Financial Planning Diagnostics was the tied as a winner of the Finance/Investment/Economics category of the 2022 IndieReader Discovery Awards, where undiscovered talent meet people with the power to make a difference.
Following find an interview with author Sue Stevens.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
Financial Planning Diagnostics, May 2021.
What’s the book’s first line?
There are three basic analyses I do when helping people with financial planning.
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch.”
Financial Planning Diagnostics puts you in the driver’s seat as you build your personal dreams of wealth by showing you how to assess your current situation and then know what questions to ask as you navigate your way forward.
If you ever thought “What should I be asking that I’m not thinking about?,” this book is for you. Even professional financial planners can benefit from the diagnostic exercises and checklists included that have been used in practice by an award-winning financial life planner as she counseled hundreds of clients.
By framing the right questions, you can start to look for answers that get you closer to your goals. Diagnostics before diagnosis.
What inspired you to write the book?
When I was first starting out in my financial planning career, I had a book of checklists that I referred to again and again as I helped counsel clients. It helped me think of things I might not have known to look at more carefully especially when helping clients with specific situations like going through a divorce or facing a terminal illness.
As I neared the latter years of my career, it occurred to me that no one had written an updated, modern book of methodologies and checklists using this approach. I wanted to “pay it forward” so that others could find the type of inspiration I did earlier in my career.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
Just like a doctor runs tests before any type of treatment is prescribed, a good financial advisor—or you, if you are doing this yourself—will run analyses to look at your overall life and goals, understand what you owe and what you own, and what your tax return is telling you. That’s what you’ll find in just the first part of Financial Planning Diagnostics.
The second part of the book offers over 25 checklists covering how to set up a filing system, do a personal finance self-assessment, create an Investment Policy Statement, budgeting two ways, how to cut costs, annual and year-end financial reviews, college funding options, divorce, job loss, aging parents, terminal illness, retirement countdown, estate planning, providing for pets, philanthropy, end-of-life, survivors’ checklist and disaster planning.
Half the battle is knowing what questions to ask.