What is Life Planning?
Life planning helps ensure your financial plan serves your life, not the other way around.
This process is especially helpful for women navigating a major transition, like divorce, widowhood, retirement, or an empty nest, who want a plan that aligns money with what matters most.
Life planning helps you reorganize your relationship with money. It helps you align your spending and saving with what matters most. We plan together to dedicate your financial resources in a way that supports your best life.
The goal is a practical plan that helps you achieve your most important goals. We then build a financial strategy that supports your goals. The process should inspire you to do what matters most to you, with the confidence that your finances support you every step of the way.
Apprise uses the EVOKE® Life Planning process to help you do just that.
What can you expect?
- Clarity on what matters most right now
- A written Financial Life Plan connected to those priorities
- A short list of next steps we agree on together
- Ongoing guidance as life changes
At the end of each meeting, we will agree on your next steps and the framework we will use to guide our next meeting.
Ready to talk through whether this is a good fit?
What is EVOKE®?
EVOKE® is our Life Planning process. It helps you clarify what matters most, then align your money with the life you want to live.
Each letter in EVOKE® represents one part of a five-part process with structured conversations:
- E for Exploration
- V for Vision
- O for Obstacles
- K for Knowledge
- E for Execution
Between meetings, you will complete thought-provoking exercises that help you clarify what matters and turn these insights into action.
Life planning primarily relates to the first three steps (EVO) of the process. The knowledge step is more akin to conventional financial planning. Most clients complete the first three EVOKE meetings in 3 to 4 meetings, at a pace that feels comfortable. Then we translate that life plan into your Financial Life Plan and ongoing execution.
EVOKE® was developed by the Kinder Institute of Life Planning.
The EVOKE process starts with the Exploration meeting. During this meeting, you will have an in-depth conversation about your best life. This is a space to think out loud, dream big, and say what you usually edit out.
Think of this meeting as an opportunity to outline your ideas, aspirations, and goals. While this may sound simple, if you’re like most people, you rarely have the time or space to think through and put into words your hopes and dreams.
If you have a partner, you will both get the opportunity to speak and be heard. My goal is to help both of you live fulfilling lives and to make room for what matters to each of you.
My role during this process is to explore what you want to do and why. You will be encouraged to talk without limits and be supported. This is your meeting. My role is to listen, ask the right questions, and help you name what matters.
At the conclusion of this meeting, you will be asked to complete two inspirational exercises for your next meeting:
1. The Three Questions
2. The Heart’s Core Grid
During the Vision meeting, we will review and discuss your inspirational work, including your answers to the Three Questions and the Heart’s Core Grid. This meeting will help you create a picture of a rich, fulfilled life that aligns with your values and what matters most.
If you are meeting along with your partner, you will both get the opportunity to create your own vision of a great life. You should both feel energized and ready to live your most fulfilling lives.
At the conclusion of this meeting, we will ask you to complete another set of exercises: Your Ideal Day, Week, and Year.
During the Obstacles meeting, we will discuss the obstacles that may prevent you from living a more aligned life. When you identify obstacles, we will discuss them thoroughly. We will help you determine how to tackle them head-on as we begin to put you on the path to achieving your life plan.
We may also briefly discuss your Ideal Day, Week, and Year exercises and compare your current day, week, and year to your ideals to help you move toward a more aligned life.
The goal here is to name what you want, what has been getting in the way, and what needs to change to move forward.
The Knowledge meeting helps us to connect your money with your life through a written Financial Plan. Using your life plan as a guide, we use financial planning and investment management techniques to align your money with your life.
This typically includes tax planning, cash flow, retirement planning, investment strategy, risk management, and estate planning coordination.
We review your Goals for Life exercise (your short- and long-term priorities) and confirm that it aligns with your life plan. When completing this exercise, we ask you to identify those things you want to do over both the short and long term. We will also discuss the steps you will take immediately to reach your current goals and plan for your future. We want to align both with your values.
With your Financial Life Plan in place, it’s time to live with purpose and meaning. The energy and clarity that come from creating your life plan and ideal life enable us to work together to bring your vision to life.
At this point, your Apprise advisor will continue to serve as your guide. We will check in on your progress and help you if you go off course or if something in your life changes. We will prioritize the most important tasks and schedule your future next steps.
We will revisit your plan as your life changes. If your priorities change, or you feel stuck, we will adjust your plan to keep it aligned with your vision of your ideal life. In addition to monitoring your plan and guiding you through your financial life, we continue to help you manage your investments as part of the overall plan.
Financial strategies like investments, tax planning, and cash flow are certainly part of this process, and they are only enhanced when they are integrated with what matters most to you. With a deeper understanding of your values, purpose, and goals, we can devise fine-tuned strategies to help you make living your most fulfilling life a reality.