The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Share Your Badassity => Topic started by: CowboyAndIndian on December 19, 2016, 07:28:40 AM
-
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.
-
I followed the link from the year in review thread and am very impressed. It's definitely inspiring me to put my nebulous goals on paper, in the midst of the chaotic transition to a "real adult" after university. I'd be very interested in seeing what the document looks like more recently (2015/2016), with the additional of MMM/FIRE and more generally the evolution of your thinking and goals.
-
I followed the link from the year in review thread and am very impressed. It's definitely inspiring me to put my nebulous goals on paper, in the midst of the chaotic transition to a "real adult" after university. I'd be very interested in seeing what the document looks like more recently (2015/2016), with the additional of MMM/FIRE and more generally the evolution of your thinking and goals.
Thank you for your kind words.
What I find useful it to go back and read this when you feel you are making no headway. Then you realize how far you have come and the transformations you have made.
The 2015/2016 plan is almost devoid of goals, since I have been FI for a couple of years and have no debts, one kid out of school and on his own and waiting for the second to go to college for us to retire. What I have started is a Retirement doc which talks about CD-Ladders and Roth pipeline and when to take Social Security.
My asset allocation has changed a bit since 2006. Mainly I have gone to better ETF's (lower expense) and have put 10% of my allocation in an India ETF. I'll post this allocation later.
-
Bumping old thread because it's year end and relevant.
This is a cool doc. Does anyone else have any other's they would like to share?