The following PDFs are sample plans made from the modules, showing more features.

PDF #1 (sample_plan.pdf): From the beginning up to the end of the text that explains the net worth report (41 pages)

PDF #2 (sample_plan1.pdf): Current and proposed retirement report (80 pages)

PDF #3 (sample_plan2.pdf): From the asset allocation report to the rental real estate report  (51 pages)

PDF #3 (sample_plan3.pdf): From the life insurance needs report, college funding report, miscellaneous, to the end (26 pages)

The most common question is, "Do I really have to print or use all of this?" The answer is no. It's modular, so you'd only use the parts you want to. For example, here's a simple financial plan.

The Following is for Assembling a Sample Financial Plan via the Individual Module Demos

There are many more financial tools and things to use when doing it this way. Most of the "bells and whistles" are not shown on the PDF files, because there's way too many there already.

If you try to print a spreadsheet from Internet Explorer, or you just click Print in Excel, it probably won't work well. It's impossible to format the spreadsheets to print perfectly on everyone's printer, because they're all different. But once you tinker with the row and column sizes to make it print right, save it, it will retain these settings so that when you print again, it will print perfect without needing to tinker with it again. You won't be able to do that with some of these demos because they're all protected to preserve content and prevent reverse engineering. But the actual programs allow you to format to print perfectly on your printer. Read about how to print these perfectly in Excel even though they're protected. More Excel tips are here.

Free Sample Financial Plan Demo Modules

Table of Contents Divider

▪ Financial plan table of contents.

▪ Personal financial plan introduction and disclaimer.

▪ Explanation of the level of financial services offered depending on the amount of assets under management.

▪ Discovery interview notes, objectives, and concerns.

▪ Cost benefit ratio: Current vs. Proposed net worth, incomes, and expenses compared (this feature is only on the far left sheet of the integrated financial planner software).

Section Divider: Personal Cash Flow

▪ Family budget and cash flow report explanation.

▪ Family budgeting and personal cash flow projection reports.

The demo is here.

Section Divider: Personal Net Worth

▪ Net worth report explanation.

▪ A snapshot, and a long-term projection, of their net worth.

The demo is here.

Section Divider: Retirement Planning and Financial Projections

▪ Text that explains the RWR retirement planning reports in detail.

▪ RWR retirement planner.

The current demo that has informational text boxes to point out all of the features.

The proposed retirement plan demo here doesn't have the text boxes so you can see more of what the single RWR version actually looks like.

Changes from current to proposed retirement plans are listed here.

Section Divider: Investment Portfolio Management

▪ Text that explains asset allocation and the investment reports.

Text explaining the Asset Allocation Models.

▪ Custom-made Investment Policy Statement (no sample here because it's not a freebie, sorry).

▪ A table with your investment performance historical track record (if you have one). You can edit and print just the table of returns on the asset allocation model page or the asset allocation analysis page.

▪ Asset Allocation Analysis.

Read about asset allocation and the three asset allocation software programs on this site.

#1 The main asset allocation software for doing detailed analysis reports for larger clients is here. The demo is here.

#2 Asset allocation models for managing smaller portfolios. The very limited demo is here (showing historical returns and yields for all 56 model portfolios).

3# A "quick and dirty" way of doing basic asset allocation is with this software. The demo is here.

▪ Morningstar reports (or whatever you're used to using) on all of the investments held now, and what's proposed.

▪ Bond portfolio management reports. The demo is here.

▪ All of the little jobs in doing a financial plan. The demo is here.

▪ If they have rental real estate, and are curious to see how it's doing, then this investment software will analyze it. The demo is here.

▪ If you want to get into comparing any of the 23 most popular ways to invest money, then the tools for that. The demo is here.

Section Divider: Insurance Planning

▪ Family life insurance needs analysis (capital needs analysis).

The demo is here.

▪ If you're comparing a whole life insurance policy with buying term and investing the difference, this report will analyze it.

The demo is here.

Section Divider: College Planning

▪ If you're forecasting children's college funding, then the college planner is used.

The demo is here.

Section Divider: Estate Planning

▪ Estate planning document organizer.

▪ Whatever it is you usually do for estate planning.

