In the early 1980s it was a well-established practice for companies to write five-year business plans, but not so for HNW individuals contemplating their personal financial situation and planning how to build resources for their future. In New York, high-paid professionals at Citibank produced detailed binders stuffed with off-the-shelf library text prescribing "uniquely targeted" plans for HNW individuals. And headquartered in Boston with six other locations across the country, Merrill Lynch's Personal Capital Planning division, headed by my classmate Henry Moore, was dialing up its version of the "personal" financial plan and role of the in-person financial advisor. Although staffed with highly qualified professionals, both these corporate and brokerage attempts to attract HNW clientele failed (resulting in write-offs exceeding $35 million for Merrill Lynch in the early 1980s).

In the south east US, particularly around Atlanta but also in some suburban Boston areas, the financial planning approach in the early 1980s was focused on pre-1986 Tax Act leveraged tax shelter strategies. This led to computerized personal budgeting programs which were part of a trend to over-intellectualize the personal financial planning "business" — none of which, to that time, could in any sense of the word yet be characterized as a "profession."

Many of these data-heavy client plans contained exhibits posing as uniquely targeted material. This seemed like overkill to us, likely to submerge the client in unnecessary details easily forgotten with the passage of time. But many players, RIAs as well as larger financial services institutional competitors, persisted in turning to their information processing consultants and departments to create fill-in-the-blanks data gathering forms which would generate by-the-numbers library text tomes and other not-very-subtle sales-oriented documents. Often these "plans" were given to a customer with confidential companion sales assistance pieces for the presenter. These sales scripts were typically nothing more than behind the curtain prompts the vendors would use to convert what was advertised as fee-based advice into commissionable "implementation-for-a-fee" transactions.

Personalizing the Personal Financial Plan

During TFC's first few years, much discussion went into shaping client deliverables. Warner Henderson experimented with and devised a set of Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet templates representing projected client cash flow, personal and family combined financial resource balance sheets, investment portfolio asset class allocation exhibits, and risk and estate planning analyses (see Appendix).

Instead of handing the client a full-blown plan neatly tabbed in a binder crammed with tables and appendices, the approach we adopted was incremental. As we guided the client through the iterative planning process and new personal and quantitative information surfaced, rerunning the template would reveal next steps toward the client's goals and objectives to be considered. A goal-oriented plan developed as the client's alternatives and horizons were explored, expanded, and refined. It was a somewhat torturous path, but it proved a more engaging and personally satisfying result for the client.

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