{"id":162927,"date":"2013-04-29T04:00:22","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/?p=162927"},"modified":"2018-11-21T08:23:18","modified_gmt":"2018-11-21T16:23:18","slug":"how-and-why-to-create-a-financial-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/how-and-why-to-create-a-financial-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"How (and why) to create a financial plan"},"content":{"rendered":"
A few weeks ago, I celebrated another birthday. For whatever reason, birthdays always make me think about how many more birthdays I have to celebrate. And eventually, I think about how my husband would handle the finances in the event of my death.<\/p>\n
Happy birthday, huh?<\/p>\n
Although I am unlikely to die anytime soon, you never know. When thinking about my earthly exit, I am bothered most by the practical things that would affect my family. In the middle of grief and loss, I don’t want my husband to be struggling to know which bills are on autopay, how much we contribute to our IRAs each month, or what the passwords are to important accounts. So, in my opinion, the most loving thing I could do is make sure he can keep our family’s financial life together. It’s time to create a Financial Plan.<\/p>\n
A financial plan<\/strong><\/p>\n I drew inspiration for this plan from, of all places, my job. My program is required to have something called a “Master Plan,” a manual that covers all the policies, tasks, and projects associated with the program. If I became incapacitated on Friday, someone could figure out how to keep the program running on Monday.<\/p>\n Something like that is necessary (and required) for good reason: At work, I’m the only one who knows how to do some things. I’m also the one in our marriage who does everything with our finances.<\/p>\n But it’s more than just my husband now. By the time you read this article, if all goes as planned, we will have custody of our\u00a0(almost) adopted children<\/a> in their country.<\/p>\n Adding children to our family changes everything. Last year, a family in our community lost both parents in a car accident. I talked to the oldest daughter, and she told me how her parents had been very open with her about their finances. I don’t know if their plan was as extensive as this, but they communicated their income and debts.<\/p>\n As I have watched this family grieve the loss of both parents, I want to do everything I can to make it easier for someone else to step in and take care of our children’s medical and financial needs if the worst would happen.<\/p>\n Creating the plan<\/strong><\/p>\n I first learned about Erik Dewey’s free\u00a0Big Book of Everything<\/a> from an\u00a0old GRS post<\/a>. His planner is full of information, more than I needed. But I pulled what I wanted from his plan and from doing other research as well.<\/p>\n Creating a plan like this requires a lot of work upfront. Maybe you can take a\u00a0financial health day<\/a> to complete this. Once the initial work is done, it will be easy to update it. I update my Master Plan at work about once per year, and it takes just an hour or so. I will do the same with our Financial Plan, adding information or updating bank account balances.<\/p>\n\n