Financial Puzzles

Answer 1

A jigsaw puzzle is a bunch of pieces until they’re put together just right, then a complete picture comes into focus. Your financial life is the same way. Until all the pieces are put together just right, there is no complete picture of your financial life. You’re out of focus with holes in the background. What are the pieces you should focus on? Well, I’ll answer that by looking at the curriculum for the Certified Financial Planner® professional designation (CFP®).

Financial professionals that are training for the CFP® go through different educational modules that are comprised of the following areas: Insurance, Income Taxation, Retirement Planning, Investments, and Estate Planning. These five areas could be looked as the individual puzzle pieces required to form a complete financial picture. Ignore any of these areas at your own risk.

Insurance is important because it covers you from financial loss in the event of an unexpected peril. Without this important piece of the puzzle you could have a healthy financial life wither away into nothing. Taxation is a big part of the puzzle because it’s a big, complex area of our financial lives. We must pay the government taxes to provide for things like important infrastructure, but there are legal ways to minimize the amount we must pay. In order to maximize the efficiency of your financial life you must plan your steps with careful consideration of the Internal Revenue Code.

Retirement Planning, or planning for any other goal, requires that we look at time-value-of-money calculations and keep things like the force of inflation in mind. Without these important tools it’s difficult to actually map out a strategy that’ll get you anywhere other than where you already are. While you’re setting aside money for a goal you’ll want to make sure you have it allocated into investments that will allow for efficient growth. The world of investments is a very complex one that requires a lot of study and careful plays.

Of course spending time planning for your financial life also requires you to look at how you want things to be distributed upon your physical death. This is important because our financial life lives on, in the form of our estate, after we check out. Charitable planned giving and trusts can be a way to minimize your estate taxation liability, but these are things that usually require expert advice to structure properly.

Do not plan your financial life in a vacuum. Each step you make should take each of the five areas into consideration. For example, there are some ways you can save on taxes by giving to a charity from a retirement plan. This move affects your Income Taxation and Retirement Planning directly, but will also require you to reallocate your Investments and possibly change the way your Estate Planning and Insurance portfolio is structured. Put all the pieces on the table and see how they fit together before making any financial decisions.