Most of you reading this wanted to make more money.  The primary reason for that are as follows:

• To have an enjoyable and comfortable living
• To raise and educate our kids
• To save and provide for our future
• To provide a lasting legacy to our descendants

Over the course of our lives, we have dealt with lots of financial choices – how to earn, where to spend and how much to save.  Each of these choices are influenced by decisions in certain points in our cycle of wealth which typically follows this path:

1. Ages 11 to 19 - We started to learn more about money and have been influenced, one way or another, by how are elders (say your parents or grandparents) manage their own finances.  This is where we build our values about money and life long habits that may need to be broken later in life if it is not aligned with what your financial plan dictates you to do.  This is the time where you make a lot of trial and errors which often than not determine how you approach financial problems later on in life.  This is the most crucial time to learn financial planning.  If you have kids, this is the best time to teach them about money.
2. Ages 20-29 – This is the time most of us started to work, establish our own credit, buy our own rented home furnishings, spend much on the things we want (not what we need).  Although we are mostly happy-go-lucky guys at this point, this is where we now realized how hard (or simple) it is to make money and also the time we all dream about making it big in the near future.  This is the age group wherein we will normally plan for marriage and most of us will wear a wedding ring by the end of the decade.  This is the time you also get your first mortgage for your home and if you are lucky (means you have savings), you will probably not borrow the downpayment money from your parents.  Otherwise, you know where to run to right?
3. Ages 30 – 45 – Most of us are in financial limbo at this time.  It’s a turbulent financial period. We can no longer track our expenses.  Bills are everywhere.  We buy and subscribe to more things that we don’t really need.  We max out our credit cards and are just paying the minimum.  We are barely making ends meet.  The babies we once love to cuddle are growing now and eating much on your budget.  We now start thinking and saving for the education of the kids.   We think about how to make more money and might end up doing double jobs or your other half might need to work as well too.  We might even start your own business here and be part of the 95% that fails in the first year of operations.   You realize later in this period that you need to plan for your future retirement.  We make ourselves busy with so many things.  We worry too much about our losing our careers or business that we forget about our relationship and family ties.  We also started worry about aging and our health that we now invest in health and life insurance.
4. Ages 46 to 55 - Finally, we now know where the money we spent went and who spent it.  You finally learned financial planning the hard way.  You also buy books in financial planning at this point to reinforce and confirm your actions.  This is also the time that we are more morbid of the fact that we cannot live forever.  You now know that you need to save and invest more for your future.   We started to get more worried about our health and how we can finish the financial work that is finally taking shape.  You might have an affair at this point or a bitter divorce.  Later at this stage, you started to see less and less of your kids and you realize how much money you can save without them.
5. Ages 56 and 65 – You now have more money to spend but are not wanting much so you increase your savings to 20% or more.  This is where you focus more on your grandchildren than your children providing for them as you wanted not as they needed.  You establish a reputation of being paranoid about the finances of your kids and is always concerned about your grandchildren’s future.  You play the hero to your grankids as hated much by your own children.  You eat less and need less so you also started to give donations to charity or to the church.
6. Ages 66 and up – You are at the prime of your life.  You are as rich as your pension can be plus more.  If you have saved and invested money well, you are well poised to enjoy the golden years.  You give more to your church than any other period in your life as you are there often.  You stopped saving and spend as much as you can now to enjoy the fruits of your labor.  You may even dip into your principal just to live comfortably as you can or maybe to finance a failing health recovery program advised by your doctor to you or your partner. Your kids and grandkids are well established so you leave them now to their rightful guardians – their parents.  You die later on happy with what you have in life and what legacy you left for your descendants.

Now that’s ideal wealth cycle assuming we will all live well beyond 60 years and up.  Now, at this point in time in your life you may not be in the same situation as described in the above age groups given the unique circumstances of each of us.  Granting that probably you never get married or you never have kids or you get divorced and started a new family all over again or maybe you are sick or had an accident early on in life, the above age group scenarios will surely not apply to you.  But to many of us, this is the ideal scenario.  We started with nothing and we wanted to end up with everything wanting to leave a little bit more to our offspring.

Now the relevance of this in your particular situation is that you have to realize that this is a very common financial cycle in our lifetime although certain events may happen at different age groups.  This will surely change in the near future given the fast and rapid pace of technological and scientific advances but the underlying factor is the same – we live, we make money, we spend money, we save for our future, we spent what we save, and we die.  We all have to realize that money, if not well managed, can lead you to nowhere, not even to the closest the remotest dreams you want possible.

