Why You Need a Personal CFO

Think for a moment about the personal wealth you’ve created during your working years. That wealth can have a huge impact on your life, your family, your community, and even the world at large – IF you take the right steps to make smart decisions about your money.

Trouble is, most Americans are so focused on getting to retirement, they never stop to think about developing a plan for getting through retirement. Many people end up neglecting important tasks altogether, or, even worse, try taking on complex issues like, Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs), Social Security taxation, long-term care planning, and estate design, without proper guidance.

And sometimes, even the help we do get doesn’t truly help us!

It has been said that most Americans are sorely lacking

coordination when it comes to their finances.

They might have an attorney, a CPA, an investment advisor, as well as an insurance agent, and assume they’re all set. Unfortunately, those professionals rarely talk to each other, which usually leads to costly mistakes.

The solution, according to Chaz Price, a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ who specializes in providing comprehensive wealth management solutions, “The key to long-term financial success is to borrow a concept from the business world: the CFO. A Personal CFO (Chief Financial Officer) is a financial professional who provides insight into your personal finances, just as a CFO for your business handles key financial issues within the firm. Even Americans who have traditionally been their own personal CFOs can still benefit from the unbiased, thoughtful instruction, and coaching a Personal CFO can provide.”

Why, exactly, should you hire a Personal CFO? As Price points out,

“The financial side of any family unit is a lot like the financial side of a business.

In both cases, crucial decisions must be made about spending, saving, investing, and planning for future growth. Furthermore, if you’re like most business owners, your time is best spent leading and inspiring people, not tackling the subtle financial nuances of the business. Just like a CFO for your business, a personal CFO for your family is a strong leader who provides sound financial advice, and creates a road map for you to follow, while working with you on an on-going basis to help ensure that you’re hitting all your goals.”

A Personal CFO is someone who has embraced a new approach to advising Americans – one that is intuitive, holistic, and incorporates the full financial complexities of their lives into one comprehensive plan. Instead of being reactive and focusing only on current needs or crises, your Personal CFO is proactive and anticipates your long-term needs – years, even decades into the future, so that you can feel confident you’re always on track to meet your goals, even as they continue to evolve and grow.

The reason this approach works so well is because the emphasis is not on strict adherence to the plan itself, but rather, on the plan’s outcomes, and getting you and your family exactly what you need most, at precisely the right time. As you’ll see, a Personal CFO can help streamline even the most complex financial life and help make sense of all the moving parts that are required to manage it.

Finding a true Personal CFO

What does a Personal CFO look like? And how can you find one? After all, with more than 400,000 practicing financial advisers, you need to be able to tell a true Personal CFO from a glorified salesperson. Here are three characteristics that top Personal CFOs possess. You should expect that any advisers you work with should possess these key traits:

They look beyond your finances. You’ll have no trouble finding plenty of advisers who focus mainly or even exclusively on investments. In contrast, Personal CFOs go well beyond investing to solve the full range of challenges that most Americans will face at some point in their lives. Those issues can run the gamut from retirement and tax reduction, to selling a business and estate planning for their heirs. Getting expert guidance in these and other areas is crucial to the long-term financial health of the American family.

They use a defined process to address your full range of needs. One of the most valuable services that a Personal CFO can offer is done at the beginning of the relationship in what Chaz refers to as the Discovery Phase. This process involves the Personal CFO asking a broad range of questions to understand your needs beyond what your financial statements show. The discovery phase involves gaining insight into your most important values, aspirations, interests, and fears. This process helps you and your Personal CFO gain the much-needed clarity on where you are today, where you want to be down the road, and how to go about closing the gaps. Why is this important? As Americans, we don’t just work because we enjoy working – we work because we want to realize a greater quality of life for ourselves, our families, the people around us, and causes we are passionate about. Personal CFOs understand that fact, and the Discovery Phase brings all these important issues to light.

They work with teams of specialized experts on your behalf. No one person – not even the smartest financial adviser in the world – can be considered an expert in every discipline of financial planning. That’s why a Personal CFO makes a point of building and working with teams of experts in all the key areas of finance that can impact Americans. For example, Chaz coordinates with expert CPAs, estate planning attorneys, business consultants, risk managers, M&A professionals, and long-term care specialists, to help develop comprehensive planning strategies.

Imagine one person standing with you at the center of your financial life, helping you bring together the right people, the right tools, and the right ideas, to build your ideal financial future.

You have put a lot into your retirement – not just money, but the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears and, if you are like most Americans, so has the rest of your family. You owe it to them to get it right, and the Personal CFO can be your best resource to make it happen.

Click Discovery Session to schedule a complimentary, no-obligation, 30-minute consultation.

Chaz Price, CFP®

419-842-0550 (phone)

chaz@theretirementhq.com (email)

www.americasretirementheadquarters.com (website)