My dad used to say that if you can see it, you can be it. To me that translates to having a goal or a dream and then planning and working to making it happen.
When my mom started to mentally decline, I started paying her bills for her. Then she was diagnosed with dementia and I started handling all of her financial matters. As one of mom’s four children, I felt that it was important to treat mom’s financial matters as I would any client’s. So, I developed a budget and a personal financial statement for her. I tracked changes in her financial statement and provided regular statements to her attorney with a variance analysis. When mom passed away, those statements made executing her estate seamless. I knew where everything was and had established relationships with relevant people.
I also developed a personal financial statement for myself and my husband.
When we worked with our estate planning attorney, that financial statement became the cornerstone of our plan. Seeing where we are with our finances has helped us tremendously in preparing for our retirement. We are personally looking at each asset represented on our financial statement as a future stream of income by investing in dividend paying stocks that will provide streams of revenue to minimize our need to dip into the principal allowing us to pass something to our children. A Certified Financial Planner can help you design the best strategy for your particular situation.
So, we can see the retirement dream and are able to manifest it by charting our course and making our dreams reality. If you would like a template for your own personal financial statement, feel free to download the Excel Financial Statement.
Happy Retiring!