We believe that every aspect of your financial life plan should be focused on improving your overall financial health. The LIVE PLAN THRIVE project acknowledges that financial wellness is more than just a buzzword. Helping people achieve true financial wellness is part of our mission.

An Ongoing Financial Life Plan

An ongoing plan to meet current obligations and future financial goals is a core component of authentic financial wellness. Putting your life goals as they relate to your personal financial plans increases the likelihood you will turn good intentions into reality. Building a financial wellness foundation starts with an ongoing L.I.F.E. plan that is Life-giving, Incremental, Focused, and Empowering.

Objective Financial Status

Authentic financial wellness is more than just how we think and feel we are doing. Objective measures of financial wellness help to track progress towards important life goals. These objective financial status measures go well beyond traditional items like income, net worth, credit scores or investment portfolio balances. Examples of important financial status measures include how much breathing room you have in your budget and your current emergency safety net. Other examples include debt-to-income ratio, savings rate, how much you spend on total housing, and your financial freedom (a.k.a. “retirement”) replacement rate.

Mind the Gap…Positive Financial Behaviors

Actions Matter! Best practice financial behaviors help you achieve goals. Budgeting, controlling debt, saving for emergencies, investing for retirement, protecting wealth, automating good decisions, and avoiding money missteps are just a few examples of how the actions in your financial life truly make a difference and contribute to your overall well-being.

Money Mindset

Human capital matters – we refer to this as your financial wellness capital. Money attitudes shape our actual financial behaviors. Your money mindset consists of your attitudes about money, overall financial satisfaction, and core money beliefs.

Real Planning is about LIFE

A comprehensive look at your overall financial wellness can help you stay focused on the things that matter in your LIFE – not just what is happening in your investment portfolio. Real financial life planning focuses on your life and requires an ongoing plan. Financial wellness isn’t just a buzzword, it is part of our mission to help you accomplish meaningful life goals with a purposeful approach.

In the past, finding a definition for financial wellness was a challenge and many different descriptions of our overall financial health still exist today. Fortunately, the growing body of financial planning research supports a multi-dimensional approach to assessing and monitoring financial well-being.

We understand that your success is defined by the progress you make towards reaching important financial life goals. Part of our ongoing mission is to help everyone strive to maintain a healthy state of financial wellness. 

– The LIVE PLAN THRIVE Project

The concept of authentic financial wellness is measured by a combination of factors including the overall satisfaction with our current financial situation, actual financial behaviors (i.e., budgeting, saving, debt reduction), financial attitudes, financial knowledge, and objective financial status.

Finding A Better Way to Track Your Financial Health

The LIVE PLAN THRIVE Project was designed with the understanding that helping others reach their most important life goals is the right approach to financial planning. Income, net worth, and rate of return on investments are important things to track but they are NOT the best ways to track the success of our clients. The financial services industry has traditionally done a poor job encouraging individuals to assess, track, and improve their financial wellness.

Authentic financial wellness is a better indicator of how clients are actually doing and how we are working to change lives in a positive way. This is why we view “financial wellness” as a more genuine measure of overall financial health.