By Rick Waechter, Founder

If you’re reading this, you probably know it’s important to have a financial plan – and to act on it. But life can get in the way – especially if you’re juggling an intense job and family commitments.

Here’s how we work with clients who have limited time.

• Prioritize. To start, we quickly identify the most critical issues and address those first. Your financial plan includes everything from financial goals to investing, estate planning, insurance, tax, debt management and college funding. But, almost always, only one or two items are critical. That’s where we start. The rest can wait.
• Assume the burden. To tackle the high priority items, we do the heavy lifting and involve you only where necessary.Need to rejigger your 401k investments or create a living trust? Most of that work can be done by us and your estate planning attorney, with your input on the critical decisions.
• Run air traffic control. We connect directly with your other advisors, so you don’t waste time on busy work. We work directly with our client’s tax preparation firm, estate planning attorney, insurance broker and other specialists.
• Leverage tech. That includes our portal, which provides a current picture of each client’s net worth and has robust tools for goal-planning, document storage and even budgeting. That also includes using digital forms whenever possible.
• Simplify. Examples: streamlining your investments, consolidating accounts, surrendering unnecessary insurance, and simplifying your estate plan.
• Guide annual tax prep. We help our clients identify what they need to collect, collect what we can for them, and help their tax prep firm whenever possible.
• Dive deep. We understand your financials -- on our time, not yours. That means we know what needs to happen and when.

Take it from someone who has a long list of household projects which have been, ahem, in progress for years. Kicking the can down the road is the wrong answer. Even if you’re really busy, you can get the benefit of a financial plan and still live your life.