You’ve likely spent considerable time and energy crafting a financial plan that reflects your aspirations and protects your legacy. However, one critical element often overlooked is ensuring that your financial planning aligns with your spouse’s vision. Misaligned goals can lead to confusion, inefficiencies, and even conflict. By collaborating on a shared strategy, you not only strengthen your financial foundation but also reinforce the partnership at the core of your family’s success.
At C3 Financial Partners, we collaborate with clients and their advisors to ensure they have clarity on their goals and objectives, confidence in the decisions they make and coordination with their team to enact their plan.
Why Alignment Matters
Financial planning is as much about communication and shared values as it is about numbers. When both partners’ perspectives are integrated into the plan, it fosters:
- Clarity: Avoid misunderstandings about financial priorities or goals.
- Confidence: Build trust in your financial future by ensuring both partners feel heard and supported.
- Coordination: Ensure both partners are rowing in the same direction, reducing redundancies or contradictory actions.
Beyond just our name and logo, our firm’s Three C Concept – Clarity, Confidence, and Coordination – is at the heart of every strategy we help create. These pillars provide a framework for addressing both individual and shared goals, making it easier to navigate the complexities of wealth management.
A Tool to Reflect and Refine
To help achieve alignment, you need to take a look at your past, your present, and your future. Our own Todd Healy was doing just such an exercise and as he was thinking about upcoming major life events for his family, he started to plan them against his own life to create a plan.
To help in that process, he developed a worksheet specifically designed to help plan for and keep track of major life events in later years. A blank worksheet is available at this link for you or your client to undergo the same exercise.
By using this worksheet, couples can engage in productive discussions, uncover gaps, and identify areas where their visions may diverge. These insights are invaluable for crafting a plan that serves both individuals and the family as a whole.
Part of this planning means making sure financial resources are available to enjoy these events. The planning specialists at C3 Financial Partners are available to discuss using life insurance and long-term care coverage in longevity planning.
Key Areas to Discuss
When working toward alignment, consider focusing on these essential areas:
- Philanthropy: What causes matter most to you? How do you wish to structure your current giving and legacy?
- Retirement Goals: Are your retirement timelines and lifestyle expectations in sync?
- Estate Planning: What legacy do you want to leave? Are you both comfortable with the mechanisms in place (e.g., trusts, wills, or life insurance)?
- Risk Management: Are you both adequately protected with life insurance, disability insurance, and other safeguards?
- Investment Strategy: Do you share similar risk tolerance levels and investment philosophies?
The Role of a Trusted Advisor
Planning doesn’t have to be daunting, and you don’t have to navigate it alone. A team of trusted professionals can guide you through the process, helping to ensure that your financial strategy aligns with both your individual and shared goals. This team may include financial planners, insurance brokers, investment advisors, and estate planning attorneys – all working together to provide advice tailored to your family’s needs.
By focusing on Clarity, Confidence, and Coordination, your team can help you identify gaps, find common ground, and create a plan that reflects your shared vision while addressing the complexities of wealth management.
Take the First Step
Your journey toward alignment starts with a conversation. We invite you to explore our planning tool – a resource designed to bring clarity and cohesion to your financial future. Together, let’s create a strategy that honors your shared vision while adapting to the complexities of wealth management.
At C3 Financial Partners, we look forward to helping our clients gain clarity in their estate planning goals and objectives, confidence that they are making the right decisions as to where their legacy should go and providing coordination with their other advisors to create and implement the right plan for them.
Securities offered through Valmark Securities, Inc. member FINRA, SIPC. Investment advisory products and services offered through Valmark Advisers, Inc., an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Representatives may transact business, which includes offering products and services and/or responding to inquiries, only in state(s) in which they are properly registered and/or licensed. C3 Financial Partners is a separate entity from Valmark Securities, Inc. and Valmark Advisers, Inc.
