For your Assignments in Weeks 16 of the course, you will develop a retirement plan for a hypothetical client. You will be able to choose one of four client profiles to use for the retirement plan, but it is asked that you stay with the same client throughout the course once you have made your decision. Each client represents one of the four generational groups that you explored in this weeks Discussion. They also represent various cultural backgrounds and personal and financial scenarios.

The completion of your plan throughout the first 6 weeks requires the use of an Excel financial tool to complete your financial calculations. You will also need to use Word to present information to your clients in the form of visuals, charts, and written recommendations.

This week, you begin the foundational work for your clients retirement and estate plan. To use an analogy from another field, when a patient walks into a doctors office for the first time, the doctor will need to gather vital statistics, medical history, current symptoms or concerns (if any), and other baseline data. This data helps the doctor and client establish current health status and health risk factors that need to be mitigated or goals that may be set for the future. Similarly, when a client desiring retirement planning services walks into your office or calls you for the first time, you, too, will need to gather baseline data. For financial planners, this includes age, family information, income, financial assets and liabilities, insurance, and other data as applicable. Once you have this information, you may begin to inventory life goals with your client and use them to create a retirement timeline, or roadmap, for achieving these goals. Remember that a personalized approach to goal setting is a best practice. One person may want to retire on a huge farm with family all around, and is not as concerned with other types of investments. Another may be concerned about the growth of a 401(k) to provide maximum flexibility in retirement.

The baseline data that you need to get started is located in the Retirement Client Profiles media in this weeks Learning Resources. You will use it develop a basic profile, retirement vision, net worth statement, insurance and liabilities inventory, a life goals statement, and a retirement timeline.

To Prepare:

• Review A Financial Profile: Especially Prepared for: John and Jane Member in this weeks Learning Resources to familiarize yourself with the components of a professionally created retirement timeline.
• Examine the client profiles in the media, Retirement Client Profiles. Select one client case file to use for this Assignment. You will use this same clients data to develop a complete retirement plan in Weeks 16.
• Examine the Application Financial Tool worksheet. You will use this tool throughout the course for the creation of the retirement plan. Also examine the Retirement Timeline Template that you may use this week.
• Following the Assignment instructions, transfer your clients data on a selective basis into the Excel financial tool.

The Assignment:

• For your selected client case, transfer your clients personal and financial data as applicable into the Application Financial Tool template.
• Based on the client information and calculations in the Excel template, prepare the following summaries for your client in a Word document (or similar word processing software) using both graphics and written comments. The Week 1 Assignment in the Word document should be no more than 5 pages long.
  • A retirement vision statement
  • A life goals statement and a timeline for the building and executing of a retirement plan. The timeline should consider the changing life expectancy of individuals and the social, economic, and cultural influences that might apply to different generational and cultural groups. You may copy, paste, and edit the timeline template found in this weeks Learning Resources into your document.
  • A net worth summary (See p. 5 of the Pontillo resource for an example of how this may be completed. You are not obligated to follow this design or layout, however, and are encouraged to find other examples on your own to get further ideas.)
  • A net worth statement (See p. 6 of the Pontillo resource.)
  • A cash flow summary (See p. 7 of the Pontillo resource.)
  • A cash flow statement (See p. 8 of the Pontillo resource.)
  • An emergency reserves and insurance coverage statement (See p. 10 of the Pontillo resource.)
  • A brief statement to your Instructor (no more than 200 words) explaining any issues you see so far that may affect the clients ability to achieve his or her goals.
• Submit both your Excel and Word documents to your Instructor in the Assignments area.

Complete this Assignment by Day 7 of this week.

To submit your Assignment, do the following:

• Please save your Assignment using the following naming convention: WK1Assgn+last name+first initial. In addition, use this naming convention for the title of your submission.
• To upload your Assignment, click on Assignments on the course navigation menu, and then click the Assignment Week 1 link.