Strategic Planning, Part II: Investment Management

Beyond Finances

Welcome back to our series on strategic planning for your personal finances. Today's episode is part II, and we're covering all things investment management.

We'll talk through what you need to do to put together a sound investment strategy for yourself, and the to-dos any investment manager should take (whether that's you as a DIYer, or an advisor who you hire to manage your assets for you).

This episode covers:

• Assessing risk tolerance and risk capacity (and the difference between the two)
• Understanding your investment time horizon
• Allocating your assets correctly (which does NOT just mean what percentage of your portfolio should be in stocks vs. bonds)
• Selecting investments and coordinating account types
• Diversifying your investments - in all kinds of ways! Diversification of specific assets, across asset classes, with the specific vehicles you use (and what specific assets you put into each account or vehicle you use)
• Considering tax impacts of your investment choices (and the tax planning you should do for your investment portfolio)
• Calibrating your portfolio for the return you need (which includes knowing reasonable return expectaions)
• Remembering fees and expense ratios - and other basics like rebalancing
• Explaining why tax loss harvesting is not right for everyone (sorry)
• Doing ongoing due dilligence to understand if and when you should replace assets in your portfolio
• Choosing contribution strategies
• Setting up standard rules to guide your ongoing decisions and complete maintenance over time

Ultimately, you should understand your investment stategy and why you set it, so you can stick to it when things get wonky in the markets (which is inevitable over time).

Finally, we'll give you the most important strategic planning advice for going through the process of setting up an investment management system that works for you: a good strategy, stuck with over time, is better than the "best" strategy you found only after trying multiple different things and interrupting your progress with each change.

Let's dive in and get into some investment management!