We don't do anything with this area because of all of the changes, problems, that market has been saturated for years, and is fading because of the low demand due to the lower tax rates.

If you don't know about what's going on with this whole part of the financial planning process, the Financial Planning eBook explains it.

For generating the numbers used in estate planning presentations, we recommend using Leimberg's Number Cruncher because it has the most accurate numbers, and their reports print and fit nicely into financial plans made with this software. Yes, you can input their numbers into our financial plan modules. This way you'd get the best results possible - way better and cheaper than NaviPlan.

Section Divider: Plans of Action

▪ Financial Plan Implementation.

Section Divider: Miscellaneous Fluff and Client Specific Stuff

▪ How to understand your (Pershing) monthly investment portfolio account statements.

▪ The last issue of your investment newsletter, which you send to your clients monthly.

▪ A financial planning referral tool that works.

▪ Some financial planners like put a copy of the Financial Planning Fact Finders, and copies of other paperwork / contractual agreements, here too.

Preparing to Prepare to Create and Present a Financial Plan

I've seen dozens of financial planners fail and leave the business just because they failed to grasp the basic concept of this one tip:

This is a good point to mention the tip that makes reading this page all worth it. If you're making financial plans and/or similar reports for clients, or employ a case writer that does, then make a sign and hang up over your phone that says: "Never ever call to make an appointment with a client to come into the office to get their plan/report until AFTER ALL of the work is done, and has been checked (preferably by someone else) more than once!" Also, put  the same sign in the office you have client meetings in - this is because this blunder occurs most of the time at the end of a client meeting.

Sales managers are always saying, "Don't end an appointment unless you have the next one booked." Never ever do that. How hard is it to call someone for an appointment that's expecting you to call anyway? Sales managers are just afraid that you suck so bad that the client will back out if you don't "seal the deal now" and/or ABC (always be closing). In reality, if you suck, then the client will blow you off regardless of when you set appointments. Whether you have an appointment set now, or plan to call for one in a few days AFTER you've made the plan, is irrelevant to when the client will blow you off. So, telling people you want to make sure the plan is good before you make the appointment will actually help not to get blown off, because it makes you look more responsible (especially to old seasoned investors that have experienced planners that can't even control their own workloads and schedules in the past. They know instant replay when they hear it).

If you're been around the block as many times as we have, then you know about all of the dozens of things that come up to completely ruin meetings when financial plans are not done, have mistakes in them, you don't have all of the client data needed (taking notes on a yellow pad and lack of using proper Fact Finders is usually the culprit here), or you don't know what the hey the plan is telling you (so you can't explain it well), you just bought the needed personal finance software yesterday and haven't even read the directions yet, etc. etc. etc.

If it wasn't for the severity of the consequences, it was comical to watch planners running around like a chicken with their heads cut off because of their inability to plan even their own schedules (and you want to charge me what to make a financial plan when you can't even plan your own day out right!?). But it's not comical if you're a case writer in an office full of these kinds of planners. Your case writers hate you because of this, so this is your wake up call to change. You'll see much higher quality work from your staff, and much less tension and ill will, and less turnover, once you've started to behave yourself when it comes to appointment setting. This brings up an old saying, "Lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." Doing it the bad way creates an environment of constant crisis.

All of that "dead time" you fear is best used to review the plan, do more research, read the financial software's directions (or do a better job shopping if you don't already have something), ensure you don't need to ask the client if anymore data is needed, having a partner look the plan over to see if it's correct, learn how to present the plan, looking over all of the details and preparing answers to questions and objections, and then arranging all of the paperwork just in case the plan goes well and you have to engage/sell product. Once you've done this a few times, you'll see that just the amount of this kind of work is probably enough to have to reschedule as it is (and then you haven't even done the work yet? And you haven't even bought the software tools to do the job yet either!?).

If you misbehave by scheduling the appointment before the work is done (or even worse, even before you have a clue about what financial software to buy to do the job), then you'll be spending 200% of this time scrambling just to have anything ready by the time they come in. Then the plan will probably suck because of all of this. Even if the plan doesn't suck, all you have to do is appear to be fumbling when you present it to make someone want to "think about it" rather than executing. If you don't practice, then you're going to fumble. Then you'll lose the client, and all of the work, time, and money you put into it is wasted.

