The Financial Planning Pyramid Is Your Road Map To Financial Freedom - Clever Dude Personal Finance & Money (2024)

Financial Education

The Financial Planning Pyramid Is Your Road Map To Financial Freedom - Clever Dude Personal Finance & Money (1)

The road map to financial freedom can be summed up with the simple picture above. You can work hard and earn boat fulls of money, but unless you have a plan for what you’re going to do with that money, you won’t be financially successful in the long term. The financial planning pyramid shows us the path to financial freedom.

The concept of the financial planning pyramid is that you start at the bottom, building a financial foundation. Once you have implemented the components of one level, you move to the next one. Each level building on the one below it.

The Financial Planning Pyramid Is Your Road Map To Financial Freedom - Clever Dude Personal Finance & Money (2)

Wealth Protection

It will be difficult to build new wealth if you have to continuously dip into current assets. For that reason the first level of the financial planning pyramid is to protect your wealth. Things included are methods that will help you hand the unexpected things in life that might derail your long term financial goals:

  • Medical Insurance : This can help pay for costly medical bills which could quickly drain your savings and investments if you or a family member has a medical emergency.
  • Life Insurance : If your spouse or partner contributes a significant amount of the household income, an unexpected death could derail your own long term financial goals. Life insurance can not only help pay for funeral costs, but also help ensure you’re not left with debt you can’t pay, or not enough income to maintain your lifestyle.
  • Emergency Fund: Even small day to day unexpected expenses such as having to pay for car repairs can cause a constant drain on your investments and savings.
  • Wills : Should something unexpected happen, you want to make sure that it is legally clear to whom your accumulated assets should be given.

Wealth Accumulation

Once a person as their assets protected, they can begin building additional wealth. One starts with low risk, low return methods and gradually moves up the financial planning pyramid to higher risk but higher reward means. As a person’s wealth grows, the more comfortable they can be with a higher degree of risk since their basic needs for the future are met through the funds in the lower risk categories. Some examples of wealth accumulation are listed below.

  • Savings : Once you have your emergency fund funded, you can start putting funds into less liquid, higher return savings accounts such as a Certificate of Deposit (CD).
  • Home Ownership : For some people, owning a home is not only a life goal, but also an investment. A person gets use and enjoyment out of the home for many years by living in and building a life in it. However, when retirement age nears, one my decide to sell and downsize, reaping significant equity.
  • Retirement Accounts : Contributing the maximum allowable amount to retirement accounts such as 401K and IRAs have tax benefits and in some cases matching employer contributions that can help maximize the growth of your investments.
  • Real Estate : Purchasing real estate can not only be a good way to build wealth through value appreciation, but also a means of passive income if the property can be rented to others.

Wealth Distribution

It is important to have a plan in place to pass along the wealth you have worked hard to accumulate to your heirs. Depending upon the laws in place where you live, estate taxes could take away a sizable amount of the wealth you earned and have already paid taxes on. For the wealth distribution level of the financial planning pyramid, consulting a professional may be a wise choice to help ensure as much of your wealth as possible is passed along to your loved ones.

You’ll also need a broker if you want to own securities. There a number of good full-service ones out there: Schwab, Fidelity, Chase, etc. Also, there are several good new money management companies which may be worth reviewing. These are Personal Capital (I like them), Wealthfront and Motif Investing. Modestmoney.com has a good review of Motif Investing which is worth reading (here).

Successfully managing your personal finances and building wealth is a challenging endeavor, but the financial planning pyramid provides a guideline for what actions need to be taken, and in what order to build a life of financial freedom and pass it along to the next generation. What level of the financial planning pyramid are you currently on? Did you skip any of the levels?

Brought to you courtesy of Brock

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The Financial Planning Pyramid Is Your Road Map To Financial Freedom - Clever Dude Personal Finance & Money (3)

Brock Kernin

Brock is a software engineer by day and personal finance blogger at night. He is a fitness junkie and enjoys grilling and smoking meat. Married with two children, Brock strives to improve his skills as a husband and father, and is always on the lookout to stretch his family’s budget as far as he can.

