Financial Foundations
About the Program
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Financial Foundations is a 16-week budget-centered coaching program led by a Personal Finance Professional. It's comprised of 11 targeted sessions that each build on the last. The program is designed to walk you step-by-step through a detailed process of organizing your personal finances, teaching you to take complete control of them and the way they impact your day-to-day life, and ultimately lay a solid financial foundation that you can build on for the rest of your life. Past client testimonials can be found further down this page.
Session Breakdown
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Session #1: Discovery: The intent of this session is to get a general understanding of you and your overall situation. It is also so you can get to know who we are, why we do what we do, and how we are able to help you.
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Session #2 - Addressing Your Current Situation: This is where we clearly layout all of your debt, income, fixed expenses, and variable expenses. By this end of this meeting you will be completely organized and we'll both know exactly what your financial picture looks like - to the penny.
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Session #3 - The Budget: During this meeting, we take all of the information gathered during meeting #2 and plug it into your Forecast Budget. We teach you the Forecast budgeting method and how to use it to gain a firm control on your day-to-day finances.
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Session #4 - Setting Financial Goals: Together we develop very detailed short-term goals that are to be accomplished over the next 12-months. Each goal is specific, has a date to be accomplished by, and a plan to actually accomplish it. We also discuss your big long-term financial goals (1-year +) and put them in writing as well.
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Session #5 - Progress Check-up: Sessions two, three, and four are very intensive. Between sessions 4 & 5 you will have a week off to digest it all. Session 5 is a check-up meeting to address any issues, questions, or challenges that may have arisen from the changes being made.
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Session #6 - Threat Analysis: During this meeting we look through several areas of your finances to try and identify potential hidden problems that may be come out in the future and cause you harm. Several areas discussed are your insurances, credit reports, a last-will-and-testament, and financial retirement needs.
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Session #7 - Threat Analysis Follow Through: This meeting is to make sure that if there were any problems discovered during the threat analysis, that those problems are actively being addressed and corrected.
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Sessions #8-11 - Accountability Meetings: Sessions #1-7 make up the first half of the program, and sessions #8-11 are spaced out during the second half. These last four meetings happen every two weeks to make sure that everything is going well with your budgeting, that all areas of the threat analysis that needed attention have been taken care of, and that you are completing/working toward the short-term goals that we set to achieve. The purpose of these meetings is to ensure that everything is "sticking" and that you're being set up to make lasting & positive long-term progress in your personal finances.
Client Testimonials
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"I can’t say enough about Forecast Budgeting and the Financial Foundations Program. It has taught my husband and I how to use and manage our money effectively, and has taken so much stress out of our daily lives. I was always afraid of managing a budget and how it would limit me, but that's because I was being controlled by my money instead of me controlling it. Today we're 100% more confident about our finances and are in control of our money, and that has been so beneficial to not only us as individuals, but for our marriage as well!!
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- Dean & Julie Berry
"The Financial Foundations program has completely changed our life. I feel more confident, secure, and at peace because I always know where our money is at, and where it is going."
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- Cathy Ivey
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“I was a hard sell for this program. I didn’t initially believe it would work for us, especially with my anti-budget attitude. Was I wrong…. I can’t believe how much it helped enable us to become debt free and to have more money left in the bank than we had ever had before - all in such a short time span. Highly recommend!
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- Len Ivey
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"Paying off our debts as quickly as possible is a goal my wife and I have had since we got married, but randomly throwing money at the gigantic lump-sum of everything we owed was discouraging and seemed as though it would never come to an end. Forecast budgeting visually shows us exactly how much money we will need in the short-term future. This helps us maximize the amount we can pay extra towards our debt each month, yet still have the peace of mind that we can afford all of our normal bills and responsibilities coming up in the future! Forecast budgeting is a game changer!
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- Adam & Emily Zimmerman
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"The Financial Foundations program was so helpful, and using Forecast Budgeting budgeting has been an absolute game changer for us. You can't measure what you can't see, but with Forecast you will see exactly what your current finances are doing, as well as how they look in the months ahead. All of your income, expenses, and payments are laid out in a way that is so easy to see and manage. It's taken the worry out of budgeting and has given us complete peace of mind."
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- Evan & Annaliese Howell
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Forecast budgeting allows me to see what we have and what we don't have for future months and plan accordingly. Between my husband and I, we have paid down $35k worth of debt in the last 24 months! We will continue to use this way of budgeting until we are debt free!
- Whitney Buchanan
(Appleton, WI)
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One vital component of this program is the Forecast budgeting process & Forecast budgeting application we teach our clients to utilize. It's a game changer when it comes to budgeting (at least according to past client testimonials). The Forecast budgeting tool allows our clients to look into their financial future, day-by-day, and see exactly how much excess money they are forecasted to have available on any given date in the future (typically forecasted out for 60-90 days). The massive benefit of this is it allows our clients to make financial decisions today based off what their financial forecast looks like.
Here's why this is a big deal: many people are afraid to put money towards a goal they have (like making an extra payment on debt to pay it off sooner) due to a literal fear of that extra payment causing them to not have enough money for next month's needs. This fear stops them attacking their financial goals and leaves them stuck. If the financial goal is to get out of debt - this results in the debt being around much longer and the person paying thousands of dollars more in interest because of it.
Forecast Budgeting is able to eliminate that fear of the future financial unknown, and empowers you to take action with your money in the now to start hitting your goals.
*In-Person & Virtual options available.