Usually, one's lack of preparation leads to working all night to get a report done before a meeting. Then the deal will be lost because you'll sound half asleep, and the clients may assume you're a broken alcoholic or something.  All it takes is one little thing like this, and the client will think you're incompetent and will not hire you. We've seen every cause and effect combination and permutation with this, so take this advice to heart.

We get calls and sales every week from planners scrambling to get a report done before meetings the next day. To make a very long story very short, just never do this. The way to never ever fall into this fatal trap is to just follow one simple rule:  "Never ever call to make an appointment with a client to come into the office to get their plan/report until AFTER ALL of the work is done, and has been checked (preferably by someone else) more than once!"

The correct way to do this is very simple: You collect the needed data in the meeting, and then you say that you'll call to schedule the appointment AFTER you've input the data into the financial software, and then looked it over to ensure it's correct. Once you're 100% sure it's all good to go, THEN you'll call to set up the appointment to present it. As you'll see, even then there are dozens of other snags that only practice will eliminate.

Even when things go the way they should like this, you'll find that most of the time, something will change enough to have to redo the plan again anyway. Usually this happens over what appears to be a minor detail - until you ask the client about it, and then it turns out you've just opened a whole new can of worms - making a plan redo necessary. So this rework will just be added to your 3AM scramble when you misbehave.

It may seem like a bad or counter-intuitive thing to do at the moment, but following this one rule could literally save your life. Doing things the other way could lead to the one fatal mistake that could put a whole series of events into motion, eventually ending your career in the biz (we've seen this about five times so far, so that's why all this is here).

Here's out motto on this for Star Trek fans: Take Scotty. If a job takes an hour, he'll tell the Captain it will take two hours. Then, if there are no snags and it's done in an hour, then he's a miracle worker. If there's a snag, and it takes two hours to do it, then Kirk got what he expected. On the other hand, and this is what most everyone does, if Scotty told the Captain it's only going to take 45 minutes, then there's only a small chance the job will be done on time, earning the Wrath of Kirk. The motto is that it's better to under-promise and over-deliver, than to over-promise and under-deliver. In this business, this goes double. End of rant.

Sample Plan Preparation and Assembly

Get what's called a thick expensive "feely-good binder" to put the reports in. This is a large three-ring binder, with a cushy-feeling and rich-looking cover. Ensure it has at least one place on the front inside cover to put your business card. It also needs to have plastic half-page spacers in the front and back to keep pages from binding. It's worth spending extra money if they have custom engraving services, so you can put your firm's name on it in big gold letters. Proper use of a good binder for your example financial plan will pay for itself a thousand times over.

Then get some Avery section dividers from an office supply store. These are just thick paper inserts that have section numbers on them (like Contents, 1, 2, etc.). Use them to match your Table of Contents by using the Avery template in MS Word to print the name of each section of the report.

Then get page protectors - the transparent plastic page-sized pockets that you put paper in, so you can see through, but they also keep the pages clean. They also allow you to clean them if they get dirty (or if you like to write on them with an erasable marker pen). This also serves as a great place to insert pages that you want to take out and give to people on the spot, so you won't have to take pages out of the example financial plan.

Put every page in a pocket so when you turn the page, it reads as if it was just paper (so you'd put two pages in each protector).

This is going to take up a lot of room, which is why you want a big thick feely-good binder. You wouldn't do this for a real client's plan, but your sample financial plan will get used a lot more and will have to endure lots of abuse (if you have any kind of financial planning marketing going on, then you should be using it almost daily).

Then when prospects come into your office and want to see what you can do for them, you walk them through the sample financial plans, using something that sounds like the sample "scripts" in the directions. Once you have it down, you'll be doubling your closing ratio.

When sales brought in qualified prospects, and we went through the "Dog and Pony Show," we had about a 95% closing rate (only about 1 out of 20 people said no. This was because most of them were happy with their long-standing relationships with their current advisors, even though their investment returns were not even close, and they could have gotten a lot richer with us. They basically just came in because sales hounded them until they did)

That's a very high closing ratio! Why? Because this all makes sense to people, the investment returns are better than what they've been getting, with much lower risk, all of the little financial planning jobs they hired you for were done, and they like having their financial futures forecasted in a way that makes sense, is accurate, and they can understand.

