When can I retire? How much can I spend? What does my future look like? This article breaks down six key financial planning questions and how a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® helps you answer them.
No one can predict the future, including financial planners. But while we don’t have a crystal ball, we do help you consider the right questions and see the long-term impacts of today’s decisions.
A comprehensive financial plan provides a vision that extends beyond one or two years. It’s a framework for evaluating trade-offs, planning for uncertainty, and making informed decisions for how to use your resources. Working alongside a CFP® to form your plan provides a foundation for smart decision-making and long-term success.
Table of Contents
What are the benefits of hiring a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER (CFP®) for financial planning?
Question 1: When Can I Retire?
Question 2: What Can I Afford to Spend on Housing?
Question 3: I’m Leaving My Job; Do I Need to Earn the Same Income?
Question 4: What Might My Estate Look Like in 10 or 15 Years?
Question 5: How Much Can I Give to Charity or Family Without Impacting My Own Future?
Question 6: How Much Life Insurance Do I Need Today, and How Will That Change Over Time?
Our CFPs® Are Here to Answer Your Financial Planning Questions
What are the benefits of hiring a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER (CFP®) for financial planning?
CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERS® are held to some of the highest standards in the financial services industry. Earning the CFP® certification requires completing extensive coursework, passing a rigorous CFP® Exam, earning a 4-year degree, and demonstrating substantial real-world financial planning experience.
But what really differentiates CFPs® is the professional and ethical standards to which they’re held. While many advisors choose to follow strict standards, CFP® professionals are required to do so at all times.
Trusting someone with your finances isn’t easy. Financial decisions are often tied to emotions, family dynamics, personal identity, and future goals. Working with a CFP® can alleviate some of that stress because, in addition to technical expertise, they are trained in the psychology of financial planning – helping clients make objective decisions for long-term success.
When you hire a CFP®, you’re working with someone who is:
- Held to strict ethical and fiduciary standards.
All CFP® professionals are required to act fiduciaries at all times, putting your interests first and not accepting commissions. They also must adhere to a strict ethics code. - Trained in multiple personal finance areas.
CFP® education and testing cover require expertise in all major financial planning areas, including tax strategy, retirement planning, insurance and risk management, estate planning, and overall financial plan design. - Educated in the psychology of money.
CFP® professionals are trained in behavioral finance and the emotional aspects of money management. This helps them guide clients to avoid hasty, fear-based decisions and instead make informed choices for long-term success.
A CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® helps you answer the big financial planning questions at every stage of life. Below are six of the most important financial planning questions we help clients answer.
Question 1: When Can I Retire?
For many of our clients, this is the financial planning question.
After working and saving for years, they want to know when retirement will happen. But answering this question requires more than a quick sit-down. It requires a thorough evaluation of income, spending, taxes, investments, and short- and long-term goals.
How a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® Helps You Know When to Retire
The foundation of a CFP® professional’s training is holistic financial planning, integrating all aspects of your finances to support current needs and future success. Rather than treating retirement planning as a standalone service, a CFP® incorporates it into your broader financial plan.
This approach helps you understand when retirement is feasible, as well as what that retirement will look like.
Your CFP® will help you build a long-term financial plan that covers:
- Spending and budgeting in retirement
- Tax planning strategies before and during retirement
- Estate planning considerations
- Social Security claiming strategies
- Charitable giving as part of your long-term plan
Retirement planning should never be a one-dimensional (or one-time) event. As you form your plan, other important questions naturally arise. One of the biggest is how much you can spend on housing.
Question 2: What Can I Afford to Spend on Housing?
Housing is one of the most consequential financial decisions you will make, so being able to project its long-term impact is critical. HTG’s housing cost worksheet helps you ascertain the total cost of your housing, but this is just the first step in determining what is affordable in the long-run.
What truly matters is how housing fits into your broader financial plan over time.
How a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® Helps You Determine Your Housing Budget
CFP® professionals are trained to evaluate all aspects of your financial plan – from income and spending to taxes and long-term goals – to ensure housing spending aligns with your long-term financial plan.
A CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® helps you understand:
- If and when you might need to downsize (and the magnitude of downsizing required)
- The financial impact of staying where you are versus moving to a lower-cost area
- The specifics needed to add clarity to this discussion
Seeing housing in the context of your entire plan helps it support your long-term goals rather than limit them.
Question 3: I’m Leaving My Job; Do I Need to Earn the Same Income?
It’s not unusual for our pre-retiree clients to consider changing jobs as they near retirement. The motivation could be fewer hours, less stress, relocating before retirement, or pursuing more meaningful work. Whatever the reason, we take a holistic approach to understanding income needs.
How a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® Helps You Navigate Job Transitions
A CFP® takes tax planning, retirement goals, Social Security claiming strategies, housing costs, and legacy planning into account to understand what you absolutely need to make to reach your goals. They’ll address questions such as:
- What age you need to work until
- How much you have to make to maintain your standard of living and meet your goals
- If you can downsize your income, and by how much
In some cases, working for less compensation can actually be beneficial if it means working longer but spending more time doing the things you enjoy. This knowledge can motivate a person to shift to work they love.
Question 4: What Might My Estate Look Like in 10 or 15 Years?
Most estate lawyers can tell you whether you have an estate tax problem today, but they will almost certainly have trouble determining whether you’re likely to have one in 5 or 10 years.
That’s why it’s essential to incorporate estate planning into your broader financial plan. Your financial plan shows you how and where your assets are likely to grow, enabling you to make informed decisions about your estate.
How a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® Helps You Optimize Your Estate for Long-Term Success
A CFP® is trained to integrate estate planning into your broader plan to support your goals rather than hinder them.
A CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® helps you evaluate:
- Which assets are best suited to fund a trust
- Which assets should be targeted for a step-up in basis at death
- Whether a credit shelter trust is needed
- How inflation, investment returns, and spending affect your estate over time
This long-term view helps align your estate plan with other important financial decisions, including how you can spend your money now.
Question 5: How Much Can I Give to Charity or Family Without Impacting My Own Future?
For many clients, legacy planning is one of the most meaningful aspects of financial planning. Whether your priority is charitable giving, supporting family members, or a combination of both, a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® helps you evaluate how much you can give without sacrificing your own financial security or your long-term plan.
How a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® Helps You Balance Legacy With Stability
Legacy planning can be deeply rewarding, but it’s also one of the more emotion-driven aspects of financial planning. A CFP® professional’s training in the psychology of financial planning helps provide objective guidance in the goal-setting and decision-making processes.
A Certified Financial Planner® helps you weigh priorities such as:
- Your desired lifestyle now and in retirement
- Supporting aging parents
- Funding education or helping children get started
- Incorporating charitable giving into your annual budget
As planners evaluate how much you can give, they also ensure you have sufficient life insurance – because legacy planning only works if your loved ones’ basic needs are covered first.
Question 6: How Much Life Insurance Do I Need Today, and How Will That Change Over Time?
Planning how much life insurance you need today and in the future is an important part of a comprehensive financial plan. It allows for better coordination with estate planning and often helps you avoid paying for coverage you no longer need.
How a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® Helps You Determine Your Life Insurance Needs
A CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® helps you understand:
- How to structure your insurance today
- How coverage needs may change as life evolves
- Where life insurance fits into estate planning
- Whether you can save money by canceling policies you may not need
Even with a well-built financial plan, new questions will inevitably arise as life changes. But with major aspects like retirement timing, housing, estate planning, charitable giving, and life insurance already accounted for, you’ll have a strong foundation for future decision-making.
Our CFPs® Are Here to Answer Your Financial Planning Questions
HTG Advisors has an unusually strong concentration of CFPs® for a firm of our size. This depth of expertise allows our team to provide thoughtful, well-rounded guidance to our clients.
While we can’t predict the future, we can develop reasonable estimates based on today’s information and make educated assumptions about the future.
Our financial planning process gives you the foundation to make informed decisions as new situations and questions arise.
Not quite a crystal ball, but perhaps the next best thing.
Let HTG Advisors to start answering your questions today.