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Helping Diligent Advisors Ensure They're On The Right Planning Path

End-Of-Year Planning Checklist: A Guide To Wrapping Up 2021


Best Practices

If you’re like us, you’re wondering where the year went. Your clients likely are wondering the very same thing.

Take The Lead

The next couple of months will pass quickly. Now’s the time to reach out to your clients and have the conversations to position them well to close out this financial year. We recommend using the “What Issues Should I Consider Before The End Of The Year?” checklist to lead these critical engagements. 

Among the more than 40 issues the checklist addresses, you’ll help your clients:

  • Answer the various questions surrounding investment and retirement accounts.
  • Consider tax planning issues, including the strategies dependent on their potential to have higher or lower income in the future.
  • Maximize charitable giving strategies.
  • Leverage business planning opportunities that tax reform has created. 
  • Analyze their cash-flow situation to maximize other savings opportunities, like a 529 plan or a 401(k). 
How To Incorporate The Checklist

Keep in mind, this checklist is a tool that will help focus your clients and support your diligence during the process. In addition, the questions on the checklist will help you get to the heart of your clients’ needs and perhaps uncover planning issues that may have emerged since your last conversation.

Depending on your level of membership, consider incorporating the “What Issues Should I Consider Before The End Of The Year?” checklist in the following ways:

  • Essentials Members: Use the checklist as your secret sauce. Whether you’re on the phone, in a Zoom meeting, or meeting face-to-face with your clients, leverage it as a guide that prompts the probing questions that matter to your clients. 
  • Deluxe Members: Make this checklist part of your personalized outreach to clients. Attach your white-labeled checklist to your meeting invitation and ask your clients to review it before you connect. You’ll accomplish more in your time together when everyone is on the same page. You can also share the checklist with your social networks and on your website to serve as a reminder that clients should be having this meaningful conversation with you. 
  • Premier Members: Use the Share Link feature to proactively reach out to share the interactive checklist and schedule end-of-year meetings. We’ve even made it easy with email templates you can use to introduce the checklist. As a result, you and your clients will be ready to have actionable and productive meetings when your appointment begins. 
  • Not Yet A Member: Through November 15, 2021, we are pleased to make this checklist available to you free of charge. Click here to download the PDF and use it to elevate your end-of-year client conversations. 
Become A Member Or Upgrade

Now is a great time to upgrade your membership or become a member! As we add checklists, flowcharts, guides, and features, membership becomes more value-packed, and you shouldn’t miss a single thing. We’ll be with you every step of the way to make sure you get the most from your fpPathfinder experience. 

 

What Customers Are Saying About Us

Hundreds of other advisors are actively using fpPathfinder. Read what those lovely people have to say about us.
“With working from home most of 2020, we wanted to still catch some face time with our clients. We used the checklists and flowcharts to conduct webinars covering various topics. In fact, having the charts readily available, we were able to do many of these on a weekly basis, knowing the material was pretty much already established. We had such great feedback that we are continuing the webinars into 2021. We have many that actually look forward to our meeting times, and found being able to have the flowchart or checklist available to work on their own later was an added bonus.”
— An advisor in Texas
“I love it! I find it very helpful. It's a great client value add.”
— Phillip, an advisor in North Carolina
“I think fpPathfinder is the best tool I’ve ever seen in the financial planning realm. I spend an unbelievable amount of time researching some of these issues that have been boiled down to one page: consulting with other experts, citing specific sources as a backup, reviewing my work, and coming to a final conclusion.”
— Jeff S, an advisor in Missouri
“It’s brilliant to boil complex planning strategies into a one-page flowchart. It totally beats having to read 4 -5 articles to understand each nuance and exception, especially on the tax issues.”
— Meghan, an advisor in Georgia
“fpPathfinder is one of a few tools that I use most often in my practice. It has improved my process and the client outcomes.”
— An advisor is Texas
“The charts are probably as much value to me (as advisor) as they are when given to a specific client. I know and understand the topics covered, but it can be a lot faster to refresh with a quick glance at the chart’s decision tree vs having to read through regulations”
— Larry, an advisor in Oregon
“I love these checklists and flowcharts! They are very useful and helpful in making sure I am covering all (or at least most) points regarding a specific topic.”
— Michael, an advisor in Pennsylvania
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