Our Process

When you contact Personal Financial Advisors, Inc., we will answer your questions regarding our services and our firm. If you are interested in further exploring a relationship with Personal Financial Advisors, Inc., we will schedule a no cost, no obligation meeting at our office.

After scheduling a meeting, we will send you a list of financial documents and information for you to bring to the meeting for us to review. You typically will have between 2-4 weeks to gather this information prior to our meeting. Gathering the financial information we request is a great exercise for you to organize your finances and review these items prior to our meeting. Having as much of this information ready for us to review at the meeting will help us get a better idea of your current financial situation and will make our time together as efficient as possible.

Our Introductory Meeting will take approximately 2 hours, as we will create a Financial Roadmap^® with you and your significant other, if applicable. The Financial Roadmap^® will take us through a discovery exercise where we will determine the things most important to you, specifically defining your goals and then prioritizing them, and reviewing your current finances. The completed Financial Roadmap^® will give you a sense of clarity regarding where you are today financially and where you want to go. At the end of the meeting we will decide if we have a good fit and should continue working together. If so, we will sign the Financial Planning Services Agreement Contract and schedule the Interactive Planning Meeting approximately four weeks after this meeting.

Within a week after our Introductory Meeting, we will send you an invitation with instructions to open your own personal client portal with us. Once you accept the invitation, you can start linking your financial accounts to our client portal. This will enable us to be much more efficient with our time during our Interactive Planning Meeting. Linking your financial accounts to our client portal will allow you to check the status of your accounts on a daily basis. The client portal will act as a hub for all your financial information. Our Interactive Planning Meeting will take approximately 2 hours, where we will verify all the financial information you provided us either through hard copy, electronically, or linked through your client portal. Once all financial information is verified, we will discuss your expectations and concerns regarding retirement, as well as your investment risk tolerance. We will then show you the current state of your financial situation versus the goals you wish to attain. If there is a shortfall, together we will construct scenarios determining the various options available for you to reach your goals. After the appropriate scenario is identified, we stress test it by determining how various financial challenges affect the chosen scenario. After seeing your options for reaching your goals, you will get a much greater sense of control over your financial situation. About four weeks after this meeting, we will have our Financial Plan Implementation Meeting.

At the Financial Plan Implementation Meeting, we will go over our analysis, the financial plan, and the recommendations to implement the plan. You will then be given an opportunity to accept, reject, or postpone each recommendation. We will meet in approximately two weeks after the Financial Plan Implementation Meeting to complete any paperwork necessary to implement the financial plan.

At this meeting we start implementing the plan. We will have paperwork prepared for you to sign, if necessary, to start implementing your plan. This meeting gives you the opportunity to discuss any questions or concerns regarding the financial plan or how to implement it on your part. This meeting typically gives you the feeling you are taking the first real steps in making your Financial Roadmap^® a reality.

We schedule a meeting to review the new statements you have received from the companies we've used to implement your plan. This meeting typically lasts no more than 30 minutes, since we are just teaching you how to read these new statements and answering any questions you may have. By understanding how to read your investment statements, you will be able to monitor the progress your investments are making which typically gives our clients a sense of empowerment.

We will contact you to schedule a Financial Plan Progress Meeting. The purpose of the meeting is to review the progress we are making implementing the financial plan, determining the progress we are making towards your goals, reviewing your portfolio, and answering any questions you may have. Once the meeting is scheduled, we will send you a Financial Plan Implementation Report which shows the status of the recommendations from your financial plan. This report will show you which recommendations have been completed to this point in time, and which recommendations have not. This report mainly acts as a reminder of items that still need to be done so they don't slip through the cracks. Implementing the financial plan is the most important part of the financial planning process. We have regularly scheduled progress meetings throughout the year at your convenience until it is time to schedule our annual financial plan review meeting.

We will contact you to schedule our annual financial plan review meeting. At this meeting we will review your Financial Roadmap^®, update your goals, and reevaluate your current financial situation in preparation for creating a updated financial plan. Since life never goes as planned, we need to update the financial plan based on your current life situation, goals, and financial situation. After we have our annual financial plan review meeting, we will repeat steps 5-8.