So knowing that, we can now play scenarios several years ahead of us and start planning for each one.  What will you do when you are middle aged?  Where will you be when you are old?  Will be happy or sad?  Will you be guilty or fulfilled with what you have?

Find out as we travel along these thin band of financial road to success.  Where others dare not to travel, we will dare and unearth its mysteries along the way.  Are you with me?

Well, look at it this way. We’re all in this together.  From the time we are born to the time we die, we, at some point or another, have to manage our own finances.  Each of us has our fair share of blessings from the One above but many of us don’t know how to manage it well that at the end of our lives that we end up broke, guilty and sad (maybe we call them the Sad Group).  Only a few can truly and honestly say they are financially successful (let me call them the Happy Group).

And why is that so? Why is it that only a portion of us are truly happy with what they have accomplished financially?  Is it something to do with luck?  Or maybe someone got a very huge inheritance or a windfall of wealth from above?  Are we really destined to be broke or rich by the one above?  Well a very tiny percentage of those who are financially stable at their early years are those types of lucky people (let’s call them the Lucky Group).  But the Happy Group is different.  Most of them know some things that The Sad Group doesn’t – i. e. managing their finances.

In managing y0ur money, you need to have a vision and a plan of action to reach that vision.  That plan is laid out, one way or another, through what we are all missing out – the dreaded personal financial planning.  Financial plans are vital in keeping track of where you are right now, and where are you heading.  It can tell you first hand where you need to adjust, what you need to do and which way you need to go.  It’s your early warning device (not an alarm clock) in making sure that your are going to reach your goals as you want it.

If you have the money to spend, of course you can hire a financial consultant to guide you in planning your finances.  A Registered or Certified Financial Planner is more than able to help you get your finances on the right track.  But you must belong to the Lucky Group to do this because these rare professionals are not cheap.  What if you are just starting to being in the Sad or Happy Group? What if you do not have yet the money to spend to fix that same money problems?  Then you need to do this on your own.  It’s not that easy because primarily it requires a back-breaking discipline within you to be able to accomplish your goal.  But it can be learned over time through constant practice and conscious efforts to stick with your financial plan.  And this blog is going to help you with that endeavor.

But for now, you must recognize and realize that financial planning is a must for you if you want to belong to the Happy Campers Group later on in life.  I am sure you will agree that you and I don’t want to belong to the Sad Group at any point in our lives. So it is very important if not critical that we learn how to plan our finances now and in the future not only for ourselves but for our families as well.

This is our mission.  This is what we this blog is all about so watch out for more as we discuss here some of the ways you can jumpstart your career as a personal financial planner to your own self.  Maybe later on you can help others in saving them from financial troubles like what we wanted to do to you.  That is our vision.

So sit back, read on and you will be in for some startling revelations about your finances that you won’t read anywhere else.

In the context of planning per se, building a short term and long term financial plans are vital to every entity whether it’s for your personal or business or other financial needs and wants.  So it is better to start this blog by exploring the components of financial planning by asking the usual 4Ws and an H.

If money just grows on trees, you don't need financial planning...

Who needs financial planning?

Again, all of us needs financial plans.  Like everything else in life, financial plans are the road map of where you want to be in a certain period of time in your life or in business.  It’s the compass of finance that can lead you to the right direction.  It’s about seeing your future and mapping out a solid plan to get there changing and adjusting it as needed along the way.  It’s not about whether you are trained or not trained to plan your finances.  It’s about realizing that you need to plan financially in order for you or your business money to grow to the amount you desire.  Therefore, you and I need financial planning unless you are born with the financial wizardry like no one else.

What is financial planning?

It is the process by which your financial goals are set and laid out in a written form together with a set of short term and long term action plans and milestones designed to guide you in the process of building wealth both in personal finance and in business finance. It is your map to financial success or the simple life if you chose to live it.  It’s all about having a financial map of where you want to be at certain dates in your life or your business so much so that you look forward to it and work your plan accordingly.  It is the ripe fruit that excites you to pick it up and eat it at the right time.  It is the very essence of why most people are wealthy and rich while others chose to gamble in their old ways and became poor in the process.

When do you need financial planning?

It all starts with the desire to have the money you deserve.  When you have that burning desire to change your life or other people’s lives through financial means (perhaps to be able to give to your kids what you did not have or maybe to contribute to the community where you belong), then you are ready to start.  It’s when the passion to make more money than what you have or save those wealth that you already had in years of hardwork or minutes of windfall, you need to plan already.  When you embark in the journey of life that realizes money is not the root of all evil but the lack of it, then you can already take that step in making sure that your goals can be reached through a well-thought strategy-oriented and results-based science of financial planning.

