It’s been said that retirement planning is “making sure that the road you are on is leading you to the destination you want to go”. I think that is a good start, but I have found in the years that I have been working as a financial advisor that many people do not even know where they want to go OR what road they are on! Retirement planning does not need to be complicated; it is the financial salesman that makes it far more complicated than it needs to be because they can command huge commissions for the sales of products, but that is not retirement planning it is financial sales.

Part of John Pollock Financials’ Investor Peace Planning Process™ is determining the destination. One of the ways we do this is to do the Ideal Target Analysis™. This is “real” retirement planning. Knowing your destination is critical, and everyone has a different destination, some are based on charitable intent, others are based on lifestyle and many are based on family. Regardless of your current situations we will help you identify not only you Ideal Target, but we will be able to determine how easy or difficult it is to reach.

The next step in the retirement planning process is determining where you are! It is similar to going to the local mall and going up to the map and looking for the big red dot that says, “You are here!”.  Most financial advisors skip both the “you are here” analysis and destination analysis and go right to the “trip” between the two, which is strategies, tactics and products. The reason most people are uncomfortable with “real” retirement planning is because they are used to people, who call themselves financial advisors, selling the “trip” (products) before they even know where the bridge is coming from or going to!

In case I have lost you in the analogy somewhere, look at retirement planning as a vacation and the financial advisor as the travel agent. The travel agent first needs to determine where you want to have your vacation, then they need to determine where you are leaving from, THEN and only THEN can the travel agent determine the best form of travel to get there. Unfortunately, most financial advisors (which are actually financial sales people) are selling the form of travel and skipping the origin and destination of your trip.

The Investor Peace Planning Process™ is designed to be retirement planning that ensures that the road you are going to go down is the one that is leading you to where you want to go.