Candido Rodriguez is a Financial Advisor at Northwestern Mutual. Candido specializes in working with business owners and families. He helps them understand and figure out ways to achieve the dreams and goals they have.

 How a Financial Advisor Can Help You Plan For Your Future

According to Candido, our most valuable resource is time and most of us exchange our time for money. Some of us are employees but some others took the courage to open their own businesses. However, what tends to happen is that we put too much effort into one, and we don't understand the importance of keeping a balance in personal planning.

Business owners tend to put masks on their employees because they want to keep retention. They want to make sure that employees stick around with their businesses. And so most of the time they make their family suffer either for lack of time or resources because everything is directed to the business. Moreover, we don't tend to put the mask on ourselves first which is very important.

Why do you need a Financial Advisor?

We've all done some level of planning and we all have credit cards, savings, and checking accounts.

What Candido wants to do is take that box of accounts, empty it out, and check what's working, and what doesn't work. And as a dashboard, replace, optimize, and improve whatever is there for things that will match the goals that you have.

Candido looks more at a centered approach with a plan that's integrated, holistic, distinctive, and gives you the confidence that all the decisions that you're making are financially sound and they are aligned with those dreams and goals that you have.

Tomorrow is important, but life is happening now.

If you make a decision for a purchase today, it should be the right one in 10, 20, or 15 years or you should at least know when to turn it on and off.

Candido creates a vision board for his clients where they can see their dreams and goals. He sets up goalposts and steps that show them the events that they are making. Every year, they get together and see what has changed because life happens and nothing is set in stone.

The plans are very flexible and they help you with the same resources that you have. If something happens, they can adapt and change course, which is part of the process.

First, he helps you identify your goals.

Candido develops a personalized plan and then goes through the implementation, which is when he brings the plan to light and takes action. Every year, he will review and go over the details with you to make sure that you are on track.

On the business side, Candido is not into replacing what you already have. It's mostly improving what is already there.

“Accountants and bankers make decisions for you without knowing what you've already done and what other people on your team are doing for you.  I'm a big believer that there are no bad financial decisions. It's just that those decisions we make don't align with our goals. Having a team together and having them speak and understand what we plan and what we want to do helps to make those decisions better and sound.”

-Candido Rodriguez

Planning Process

Discovery (Vision and Goals)

Recommendations (Personalized Written Plan)

Implementation (World Class Solutions)

Relationship (Review and Update)

The process is simple. Candido will talk to you and see what's important to you. He will present some recommendations and implementations. Then, review and update the goals every six months or every year.

What is financial well-being?

• The control over month-to-month expenses
• The capacity to absorb a financial shock
• The ability to meet financial goals
• The financial freedom to enjoy life

The way it is done is by managing the finances, mitigating financial setbacks, meeting our goals, and making good financial decisions. 

Plan For Success: A Five-Step Process

Candido shared a five-step plan to set up the goalposts so that he can track and see how you are doing and what things he needs to adjust.

 

For instance, one of the things that he also prepares is the balance sheet and a cash flow statement Sometimes he does that for the business to know how much money is coming and how much is going out, it helps him reduce those leaks.

Sometimes we have control over what comes in, but it tends to match a hundred percent of what goes out. However, by doing these graphs and steps, Candido can help you identify where you can improve the expenditures, especially for business owners that have Schedule C to take advantage of the deductions and credits.

Above is an example of saving starting at just 20 dollars every week for 52 weeks. It is not a lot but it adds up.

And this is what will happen if we save 50 dollars every week for 10 years.

The idea is for us to understand that it doesn’t have to be big steps. It's to have those small steps that can help us be better.

"One important part II wanna leave you with is to talk to your kids about finances. They have to understand and they have to know how to manage money because there is a huge retirement gap right now, which is 10 times bigger than the national debt. So only 2% of people are retiring. So talk to your kids. You can reach out to me. There are a lot of interactive games and activities that I can share with you to help you have a conversation with them. And also for yourself, we can learn about money, making it fun. As I always said,  living today wile planning for the future."