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Financial Planning

At Maxima Wealth Management, we believe that planning is the cornerstone of success. Whether you view success as having financial gain, having the freedom to spend more time with your family, having political clout in your community, or just having the freedom to be a better person, planning will make meeting your objectives that much easier.

It has been said, “Success is a journey – not a destination.” At Maxima Wealth Management, we view our clients’ lives as journeys and we help them find their path using tools to navigate successfully.

5 Steps to Planning

To aid our clients in choosing their path, Maxima Wealth Management follows a five-step approach for evaluating and implementing an appropriate financial plan. Most professionals will sit down and evaluate a client’s needs and recommend a proper course of action. Rarely, does the professional remind the client to consistently re-evaluate his or her plans to determine whether or not he or she is on the correct path.

As success is truly a journey, it is important to know that you are on the right path at all times. Therefore, a truly worthwhile plan will be cyclical in nature; it will require that the individual re-evaluate and plot his or her course and make changes if necessary.

Like driving your car, you may know your destination, but sometimes roads may be closed or conditions may change that make detours necessary. If your plan does not allow for such detours, then it is an inflexible plan and could be doomed to failure. At Maxima Wealth Management, our five-step approach will help you create a flexible, workable plan.

THE PROCESS

I. Assess the Situation

Before you begin any plan, it is important to know your starting point. Your assessment should be an honest look at from where you are starting so that you know how to plot a course for where you eventually want to end.

If you have ever navigated either by sea or air, you know how important it is to determine your exact location prior to plotting a course. The same principle applies in the financial world. If you have a goal in mind, determining your starting point can help you decide what steps are necessary or what path is needed to reach your goal.

The very exercise of ascertaining and assessing your situation is beneficial. But for your planning professional, knowing where you are is absolutely crucial to be able to give you proper advice. At Maxima Wealth Management, your current situation will be evaluated to determine whether planning will be appropriate for you and your family.

Keep in mind that assessments at Maxima Wealth Management are typically no-fee situations. We believe strongly that in order to know how to arrive at a destination, we need to know where you are starting. We make it as simple as possible for potential clients to contact us and get an honest assessment. How can someone offer you direction unless they know where you are coming from?

II. Develop a Plan

Deciding to develop a financial plan is one of the most important steps you can take. Your plan should take into account several considerations.

The first is to address any obstacles standing in the way of you and your financial goals. The second consideration is to determine the tools available to help overcome and avoid the obstacles. Finally, it’s important to make sure that your plan is workable and makes sense. It will do you absolutely no good to develop a plan if you cannot follow it. This is where professional assistance is necessary.

At Maxima Wealth Management, we develop plans where our clients are active participants. We believe that control is a crucial element in any plan. We want our clients to have control over their plans. Therefore, we educate our clients so that they can take an active role in developing, implementing, and managing their plans.

III. Choose Planning Tools

Once you have assessed your situation and developed a plan to address the obstacles between you and your financial goals, the next step is to decide the planning tools that can help you achieve your desired outcomes.

Planning tools are similar to most tools – the user needs to know how to properly use the tool before it can be of use to them. In the financial and legal world, there are different tools and entities available to help accomplish a number of tasks.

Just as a hammer is meant to drive a nail and is not intended to cut through wood, certain planning tools have specific uses. Using a holistic approach to planning, we will look at your entire financial picture and recommend tools that will integrate well with the rest of your plan to create synergy. We take the view that a proper financial plan will utilize the most appropriate tools available and that there is no such thing as “one-size-fits-all” in the financial world.

At Maxima Wealth Management, we will help you decide what tools are best to achieve your financial goals. Then, we will either provide you the tools or connect you with the appropriate professional or organization for assistance. Our objective is to determine the most useful tool to accomplish your particular goal. Once this is accomplished, we will tell you exactly how we can help you in achieving your financial goals.

IV. Implement a Structure

Professionals tend to place barriers between themselves and their clients, which can have a negative impact on the client. Have you ever been concerned about an issue but have been reluctant to call an attorney or accountant because you know they will bill you for the telephone call? At Maxima Wealth Management, we have a unique approach to the implementation of the financial structures we create.

Maxima Wealth Management takes a very “hands on” approach to implementing our clients’ financial plans. We create open channels of communication with our clients by removing hourly-based fees so that our clients do not need to hesitate to pick up the telephone and call us with questions or to email us with their inquiries. We believe in a business model designed to remove the barriers that keep clients from communicating with us, so that there is a greater likelihood that our clients will completely utilize the strategies and plans created.

Just as a hammer will never drive a nail into wood unless somebody picks it up and swings it, your tools and your plans will do you no good unless you use them.To help facilitate the use of the financial tools, Maxima Wealth Management has developed, and makes available to our clients, resource materials designed to help educate our clients so that they can properly use the structures and tools created.

V. Review the Structure

Once you have developed and implemented a plan, it is important to review the plan periodically. It makes good sense to review your plan and to reassess your situation at least on an annual basis.

Remember, if a ship leaves port and is off by one degree when it departs and the crew does not catch the mistake for a week, they will be many miles off course when they do figure out that they made a mistake. A periodic review allows you to get back on course if things change or new obstacles arise.

Your plan should be flexible and allow for modification. At Maxima Wealth Management, the structures we create integrate well with further planning and allow for maximum versatility when it comes to making modifications in the future. Circumstances change, it is nice to know that you have the ability to change with the times. A periodic review of your situation lets you know whether or not you need to make changes. Often times, you will find that your existing plan is sufficient and no modifications need to be made. In that case, you will sleep better at night knowing that you are on course toward your goals.

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