Ep 16 | What the f*ck is a financial plan?
What exactly is a financial plan—and why does it matter so much more than most people think? Priya Malani kicks off a new Q&A series by unpacking the real purpose of financial planning. It’s not about spreadsheets, restriction, or being “good with money”—it’s about building a life you’re excited to live, with your money fully aligned to support it. From practical strategies to wild-but-true client goals (hello, Toto toilets and vow renewals), this episode reveals how a plan can take you from winging it to feeling totally in control. Whether you’re flying solo or merging finances with a partner, it’s time to stop guessing and start designing a life that works for you.
Tune Into This Episode to Hear:
Why a financial plan is more than just a spreadsheet—it’s a blueprint for your life
Real (and hilarious) examples of what people are actually planning for
How couples with different money habits get on the same page through shared goals
Why it’s easier to make smart money moves when you know exactly what you’re working toward
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THE STUFF OUR LAWYERS WANT US TO SAY: Stash Wealth is a Registered Investment Advisor. Content presented is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to make an offer or solicitation for any specific securities product, service, or strategy. Consult with a qualified investment adviser (that's us) before implementing any strategy. Investing involves risk, including the loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. There…we said it.
Transcription
Hey guys. Welcome back to The F Word, where I talk about finance in a way that actually makes sense for 30-somethings. We're kicking off a new series today where I'm flipping the script and answering your questions. The first one, it's the most common thing I get asked by friends, clients, people in my DMs.
What actually is a financial plan? What's the point? What does it include? And, why are you obsessed with it?
So today I'm walking you through it. I'm gonna cover what a real financial plan includes, why it's more than just budgeting and investing, and how it's different from the advice you scroll past on Instagram or TikTok.
A good financial plan eliminates the feeling that you're winging it. It's about you designing your life and setting yourself up with the right decisions so you can do the things that you care about, the things that you wanna do. You've articulated what you care about, and a good financial plan will tell you exactly how to get it. It's not the easiest exercise, but it's a very valuable exercise because once you get a sense of what you want to accomplish in life, your financial decisions become so much easier.
It's really hard to know where to put your money, how much to invest, how much to save, what to budget for what without a clear goal. It's very difficult to know how much you can afford, what lifestyle you can actually afford. But once you've painted a little bit of a picture of, okay, these are the things I care about, it's really easy to reverse engineer how much you should be saving and investing for them, and that actually allows you to back into what your lifestyle can look like today.
Your standard financial plan includes an evaluation of what you've done today and course correction information. So like instead of doing what you're doing, you should do this instead. Whether it comes to saving or budgeting or debt pay down or investing, a good financial plan should give you clear directions and how those directions will impact your ability to achieve the things that you care about. So asset allocation, not to get into the jargon, but like how you should be invested, how you should be tackling your debt. Should you pay off your student loans first, then start saving for retirement? Should you do both at the same time? What's a good budget for you?
A financial plan forces you to articulate what you truly care about.
To give you an example of some of the goals, like I think the word financial plan can feel very heavy and very like, okay, retirement, buying a home, having a family, which is certainly things that a financial plan can help you accomplish. But we've had some really quirky, cool, fun, interesting goals people have put into their financial plans. And I'll tell you a few of my favorites.
We had a client recently who did a blowout 40th birthday. She invited 45 of her friends to fly in for her birthday and did a Vegas theme. We have clients planning to go to the 2028 Olympics. We have clients planning to buy a vineyard in Italy when they retire. Oh, another one was season tickets to their favorite sports team. I think it was the Braves, we have the Toto toilet that was in a Stash Plan. International vacation every two years. Um, 10th vow renewal wedding extravaganza. Vintage watch. Nice handbag. World Cup tickets, until they die. Fix my wife's left boob. Judgment free zone. Oh mommy makeover. After she has her third kid. She hasn't even had a kid yet. Clients are wild and they're planning accordingly.
Hopefully this inspires you to think a little outside the box. A financial plan can be anything that you wanna accomplish. And for couples allows you to talk about what you care about and maybe priorities around those things that you care about. So one of the biggest things that comes up is the saver married to the spender. And the saver can never understand why the spender spends so much. Why are you wasting our money? Until you've sat down and talked about like, what do we want to accomplish as a couple? Do we wanna buy a home? Do we want to start a family? Do we wanna change our jobs? Do we wanna go back to school?