Your closing ratio won't be near this high until you've mastered using these financial planning tools with Real World clients, and can present them articulately (and then can answer their questions intelligently).

It takes preparation, skill, knowledge, hard work, time, and practice to wake people up. People keep doing what they've been doing because all of this just gives them a headache, it's too much time and trouble to make changes, it's expensive, they hate paperwork, they fear the risk of losing money, but most of all - they just don't understand. They don't understand because the information was never presented to them in a logical fashion using words they understand.

So if you want to succeed in this business, your second most important job, after finding people to present to, is getting people to understand. We've found that these two tasks are way harder than actually doing the financial planning work and/or managing money!

That's why the bottom lines of most real financial planning and investment firms rest on how well sales people can present technical information to people they've just met. Most are extremely terrible at it, so their closing ratios are less than 40%. The result is that people just stay with their money-losing advisors because they trust and like them personally. Even if it's going to probably just going to ruin their lives down the road, and they know it, this is what people actually do in the Real World.

It's your main job to change their minds, and you're never going to raise your closing ratio over 50% with just fluffy verbal hype, taking notes with a yellow pad, and fancy Broker Dealer or (life insurance company) product sales brochures.

Also, spending many times more money than it would take to buy all of the financial planning software on this site, on things like Bachrach Values-Based Selling seminars, isn't going to help you much with this either.

You only have to be a superstar salesperson if you're trying to sell people things they don't want nor need (life insurance company products like annuities or whole life insurance).

Sales training like this will help people like and trust you more, but still, unless you can provide some juicy red meat that smart people with real investments want to spend their money on, they're just going to go away to "think about it." These people don't come back and avoid your calls.

Sure you'll get lots more tiny clients with little money to work with, but you'll rarely get anyone of significant value until you can do something of Real World value for them. These little clients are the ones you're going to want to get rid of, if and when you become "successful" (the bottom 20% of the revenue-producing clients generate 80% of the work over time).

Even financial planners with little-to-no people skills can do better than the fluffiest Bachrach Values-Based Selling graduate if they can just get people to understand Real Value - which is having the tools needed to change people's financial lives for the better.

If you have inadequate financial tools, or can't present them well, then all of the fluffy sales training in the world will not save you. It may turn you from a total sales failure into a barely surviving salesperson (which is exactly the long-term result we've seen with about 25 Bachrach Values-Based Selling graduates we've done work for in person).

But if you want to live the dream most people think of when they get into this biz (six-figure income while working less than 40 hours a week with a flexible schedule doing something good to help humanity) then you're going to need to step up and invest in the things needed to be a "true professional." Like it or not, believe it or not, this means spending work, time, and money on being an expert at real investment management and financial planning software.

So financial planners need to have their sample financial plan presentations down pat to be able to show people the difference in their financial lives between what they've been doing vs. having a real financial plan, coupled with getting decent investment returns.

If you have no sample financial plan, didn't take the time to learn how to present it, and all you have is verbal hype and few sales brochures, then you're just going to lose most all of the people you talk with, because you have nothing to offer but the same old song and dance.

The more money someone has, then the more they've "been there and done that" with financial advisors that have nothing to offer but the same old dog and pony show. These are the people you want and need to be your clients. They've probably been interviewing financial planners for decades, and few have met their standards. You live the dream in this biz by a keeping small flock of these good clients, not a large flock of tiny bad ones.

If you still don't get it: You need to "Put the Horse Before the Cart" and not the other way around.

Tools to do your job like a true pro = The horse. Fluffy-values-based-sales-skills = The cart.

Why? Because even if you're the best salesperson in the world, unless you have something of value to sell (the horse) very few people will buy, and the ones that do will both work you to death and not pay you enough. And even if you couldn't sell fire to Eskimos, good people with money are still going to hire you if you can get them to understand that you can do the important work for them - and get the Real World results.

The proof - accountants! It's a long-standing joke that accountants have little to no people/sales skills, but are very competent to get the jobs done.

So don't let BD recruiters tell you that your success or failure is mostly due to your sales skills. It is if you do what they want you to do - which is have a large flock of small clients buying mostly life insurance company products (and then when you quit or are fired for not meeting their quotas, they get to keep all of the clients you drummed up, so they win no matter what happens to you).

