A Basic Financial Planning Checklist

A Basic Financial Planning Checklist

 A realization that has only very slowly occurred to me, over 15 years in the world of financial planning, is that the most common financial planning mistake that I see people make is not so much a particular bad decision, but rather completely ignoring certain parts of financial planning.

In many cases, that shows up in the form of focusing too much on the investing part of the picture, while having some other critical financial planning need that is going unaddressed.

And that’s not terribly surprising. Investing involves thinking about upside — how your assets will grow (and how they could grow, if you make a high-risk bet and get lucky). That can be fun.

In contrast, many critical financial planning tasks involve thinking about downside. (What if you become disabled or die earlier than anticipated?) That’s less fun.

In addition, a lot of critical financial planning tasks look suspiciously like work.

What follows is just a brief checklist of financial planning topics, all of which should probably be addressed before spending much time thinking about exactly what is the correct allocation to international bonds or whether index funds are preferable to ETFs.

Insurance Planning:

Do you have health insurance? (And if it’s open enrollment season, have you checked to see whether there’s a different plan that might be a better fit for your household?)

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://obliviousinvestor.com/financial-planning-priorities/