesser, but still important, goals along the way.
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And finally, the third question, how do you make financial decisions?
Most people make financial decisions:
- One at a time
- At different times
- With different people
- Under different economic circumstances
- Which often creates a financial junk drawer
Their financial decisions might include the advice of ...
- CPAs • Bankers • Attorneys
- Money Managers • Business Partners
- Real Estate Agents • Life & Health Agents
- Auto & Home Agents • Friends and Family
Though these advisors often play key roles in helping you make financial decisions, they often work independently of each other.
Our job: Serve as macro-managers. We make sure that every person you get advice from is working together to serve you best.
We co-ordinate what you already have in place in order to help you make financial decisions that take all of the above counselors — and their work — into consideration. We work in concert with your advisors, not against them.
How do we do that?
That's the topic of our next post, The Game Board • Feel free to check it out now.