People with real money would much rather pay big bucks to an accountant-like financial planner/investment manager with no people skills, than a fluffy salesperson armed only with fancy color product sales brochures. If you don't believe it, then just ask them.

If you want to get paid like a pro, and live the dream like a pro, then you need to act like one. After you get the basic education and licenses, then you act like one by investing in the tools needed to do the jobs. Then you need to learn how to present these concepts to new people. When you can do this, people will hire you.

If you still don't get it:

Being a great fluffy value-based verbal-hype salesperson = Not making much money because your large flock of low-net-worth high-maintenance clients works you to death chasing paperwork, fixing the problems they cause, and other useless activities.

Being a true professional that can work real financial planning and investment software and are able to get people to understand = Having a small flock of low-maintenance high-net worth clients that are with the program, allowing you to live the dream (six-figure income while working less than 40 hours a week with a flexible schedule doing something good to help humanity).

The choice is up to you, and just boils down to how much time, work, and money you're willing to pony up in buying financial software and learning how to use it, and present it, to provide things of Real World value to people that can afford to hire you.

Then once you get people to sit and talk with you in person, the only things standing in your way are:

▪ Your dress and office situation.

▪ The way you do business and get paid.

▪ How much your Broker Dealer restricts what you can do for people. Read about getting free from all of that.

▪ The tools you have to do the three main financial planning jobs people will hire you for - managing their risks, forecasting their future, and managing their money.

▪ How well you can get people to understand what it is you want to do for them. This is called presenting your sample financial plan.

So as you can see, even if you have the first four things down, if you can't get people to understand what it is you want to do, then all of the resources that went into getting that person to sit down with you have been wasted. And on top of that, all of the resources you invested in getting to the point of being able to, and allowed to, prospect for this business are wasted too.

So your success or failure all boils down to how well you can present the "Dog and Pony Show" to prospects and paying clients. Everything you'll need to do that is on this Word document.

Now it's just up to you to take the time and work to learn it, and be able to present it in a way that people will understand. After you can do that, your closing ratio and your income will double - even if you are computer illiterate and have no clue about how to make financial plans or manage money (because you can read the directions or hire people to do that). All that's needed is for you to invest the time in learning.

Please keep this in mind: All you need to do is get about $5 million under management at a 1% fee to generate enough money to keep your basic expenses paid pretty much forever.

This $5 million could come from just that one old crusty pain in the butt that showed up at your office in dirty torn jeans in an old broken down pickup truck. All he was after was someone that could do the job. He's been shopping for years, has fired everyone else, is sick of the same old fluffy sales routine, and planned to walk out of your office the moment the words annuity or life insurance was spoken.

All it's going to take is for you to do your thing right just this one time, and your practice could turn around in one day. And by the way, buying all of the financial software tools needed to get to that point would have cost you less than 5% of just the first year's fee income from just this one person.

So the bottom line is that most of the tools, tutorials, primers, and resources to do all of this work is right is on this page (the links which will lead you to the beef). Everything else is scattered on the site, and you can start you search on the free downloads page.

The cost in money is small, but the cost in learning and being able to talk about it right is high.

If you can do it, then you will succeed, if not, then you probably won't! After monitoring the progress of about a thousand planners over the last 20 years, we can say with 100% certainty that success in this biz is not who your BD is, what products you can sell, what fluffy sales course you took, who you know, what licenses or professional designations you have, where your office is, the state of the markets/economy, or any of that.

The #1 success factor in this biz is investing in the tools to do your jobs, and being able to present samples of what you do to prospects in a way they understand.

That all depends on how much you're willing to invest in these two areas. Just these two things will make or break you. If you don't believe it, just talk with ten successes and ten failures and see what they all have in common.

You'll see that the key is being able to do the jobs people need done (buy software), and being able to get that point across to people (learn), so that they'll hire you now and not fire you later (you won't get fired if the software you learned actually does the jobs!).

There's more valuable content like this in the Money eBook.

Download a Word doc showing what the asset class colors should look like. If they don't look like this on your computer, then blame Bill Gates at Microsoft for never fixing this that and the other. They can be easily set back to what they should be when you buy the program