What Is Life Planning?
I describe myself as a financial life planner. The “financial” part might be obvious—I help clients with things like cash flow, retirement planning, insurance, investments, taxes, estate planning, and more.
But the “life planning” part? That may not be as clear.
To explain what life planning is, I think it’s helpful to first ask: What’s the point of hiring a financial planner in the first place?
At its core, the goal is to improve your life—by improving your finances.
The Financial Planning Process Is Like a GPS
I often describe the financial planning process like using a GPS on a road trip.
When you get in the car, the GPS needs two things:
Where you are now.
Where you want to go.
Once it knows those two things, it can calculate the best route—taking into account traffic, weather, construction, and more.
Financial planning works the same way. We start by understanding your current financial situation (your “now”) and where you want to go (your goals). Once we know both, I can help guide you, offering the most efficient route to get you there.
Where Life Planning Comes In
What I’ve found through my career is that most people struggle to clearly define where they want to go.
They might say they want to retire at 60, take a sabbatical, or start a business—but they rarely take real steps toward those goals. That’s because those goals often aren’t theirs. They’re borrowed from friends, family, or social expectations.
And when something isn’t deeply meaningful to you, it’s easy to put it off—or abandon it altogether.
That’s where life planning comes in.
Life planning helps you uncover what truly matters to you. It gives you the clarity to define your own version of an ideal life, not someone else’s. I’ve gone through the life planning process myself, and I can confidently say it’s the best way I’ve found to gain that clarity.
It’s also why I do life planning with my clients—because when you know what you want, you can finally take action to make it a reality.
To paraphrase Ted Lasso, when you realize what you want out of life, you want the rest of your life to begin ASAP.
The Real Value of Financial Planning
At the end of the day, the most important thing I do for my clients isn’t building a financial plan. It’s not optimizing their investments or managing their equity compensation.
It’s helping them take action to live the life they want—as soon as possible.
What the Life Planning Process Looks Like
The life planning process I use was developed by George Kinder, the founder of the Kinder Institute of Life Planning. His approach includes four core meetings, which I’ve built into my Initial Financial Life Plan, plus a fifth meeting that happens with my ongoing planning clients.
Here’s how the process works:
We start broadly by exploring what’s most important in your life.
We narrow it down to the key goals that matter most.
We make a plan to start taking action now—not someday.
We align your finances so they support your Authentic Life, as quickly as possible.
By the end of the process, you’ll have clarity about where you are today, where you want to go, and a plan to get there. From there, you can either implement it on your own—or we can do it together through ongoing planning.
Final Thoughts
Financial life planning is about more than numbers. It’s about helping you define a vision for your life—and then giving you the tools, guidance, and support to make it happen.
Because financial planning should be about more than just building wealth. It should be about helping you live a life that feels authentic.