Life Stages (You Are Here)

FINANCIAL PLANNERS – Have you noticed how we’re forever being asked to predict the future with projections, illustrations, and forecasts?

And have you also noticed that every one you produce looks the same…some kind of linear or compound increase over time?

That’s because they’re not really projections; they’re extrapolations dressed up as forecasts.

We get away with it for investment growth and other technical stuff, but the problem comes when we produce financial planning cashflow models, which are supposed to be a blend of forecasts for income, investment growth, and …well, life.

And life isn’t linear.

Or compounding.

We don’t simply go through life with each day being a slightly brighter version of the last.

We don’t glide through on some linear superhighway.

Life is a rollercoaster.

In fact, when you look back at your own life, it can feel like you’ve lived many ‘different’ lives over the years. Like a book of short stories featuring the same, but also slightly different protagonists.

Each phase brings its own challenges, its own joys, and its own unique features that make us look back fondly, even though we don’t want to go back and do it again.

We can’t just assume that a client’s life will look the same each year, but 2.5% better…

Our role is to help our clients see where they are at in their lives – a bit like those ‘You are here’ signposts that you see when wandering around unfamiliar territory.

Because if you know where you are now, you can look back and see where you’ve been.

And if you can see where you’ve been, you can see the different stages as they lay behind you and recognise them for what they were- a chapter of your life you’re unlikely to revisit.

If you can do that, you can look forward and better visualise how things might change in the future. How the things that aren’t important to you now, may become more important in the future, and vice versa.

So instead of ‘forecasting’ the human aspects of our client’s lives, we do better to map them, to show them where they are now, where they’ve been, and where they might go in the future.

In the video, I’ll show you how I do that and the value of having a visual aid to help your clients see ‘where they are now’ and look forward to what their future lives might look like.

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