Federal Employees - Building Your Financial Plan

As a Federal Employee you may seek the advice of a Financial Planner, you need to do some homework towards building your financial plan. The Financial Plan is a key component of your overall Retirement Planning strategy, so you can retire well and live in comfort and security.

Some key items of what your Financial Plan should consist of:

– One SMART Short Term Goal (0 – 3 months)
– One SMART Intermediate Term Goal (3 months – 1 year)
– One SMART Long Term Goal (1 year plus)
– A quarterly record of how you get and use your money (you may choose to use a weekly or monthly record)
– A process of allocating your money by using the decision-making process
– Identification of at least 3 factors that might potentially impact your financial plan (factors may change from time to time)
– At least four strategies that will keep you firmly on your plan
– Process by which you can easily and clearly articulate how you will monitor and modify your plan.

Building your retirement plan in your mind is the first step to getting started, commiting it to paper (electronic or otherwise) is the first step to implementation. Your plan does not need to be anything technical, but a plan that you can work with; a plan that is not tossed outside but becomes the roadmap to securing your financial future in retirement.