Overview
Building, maintaining and protecting your net worth can be likened to running a business. To succeed requires a consistent effort, careful planning, attention to detail, and someone to coordinate the effort. Many financial services providers give the impression that it only takes fifteen minutes to get financially fit and be on your way. In a time-starved world, it is an alluring message that a single transaction will secure your financial future, but not particularly accurate.
Using a comprehensive approach that looks at all facets of your financial life, Integral’s wealth planning process isolates and reverses corrosive forces that erode your net worth over time. This process involves six basic steps.
Step 1: Collecting the Data
Prior to dispensing any advice, Integral invests the time to develop a detailed diagnosis of your current financial situation. We do this by gathering and verifying up to 230 separate data points, that can include:
- Assets and liabilities
- Cash flow position
- Insurance policies
- Previous Tax returns
- Wills
- Powers of attorney
- Current Investments
- RRSPs
- Employer benefit programs
- Trust agreements
- Pension statements
We synthesize this information to generate a financial scorecard. The scorecard summarizes your current financial situation based on the decisions and transactions that you have made in the past.
Step 2: Identify Objectives
Financial and personal goals are often interdependent. We make it our business to understand how your health, family status, marital status, career changes, and other life events are influencing your outlook on life.
Your goals may be to provide for your children’s education, support elderly parents or to accumulate investments that will create income for your retirement years. Understanding these intentions and their relative priority are important in determining the best strategy for you. We act as your “alter ego”, ensuring that goals are specific and measurable - both in quantity and timeframe.
Step 3: Identify Obstacles
A wealth plan needs to be objective and realistic. This includes being prepared for life’s expected and unexpected events and setbacks.
Although it may be an uncomfortable topic, any plan must make provisions for your family in the event of your death, either today, in the future, or that of your spouse. A key reason to create a plan is to ensure that your loved ones are cared for. The same applies if you become disabled and are unable to earn income. Our plan is designed to give you the peace-of-mind that you will enjoy financial stability, irrespective of what life throws at you.
Integral also evaluates the likelihood of you meeting your financial goals based on your current financial situation. Possible obstacles include underperforming investments, uninsured risks, excessive financial obligations, unnecessary tax burdens, or unrealistic goals relative to available resources and income. Integral identifies these potential impediments and develops solutions to overcome them.
Step 4: Formulating A Cohesive Strategy
Integral generates results for our clients by managing and directing all of the factors that influence net worth. Tax regulations, pension rules, estate rules, and market trends and investment strategies have intricate linkages. Success depends on knowing how a decision in one area may affect another area. Integral’s cohesive wealth plan organizes these elements harmoniously to maximize wealth.
Our plan shows you how to best utilize your current and anticipated financial resources to meet your immediate needs and your long-term objectives. The plan takes in to account variables such as your planned income and expenses, inflation, health care costs, the projected value of your investments, the tax cost of your investments, the target date for your retirement, and your evolving tax profile etc. It also includes an analysis of your retirement needs based on your lifestyle and quantifies how much you will need to save and earn on your investments to provide for that retirement.
Beyond your retirement planning, the plan will also address efficient transference of family assets, often through the use of family trusts.
The plan includes a projection of your present and future cash flows and net worth. Depending on the complexity of your finances your Integral advisor may present various “what if scenarios” to demonstrate ways to improve your financial efficiency. The plan is highly tax-aware. Our advisors work with your tax advisor or a recommended tax specialist to rigorously explore all opportunities to reduce and / or defer taxes.
Step 5: Implement The Plan
Building, maintaining and protecting your net worth can be likened to running a business. To succeed it requires careful planning, attention to detail, and someone to coordinate the effort. Your Integral advisor carries out the plan, acting as your “financial quarterback” to guide the workflow of all your trusted advisors.
Step 6: Review
Every wealth plan needs to be adjusted periodically. Over time, your circumstances will change and so should your plan. Whenever there are important changes in your life such as an addition to the family, the loss of a loved one, an inheritance or any major expenditure planned, your Integral advisor will be there to re-calibrate your plan and assess any implications. Your plan should be reviewed at least annually to ensure that it is adjusted to continually meet your goals.
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