%
Americans Living Paycheck to Paycheck
%
College Students Who Drop Out And Have Student Loans
%
College Students Carrying Credit Card Debt
%
Adults Who Have Less Than $10,000 Saved For Retirement
Frequently Asked Questions
Some of the more common questions we get asked. Don’t see your question here? Contact us today.
How can I afford to pay you when I can't make my bills each month?
If you want to change your life, you must do something different. And in the realm of personal finance, working with a good coach can be the first step. Clients often comment that they are surprised how reasonably priced our services are for the impact it has on their life.
Realistically, we all afford what we choose to afford. For most families, the savings from not going out to eat one month will more than pay for a coaching session.
What is the difference between a Financial Coach and an Investment Adviser or Financial Planner?
A Financial Coach considers every aspect of your life as it relates to money. We address your family’s values, emotions, relational IQ, and goals.The Financial Plan that you and we develop for you and your family is custom designed just for you. For example, you may come to us with the question “What mutual fund should I buy in my IRA?” and our answer will be a deep-dive conversation with you where we, together, determine if your financial foundation is secure enough to be at the point where you can invest.
We do not sell any products but we will coach you about products you may or may not need, such as term life insurance. We don’t care where you buy it from – but we can help you identify good and bad products. An adviser and some planners, on the other hand, will deliberately steer you towards products that they sell. That’s not necessarily wrong, but you need to be able to tell the good from the bad.
What does a coaching session look like?
To begin with, we will ask you to fill out some confidential forms detailing your finances. You will not list any account numbers, but we need to know about your sources of income, a list of your debts, a list of your assets, things like that. Then, we will dive deep with you discussing all of these items and more. We have to find out what is important to you, and what your long & short term goals are.
Then, we will prepare a detailed plan to help you best meet those goals. Make no mistake: it is entirely up to you to do the hard work. Depending on the level of service in which you engage with us, we can follow up with multiple sessions to track your progress and course-correct along the way. Often times we will become your accountability partner. All plans are living, breathing documents because what is true in March when you begin the plan may change by the time we get to Summer.
We will typically divide the long-term goals into a series of one-at-a-time steps, such as – pay off all consumer debt. Build a solid savings / emergency fund. While those steps may be applicable from one client to the next, the way that you walk those steps is completely unique to your situation.
What is Financial Peace University?
Financial Peace University (FPU) is a nine-week class that covers the basics of personal finance and aligns directly with how we coach our clients. For many families, this $100 class is all they need. You can read more about FPU in this blog post, and if we are not local to where you are, you can find an FPU class near you at this link.