Planit:Objectives
From Planipedia
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The Objectives screen is where you’ll identify your client’s life goals. When this screen opens, it will be pre-populated with your client’s Current and Retirement Lifestyle objectives.
This screen is has also been changes to be tab driven, with a separate tab for each scenario for your clients.
Here is an overview of some recent changes for the Goals and Objectives screen.
- More Transparency of Assumptions. For example you’ll see burial costs identified on the Client and Spouse’s death tabs.
- Easier to make edits right on the screen without having to open each record.
- Ability to add Objectives that are unique to the Modeled scenario.
- Increased Intelligence when Objectives begin and end using drop down setting for both the start year and the end year.
- Hover over feature for the start year and end year when they are tied to something other than a fixed date. Also you can hover over the inflation rate to see if it’s tied to the default inflation rate.
When you first come into this screen, you will notice that the system has created the Current Lifestyle for clients who are not yet retired and the Retirement Lifestyle record. And any Educational Goals that you identified for dependents on the Personal Information screen. The first thing you need to do upon entering this screen is to review the Retirement Lifestyle record and edit it as appropriate. The initial record that’s created here is based on the first save you do on the Cash Flow screen. From that point forward the retirement lifestyle will not be changed when you make any changes in the cash flow screen. This is because you typically will edit the retirement lifestyle objective based on either goal that your client has identified, or your estimate of the appropriate amount given your discussions with your client. This number should be considered as a starting point and will likely need to be adjusted to reflect a somewhat lower objective since typically client’s don’t require the same spendable income in retirement as they do during their accumulation years when they are paying off mortgages, other debts and supporting dependents.
Details of Entering in Goals
"Goal Type" - You have two choices here, either Other or Education.
'Education'
These are created for any dependent the client's may have. When you select this option another field below it will open up to allow you to select the dependent in which you are creating the goal for. These are the dependents that you have entered in on the Personal Information screen. The dates it uses for the goals is derived from the birth date of the dependent. Should the child be likely to start school earlier, or later, these dates can be edited while in the "Detailed Objective" screen.
Institutions: This is a database of many educational institutions. If your client indicates they want to fund educational costs for their children but don’t have a sense of what it will cost, you can ask them if they have any suggestion of where they might want to see their children go relative to which university.
When you click on the "Institutions" button is launches a database of hundreds of educational institutions in about 10 countries. For example, let’s look for the University of Toronto. When you find the institution you want, click on it, identify if you want to include room and board or not and the system will advise you of the costs. You then can click on Save to capture these costs and populate the detailed objective screen. It will even capture the currency type if you select an institution from another country.
The information on these costs come from a variety of sources, for Canada, primarily from the MacLean’s study on Canadian Universities. This is a nice little value add for your clients’ to help them set realistic goals relative to their children’s educational funding.
Amount & Duration Info: If you have already choosen a Institution then this amount will be poplulated for you. If your clients already know the amount they want to fund this goal for, then you can enter in the amount here. Also the Duration date fields populate automatically, these dates for the education goal comes from the birth date of the child from the Personal Information screen. If you wish different to and from years, you can change this on the screen.
Death & Disability Info: When it comes to entering in your goals you should be aware of if your client's were to die tomorrow or become disabled, what percentage of this goal continue.
'Other Goal'
In addition to the standard objectives set up by the system automatically, you can provide a very powerful life goals analysis if you explore your client’s other goals in life. A few additional objectives could be home renovations, purchase of a boat, roof on a house or maybe a retirement cruise.
When you choose these types of goals the fields are a little different that the education fields. One of the biggest differences is the From and To years. Here you can choose if you want the goal to start at retirement or maybe a fixed date where you can edit the start year and end year.
Need For – Objectives can be set up to be applicable for both the client and spouse (joint) or just for the client or just for the spouse. In the retirement life goals analysis that’s done, all goals will be incorporated. However in the Death or Disability analysis, goals for the Client will only apply on the Spouse’s death, not on the client’s death since the spouse isn’t concerned with that goal.
Index Rate – Defaults to the inflation rate set on the Planning Assumptions screen however if you uncheck the "Default" you can enter in your own index rate.
% On Death or Disability – Allows you to identify how each objective will be impacted by death or disability.
Ranking
Unfortunately, sometimes clients won’t be able to achieve all of their goals. By identifying the highest to lowest priorities; the Auto Model process will know which goals to eliminate first.
Retirement Lifestyle Tiers
You have the ability to tier the retirement lifestyle objective into multiple tiers with different dollar amounts. To do this you would click on the edit beside the “Retirement Lifestyle” goal. Here you can adjust your Retirement Goal and also add in any tiers you wish for this client by clicking on the “Add” button.
After you click the add button another Retirement Lifestyle field will appear and when you change the “To Year” on the first entry and click save the second one will adjust appropriately.
TIP: Note that all goals identified on this screen are after tax spendable amounts.
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