It's really difficult to care about saving your money. And so oftentimes simply sitting down and building a financial plan together forces you to articulate your goals to one another, and we see much better accountability to saving and spending once you both know what's at stake. Okay, I'm not gonna spend money the way I used to because we both want to have enough to have a down payment in three years. All of a sudden the saving that you were worried about your partner doing disappears because now you both have a joint target that you're working towards.
Without a financial plan, can you still do those things? Of course. Absolutely. But one of the biggest benefits of a financial plan and one of the biggest reasons we advocate for a financial plan is because it allows you the time and the space to really think about, and it's not easy, but to really think about what you actually care about, you, you and your partner, but just spending time thinking about it will allow you to create a much more efficient, effective set of directions for yourself. And a lot more clarity around how your day-to-day spending is impacting your ability to get on track for your goals.
Sometimes people will say I can't even dream. There's no money left over. Like, why even put a plan together? There's like no money. I promise you, when you put a financial plan together, you'll find the money.
A good financial plan eliminates the guesswork, right? You should no longer have to feel like you're winging it. You should feel like I have clear direction. I know exactly what I need to do, and if I do these things, I'm gonna be on track for the things I care about.
The most underrated part of a financial plan is the reinforcement that you might already be doing something's right. One of my favorite things is when we tell people, yes, that's great. Keep doing that. A lot of times I find that when people are on the right track, they simply don't believe in themselves because they're not an expert. They don't have a finance degree. They didn't go to school for this. So I think one of the most underrated parts of a financial plan is that second set of eyes simply saying to you, yeah, you're good. On that part? Don't change a thing.
So who typically has access to a financial plan? Historically, it's been rich people, and typically financial planning has been an exercise that one goes through when they're older. When they're later in life, right? Like you're pre-retiree, usually you're freaking out, you're not sure you're prepared, and so you get a financial plan that says, okay, here's how long your money's gonna last you. That's one of the most common use cases for a financial plan.
When you get a financial plan earlier on in life. It's a much more enlightening experience. Like when you're older and you kind of know how much money you've saved up, it's not rocket science to figure out how long that money's gonna last you, right? But when you're young and you have years in front of you to earn and your income potential is actually going up, building a financial plan can be one of the most empowering experiences of your life. Because without doing that simple math, it's hard to know what your potential looks like.
And so it's a little bit of bullshit that most financial planning is made available to really, really rich people or people who are pre-retirees, even if they're not super rich. Because the best time to create a financial plan is actually when you're in your thirties and you have your entire life in front of you.
You haven't made a bunch of mistakes, probably. And you have time on your side.
Can you start investing without a financial plan? The answer is yes, absolutely you can. Should you is another question.
So it's the 21st century. There are amazing tools out there that let you invest for as little as $5. You can start making your money work harder for you. In fact, you likely already are investing without a financial plan in place. Most people are investing into their employer retirement plan. Maybe a 401k, maybe a 403b.
Similarly, when you go through a financial plan, you will articulate other goals, likely more fun goals that you wanna accomplish before retirement. So maybe you wanna buy a house or travel more or buy a really fancy sports car like I did. All kinds of things that you wanna accomplish between now and retirement.
So again, you can invest and you likely are investing without a financial plan. But the point is you're investing with a very specific goal in mind and a financial plan forces you to articulate your other goals so your investing strategy can be more targeted towards the things that are important to you.
What I love about financial planning when you're in your thirties is that it's very rare we have to tell a client like, no, that's off the table. You can't do that. Almost always, even if they're not in a great financial spot and probably sitting under a mountain of student debt, they have so much time on their side and they're putting a plan together and articulating their priorities, it's almost never that we have to say no. We're always telling people like, oh my God, that's awesome. You should totally do that. That's amazing. Here's how we're gonna do it. It's about finding ways to do the things that help you live the life that you wanna live.
Alright, that's all for today. Hope this give you some clarity around what a plan actually looks like, why it matters, and how much easier your financial life can feel when everything's working together.
If this episode made you go, Ooh. That's what I've been missing. Maybe that's your sign. You don't need to be guessing. You just need a plan that fits your goals, your income, your real life.
If you can think of someone, this episode would help, please send it to them. We are trying to grow our audience and we'll take all the help we can get. Please send it to a friend who's earning good money but still feels low key behind.
And as always, if there's a question you want me to tackle in a future episode, you know where to find me. See you next time.