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The Financial Planning Pyramid Is Your Road Map To Financial Freedom - Clever Dude Personal Finance & Money (2024)

FAQs

What is a pyramid in financial planning? ›

The pyramid, representing the investor's portfolio, has three distinct tiers: low-risk assets at the bottom such as cash and money markets; moderately risky assets like stocks and bonds in the middle; and high-risk speculative assets like derivatives at the top.

What is a financial pyramid? ›

Financial pyramid. A risk structure that spreads investor's risks across low-, medium-, and high-risk vehicles. The bulk of the assets are in safe, low-risk investments that provide a predictable return (base of the pyramid). At the top of the pyramid are a few high-risk ventures that have a modest chance of success.

What is the financial goal pyramid? ›

The idea behind a personal financial planning pyramid is that it illustrates which financial matters you should focus on most, working through your needs one by one in order of priority. As you ascend the pyramid, your debt reduces, and your assets grow, helping you to accumulate wealth more consistently and stably.

What is the pyramid to save money? ›

When building your pyramid, the base is all about financial protection. This means taking care of your daily expenses, housing and transportation, with a focus on survival through stable cash flow and debt management (such as paying off credit card debt).

What is the pyramid money system? ›

A pyramid scheme is a fraudulent system of making money based on recruiting an ever-increasing number of "investors." The initial promoters recruit investors, who in turn recruit more investors, and so on. The scheme is called a "pyramid" because at each level, the number of investors increases.

How to build your financial pyramid? ›

The Financial Planning Pyramid consists of four layers: Base Layer: Emergency Funds and Insurance. Second Layer: Debt Management, Third Layer: Core Investments, and Fourth Layer: Speculative Investments.

Who loses money in a pyramid scheme? ›

Therefore, the participants in the bottom three tiers of the pyramid lose their money if the scheme collapses. If a person is using this model as a scam, the confidence trickster would take the majority of the money.

What is the pyramid of money management? ›

The financial pyramid emphasizes savings (emergency funds), protection (various insurances), and investments (home ownership, stocks, bonds, commodities). Taking control of finances now leads toward financial goals and secure retirement. MONEY MANAGEMENT SERIES.

Are financial pyramids illegal? ›

Pyramid schemes are illegal under state and federal law. If the plan's way of making money is based not on selling a product or a service, but on recruiting new members into the plan in order to get paid, it is an illegal pyramid.

What is the pyramid strategy? ›

By putting the various elements of a good strategic plan into a pyramid form, it is easy to see the "big picture" and relationships between different elements of the plan in a form that is easy to understand: the purpose shown at the apex cascades from one level of strategy to the next.

What are pyramid goals? ›

That's where a goal pyramid comes in. A goal pyramid is a strategic planning framework that provides an easy-to-follow structure for strategic planning at the individual, team, and department level. Goal pyramids provide both structure and flexibility—they are easy to modify as the work evolves.

What happens to people when they don't have a budget? ›

The purpose of creating a budget is to track where your money is going and where there is scope for spending less. If you don't stick to a budget, you are at risk of spending more than you can afford, leading to poor decisions and debt. Poor credit score.

What does a good financial plan look like? ›

A financial plan is a comprehensive picture of your current finances, your financial goals and any strategies you've set to achieve those goals. Good financial planning should include details about your cash flow, savings, debt, investments, insurance and any other elements of your financial life.

What are the 3 rules of financial planning? ›

Finance experts advise that individual finance planning should be guided by three principles: prioritizing, appraisal and restraint. Understanding these concepts is the key to putting your personal finances on track.

What is pyramiding in finance? ›

The term pyramiding refers to a trading strategy that increases positions in securities by using unrealized profits from successful trades. As such, pyramiding involves the use of leverage to increase one's holdings by making use of an increased unrealized value of current holdings.

What is a planning pyramid? ›

A strategic planning pyramid is a visual tool to help you draw out the goals of a business plan from top to bottom. This simple strategy may help you plan the steps necessary to achieve the vision of the company.

What is the meaning of pyramid in business? ›

A pyramid scheme is a fraudulent and unsustainable investment pitch that relies on promising unrealistic returns from imaginary investments. The early investors actually get paid those big returns, which leads them to recommend the scheme to others. Investors' returns are paid out of the new money flowing in.

What is a pyramid method? ›

The Pyramid Approach emphasizes the “why” of learning and “how” to teach rather than simply “what” to teach, allowing each learner's program to be individually tailored to meet their learning goals.

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