Where can you get information about financial planning?

The internet.  It has a wealth of information about how you can plan for your finances and how you can be successful financially.   You can also buy books, audio books and ebooks to help you propel your passion inside and have that burning desire to continue and focus on your financial plans.  I suggested the internet because there’s lots of first hand experiences on finance that people share in many places like blogs (such as this) or community sites (such as forums) as well as social media (like facebook) where these posters normally give tips and tricks you would not normally find in books from best selling authors.  The wealth from classic books such as The Science of Getting Rich (by Wallace Wattles) and Think and Grow Rich (by Napoleon Hill) can spice up your emotions and guide you towards the accomplishment of your plan.  The key here is to become a sponge that can be squeezed wherein you have to absorb as much info as you can from thousands of literary works about saving, making and growing your money and to squeeze out those trash and “not applicables” to your end.

How can you succeed in financial planning?

Focus and determination is key.  You also have to practically rewire your thought processes and change your behaviours and old ways to be able to achieve your goals.  With focus, determination and openness to change, you can easily embark on a journey to financial success like you wouldn’t imagine possible.  Life is a journey and money is something that goes well with it.  Without money that you can get from a well-planned financial strategy of growing it, then you may not be able to achieve your fullest potential in enjoying life, sharing wealth with the needy and caring for others.

And lastly, although there are certain scriptures in the Bible that says so many odd things about a man who’s got wealth, there are also certain things there that says we should not be poor.  With proper financial planning, you can be wealthy just about right to the accepted norms of your spiritual needs and at the same time not poor enough to beg from other people.

The goal of this blog is teach people what I learned from experience and from countless authors and minds out there that money, if not well planned, is hard to manage let alone grow to the size we want.  After many years of struggling on how to make money work for me, I have not come to a point in my life wherein I am finally enjoying the benefits of having a financial plan with certain goals and strategies that fits my unique situation that will benefit me, my family and other people in my community and later on the whole world if all my plans come in to play.

This is the journey of my financial life that I wanted to share with the world from every tidbits of financial wits to the hardcore study of money the moment it happens and how it affects me.  Join me as we unravel the truth and benefits of financial planning and how you and I can be better financially in many aspects of our lives later on.

Comments are certainly welcome.  Thank you in advance for participating.

Have a nice day!

Here we will talk about financial planning in general and will go as far as talking about , financial planning firms, financial planning business and the financial planning service as an industry.  Sound  financial planning advice is critical to the current economic situation that financial planning advisors, financial planning consultants and experts are quite busy with their clients.

There are so many areas now being covered by this topic coming from the typical corporate financial planning and investment financial planning.  Among which now includes divorce financial planning, retirement financial planning, insurance financial planning, family financial planning and most recently personal financial planning for the rich and famous.  Financial planning clients are more meticulous now than ever before and they are mostly wanting to deal with financial planning company or companies that presents the best breed of financial planners on fee-based financial planning mode.  Most financial planning consultants are keen on making their financial planning fees much of their main income nowadays with the opening of the market in recent years.

Certified financial planning courses are now easily accessible more than ever.   Hundreds of financial planning courses have been offered to the public by colleges and universities for financial planning and by financial planning associations as well.  Career in financial planning is now on rise from the usual CPA course as a top choice amongst finance students.  The aim is not just to get a degree but to get certified in financial planning and be accredited by a  financial planning association or institute or probably work with financial planning companies.   When working is a choice, the typical career path goes from being a financial planning analyst to a financial planning specialist and eventually to a financial planning manager designation.  Financial planning training are normally being established within these financial planning firms.

Financial planning is a lucrative career and business.  As we said, financial planning jobs are on the rise.  There are lots of independent financial planning experts now in the market to help guide you with your money for the future.  As your financial planning guide, these professional financial planning advisors will give you more than financial plans.  Their invaluable insights in processing financial planning information from you can play a major role in your family’s future whether its a one-man financial planning firm or a robust top-heavy financial planning corporations.

There are literally thousands of financial planning books, financial planning classes, financial planning software, financial planning magazine, financial planning tools and financial planning tips all over the internet (this blog is one of them).  There are also lots of financial planning processes being shared to the public.  Financial planning calculators and sample financial planning worksheets are some of the most useful tools that are easily distributable to the world wide web.

So sit back, relax and enjoy this blog.  We hope to keep you glued for a while and come back in the future for more financial planning updates.  Please stay tuned and don’t forget to subscribe to our feeds.

Thanks you.

Your Financial Planning Professionals