After your first meeting

After you've met with an advisor and decided to work together, you'll be ready to make some progress. Together you'll schedule the first of several follow-up discussions to start developing your financial plan. While every advisor works a little differently, here's an idea of the steps you'll take.

1. Gather the right information

The advisor will allow enough time for you to locate and assemble the material you'll need to provide, if you didn't get a chance to prepare them for your initial meeting. These include:

• Your budget or an estimate of where your money goes each month
• Your most recent pay stubs
• Tax documents for the last two years
• Information on your investments, IRAs, 401(k) etc.

2. Evaluate information and discuss your priorities

• The advisor will review your information and answer any questions you have.
• You'll discuss your current financial situation and review your overall goals.
• The advisor should now have the information needed to write your initial financial plan.

3. Review the financial plan

• The advisor will present a financial plan based on the information you provided and your dreams and goals.
• You'll review the plan's recommendations together, and you can suggest adjustments if necessary.
• You can now put your financial plan into action and decide how often you'd like to have follow-up meetings.

4. Ongoing financial planning

• The advisor's main job now is helping you stay on track following the financial planning process.
• During each follow-up financial plan meeting, you and an advisor will review your plan and your progress and make adjustments as needed.
• You keep the advisor up-to-date on anything that might affect your plan (marriage, job change, birth of a child, new business etc.).