The One-Page Financial Plan: A Simple Way to Be Smart About Your Money

We’ve all heard the stories of people who were completely focused on goals like retiring by age sixty or having $1,750,000 in the bank—they might reach them, but when they look back, they see a trail littered with broken relationships. What many of these stories share is that disappointments often come when people are so focused on outcomes that th

Now, consider a third example. In this situation, you have kids and all the financial goals that come along with them. You’re going to have education to pay for, you’re going to take vacations, and you’re relying on both incomes to support those goals. In this case, if one of you were gone—in other words, if one of those incomes were no longer ther

There’s a simple rule of thumb to determine whether you need insurance: If someone depends on you economically, you need life insurance.

This process can be eye-opening: it allows us to see whether our goals are in line with our values.

Then you can start listing some other goals you know will need to be addressed. They can be short-, medium-, or long-term goals (remember, you’re just guessing): I can see the car will need to be replaced in five years. We want to retire by age sixty-five. We want to pay down our mortgage in twenty years.

I asked them one question: why is money important to you?

Here’s a “three-guess process” for estimating how much your goals will cost. Once you’ve guessed at each goal, take another guess about when you’d like to achieve it, and how much it will cost. This process won’t make the future any less certain, but it will help ensure that you’re ready for the things you’d like to have happen, and prepared for th

found no more efficient strategy for solving the problem of how to handle our finances than asking “Why is money important to you?”

Stop giving me options I’m not qualified to evaluate. Please. I’m begging you. . . . Just tell me what to do.”