I have been creating financial plan document at the end of each year for the following year. It keeps track of what I wish to achieve in the following year and keeps track of our progress during the last year. Hopefully this will be useful for the community.
A long time ago, when DS1 was a couple of years old, the internet did not have financial information and the only source of financial information were magazines like Money or Kiplingers. I decided to get a financial planner to go over my plans. The financial planner would check if I was on the right track and if I had missed something. Even then, I knew that I should use a fee only financial planner. So, found a nice chicago financial planner, who charged for a couple of hours to review my plans. So, I sat down and started writing a plan. A lot of loose thoughts in my head had to be written down in a structured manner. After writing it down, I found that a lot of thoughts had crystallized.
Initially, the plan was a one off document. It was updated after a few years and I started seeing the value in updating it
annually. So from 2005, I started creating an annual financial planning document.
Starting early December each year, I start working on the document. More specifically adding new goals, removing completed goals and modifying goals which have yet to be completed. Finally, on December 31st, I spend a couple of hours updating the net worth section using Dec. 31 EOD amounts from all of the accounts.
Some caveats, Remember, this is a document from 2006.
- I did not know about FIRE and planned to retire at 65 like everyone else.
- I had not found MMM and did not know about the 4% rule or cFireSim. I would definitely add these to the retirement section.
- I give you this older document since it has goals like mortgage etc. A lot of newer documents do not have those goals since the mortgage was paid off.
Use it how you wish. I have provided both a PDF and a Word document. Hopefully, that will be useful.