Now that you have completed the Financial Organizer Template, the next step is to electronically sync your bank and investment accounts, and use the budgeting tool to determine your average monthly spending. Please follow the steps below to complete this process.
Step 1: Electronically sync your bank and investment accounts to your client portal
- We have recently emailed you an invitation to create your password for your HCP Wealth personal financial portal. Follow the instructions to create your login information. Once you have created your login credentials, moving forward, you can login to your client portal HERE ( It is recommended that you bookmark this login page for future use. You can also download our mobile app by searching for "Rightcapital" in the Google Play or Apple Store.) Once you are logged in, read these instructions and tips to link your accounts.
- We ask that you sync ALL of your bank account accounts, investment accounts, and credit card accounts. There is a quick video demo of this process below.
- Please don't spend any time electronically syncing your mortgage, insurance policies, student loans, or other loans, or goals. I will upload those details manually for you.
Step 2: Estimate Monthly Spending
Now that you have synced up your bank and credit card accounts, we can take advantage of the budgeting tool in your client portal to get a better grasp of your monthly expenses and cash flow.
*If you happen to have your own method for tracking your spending and prefer to use that to provide me an estimate, that is perfectly acceptable. You still need to read the disclaimer below in Step 3 which tells you which expenses you DO NOT want to include in this monthly spending amount.
We will ultimately spend more time reviewing the budgeting tool together in a meeting, but for right now we just need to get a general understanding of your expenses. When you first sync up your accounts, the tool will automatically categorize your last 3 months worth of expenses. It's important that you then go into the budgeting tool and make sure your transactions are categorized correctly ( as a best practice I recommend doing this every few months). The video below will show you how to do this.
Don't worry, for privacy purposes, by default, as your advisor I can not see your individual transactions. Also, keep in mind that during this step in the process we are not actually creating a budget which is a forward looking tool with amounts that are not set in stone. We are simply using the budgeting tool to understand what you have ACTUALLY been spending historically over the past few months.
*Tip: if there is an expense showing up that is truly a one-time expense that won't happen again, you can change the category of that transaction to "exclude". That way we aren't overestimating your spending.
*If you want to create a custom budget category that isn't already an option in the tool, follow the steps in the video below:
Step 3: Enter Your Pre-Retirement Living Expenses
- In the client portal, click on "profile" and then "expenses" to enter you current monthly living expenses as seen in the image below.
- IMPORTANT!!!: These expenses should NOT include: insurance premiums, debt payments such car loans or mortgages, travel expenses, charitable giving, taxes, or business or rental property expenses when applicable. These cash outflows are already accounted for elsewhere in your portal. So if they are showing up in the budgeting tool you need to subtract those amounts before you enter your monthly living expenses in this step. You can also exclude one-time transactions that aren't likely to happen again. The default option is to use the simple approach and enter a total amount.
- Or as seen below, you can use the detailed estimate option to provide individual amounts for specific categories
Step 4: Risk Tolerance Questionnaire
I ask that you click this link to complete a Risk Tolerance Questionnaire and email me a screen shot of the results. If you are planning with a significant other, each of you should complete your own questionnaire.
This will give us insight into what kind of market volatility you are willing to accept. We will then compare this to your risk capacity which is how much market risk you are financially able to accept. This will help to guide my recommendations when it comes you your asset allocation.