Paul Sydlansky, CFP®, founder of Lake Road Advisors, walks you through their financial planning process from start to finish in this video. Learn how they tailor plans to meet your unique goals, priorities, and concerns. This episode covers everything from building cash flow and balance sheet reports to tackling pressing financial issues and adjusting plans as life changes.

Topics Discussed:

• Understanding client goals and priorities
• Building cash flow and balance sheet reports
• Addressing pressing financial issues
• Modular approach to financial planning
• Ongoing monitoring and adjustments

Transcript:

Hi everybody. I’m Paul Sydlansky, the founder of Lake Road Advisors, and welcome to episode four of The Build where we’ll talk to you about our financial planning process.

Oftentimes, clients ask us, what is financial planning? How does it work, and what do we actually do? Well, in today’s episode, we’re going to go over our financial planning process from a 10,000-foot view, and that process starts with you and understanding your goals, your priorities, and your concerns. When we start our process, we ask you to literally write out your goals, priorities, and concerns so we can use those as a foundational piece for developing a plan that works for you. After we’ve established the things that are important to you and what you’re trying to achieve with this process, then we can jump to step two, where we build the foundation of your financial plan, which is building the cashflow and balance sheet reports.

The cash flow report is simply income coming in and expenses going out, and the difference is your surplus or deficit. A balance sheet is your assets, things that you own like your home, your cars, your investments, minus your liabilities, things that you owe, like a mortgage, a car loan, student loans, and the difference is your net worth. Understanding those two statements is critical to understanding where you are financially.

Once we’ve built the foundational elements of your financial plan, then we can jump right into tackling the most pressing issue that brought you to us. That can be anything from understanding what to do with some extra cash, understanding how to invest properly for your future, starting to build a retirement fund or a 529 plan. Whatever it is, we tackle that pressing issue that’s brought you to us, and from there we help you implement a solution to get you toward achieving that goal.

Once we’ve tackled your initial issue that brought you to us, we then go into our process of going through all the areas of your financial life, whether that’s insurance, taxes, estate planning, investments, college planning, you name it. We take a very modular-based approach, so we tackle those areas one piece at a time. If we tried to do it all at once, it would be too overwhelming and really nothing would get done, but by taking each one of those on its own, we can look at the issue at hand. We can make sure that each one of those areas is properly aligned with your goals, and then we can implement with you a solution to get you on the path to achieving your goals.

Once we’ve gone through all the areas of your financial plan, our final step is really to monitor and adjust because planning is not a one-time event planning is a process that you commit to help build your financial future. Life is going to change. While your values probably won’t change, your goals will change, jobs will change, family situations will change, and what we’re going to do is look at your initial plan and help you course correct and make changes based upon whatever those new circumstances are.

Now that you have a good high level understanding of our financial planning process, next week we’re going to jump right into it. We’re going to talk about cashflow, and we’re going to help you figure out where your money’s going, and also give you some tips on how to create some efficiencies in your own process. Thanks for joining us, and have a good day.

Lake Road Advisors, a Fee-Only, independent financial planning firm with offices in Corning, NY, Ithaca, NY and Portland, OR works with clients virtually all across the country. Paul Sydlansky, the founder of Lake Road Advisors LLC, has worked in the financial services industry for 20+ years. Prior to founding Lake Road Advisors, Paul worked at Morgan Stanley in Manhattan for 13 years. While at Morgan Stanley, Paul was a senior-level manager within the Institutional Equities Department. In 2018 he was named to Investopedia’s Top 100 Financial Advisors list. Paul received a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Marist College and holds an MBA from New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business. Paul is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ and a member of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) and the XY Planning Network. They can be reached by phone at the Corning, NY office at (607) 438-2914, Ithaca, NY office at (607) 463-8400, or Portland, OR office at (607) 292-2172 or at the firm’s website at https://lakeroadadvisors.com/

The information provided is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice and it should not be relied on as such. It should not be considered a solicitation to buy or an offer to sell a security. It does not take into account any investor’s particular investment objectives, strategies, tax status or investment horizon. You should consult your attorney or tax advisor.