What Can A Daily Money Manager Do For You?

Financial organizing can mean different things to different people. The most basic is simply organizing and filing all your paperwork, but there’s often a lot more to it. Assurance Family Partners offers several services to organize all your important papers and data:

• File management: Are you overwhelmed with papers everywhere? Do you spend more time than you’d like trying to find that one statement, receipt, or bill? Assurance Family Partners will bring order to your paperwork by setting up and maintaining an easy to use file system. We can also file your documents for you, using a personalized system that works best for you and your lifestyle. Client documents processed in the AFP office can be scanned and organized into digital folders for instant and secure access.
• Tax Organizing: Gone are the days of bringing a shoebox of receipts to your tax accountant! Assurance Family Partners maintains your data throughout the year. We will provide reports and supporting material to your accountant and fill out tax organizers as needed.
• Record Retention and File Maintenance: Can you quickly locate important financial documents? Do you keep every statement and receipt “just in case”?  AFP will provide guidance on what to keep, how long to keep it, and why. No more huge piles of old grocery receipts or telephone bills. We will even help you whittle down those old tax files, clean out paper files and discard or shred items that are no longer needed.
• Personal Records:  If someone had to take over your financial and administrative life, would they know what to do and where to find everything to take over seamlessly? Are you able to find all your information easily? Your AFP partner will compile a complete inventory of your personal information, financial accounts (including credit card and investment accounts), medical information, important account contacts, vehicles, household information, online accounts, and access information, and the location of your estate documents.
• Paper or Digital: Whether you like hard copies or digital, Assurance Family Partners will store your information the way you prefer. We will also provide guidance on securely storing your information.There are as many ways to organize papers and information as there are clients. If what you’re using works, we won’t change it. If what you’re using doesn’t work, together we’ll create a system that does. Assurance Family Partners then maintains it in an orderly fashion.

Do you know where you stand with your day-to-day finances? Knowing your income and expenses is an important aspect of managing your personal finances. With our bookkeeping system and attention to detail, AFP keeps track of your financial data and provides you and/or your financial team detailed reports: every transaction is categorized, capturing important data for tax return preparation, income and spending clarification, and monitoring your progress to achieve your financial goals.

• Bookkeeping:

Assurance Family Partners provides regular, timely bookkeeping on a schedule determined by you using personal finance software for efficiency and accuracy. Reports are tailored to provide only the information you want. Whether it’s a high level overview or granular transaction detail, our reports are easy to read and tailored to fit your unique needs. For example, if you have more than one child attending college, their educational expenses can be tracked separately for tax reporting purposes.

• Reporting:

Gain peace of mind knowing that you can easily access summary reports of financial snapshots including:

• Personal Financial Statement: By comparing personal financial statements over time, clients can track how their financial health is improving or deteriorating. Personal financial statements are helpful in tracking wealth and goals, as well as applying for credit.
• Income Statement: You’ll receive a summary of your income and expenses so you can track net income over time.
• Net Worth: A net worth report shows assets minus liabilities. It also reflects what an individual will have in cash if they sold off all their assets and paid off all their debts.

 

No matter your economic situation, knowing how your money is spent is critical to planning. Whether you’re concerned with paying down debt, saving for retirement or college, or planning a special purchase or trip, having a savings and spending plan will help you achieve your goals. Assurance Family Partners is experienced in providing cash flow reports, developing spending plans, and helping clients maintain accountability to achieve their financial commitments and goals.

• Income and expense tracking: We track monthly income and expenses in the check registers as well as with personal financial software such as Quicken.
  • Categorize expenditures
  • Prepare historical and/or on-going spend analysis

• Budgeting and cash flow analysis: We analyze income and spending to help clients stay on budget, reach savings goals, or make financial decisions.
  • Discuss financial goals and formulate a plan to meet those goals
  • Create a spending plan
  • Prepare cash flow analysis within new budget
  • Devise a strategy for spending and/or debt reduction
  • Develop a savings strategy
  • Prepare a debt analysis report
  • Review credit report and recommend suggestions for improving credit score
  • Negotiate with creditors

Gone are the days of bringing a shoebox of receipts to your tax accountant! Assurance Family Partners maintains your data throughout the year and will provide reports and supporting material to your accountant. We organize tax documents, calculate deductible expenses, and help fill out the tax organizer provided by the accountant. We can also work with your accountant to make sure your taxes are prepared properly and submitted on time and, if necessary, we can also help catch up on overdue tax returns.

When you select our banking services, your AFP daily money manager can make deposits for you at your financial institutions and resolve any issues or inconsistencies with bank statements. We also make sure beneficiary designations are in order and stay on top of due dates for banking-related investments such as CD maturity dates.

With so much junk mail coming in daily, it is often difficult to recognize an important bill or notice. Charity requests can also fill up your mailbox. Our daily money managers review all mail to ensure legitimate mail is addressed and junk is tossed. We open and sort the mail, throw away the junk, shred sensitive data, and file the things that need to be kept. For clients who can no longer manage their mail at home, Assurance Family Partners will arrange to receive bills, statements, and other business mail at our offices where we will process, scan and organize them into digital or paper folders for instant and secure access.

Insurance can be a confusing and overwhelming area for many people. Let Assurance Family Partners help with:

• Medical claims submission: We submit claims, review explanations of benefits, and work with Medicare and/or the insurance company to make sure claims have been paid properly.
• Homeowners and personal property documentation: We photograph and list all personal property for insurance purposes, and provide clients with the list in hardcopy and computerized formats. We also arrange for property appraisals as necessary.

We work with clients on an ongoing basis to document all aspects of their financial lives in our Family Playbook. This process helps our clients capture all of the essential details of their lives in one place, easing access to the critical information for daily living, in case of medical incapacitation, or other critical situations. Many think of the Family Playbook as a gift to their kids. They don’t want them to struggle the way they did when they helped their own parents.

Being a Personal Representative (PR) for the estate of a loved one is a challenging task even for the most paperwork- and project-minded people. Oftentimes, the role becomes the responsibility of the surviving spouse who may not know how to find the answers to many of the requirements of the professionals who were hired to administer the estate. Assurance Family Partners can shoulder the burden of that administrative task and work closely with the accountants or estate attorneys to gather the documents and reach out to the 3rd parties on your behalf.

Assurance Family Partners assists professionals, including attorneys, accountants, investment advisors, geriatric care managers, professional guardians, and powers of attorney. We help them manage their clients’ daily financial details. We can work directly with the advisor or clients, providing oversight and administration of day-to-day affairs.

• Reports: We can provide reports to CPAs or other estate professionals such as financial planners and estate attorneys.
• Coordination: We often complement the work of legal, tax and investment professionals to support clients’ long-term financial goals.
• Connections: We connect clients when they need referrals to the right professionals.

Although most of our clients prefer us to do the work for them, we are happy to teach you the fundamentals of good daily money management and provide upfront or ongoing guidance to set you up for success. We can help identify your areas of strength and challenges when it comes to managing your money and focus on those of greatest concern. We’ll teach you how to create an effective framework to organize your financial life, create and stick to a spending plan, pay down your debt, create a system for staying on top of bills, and help you strategize to achieve your financial goals.

While it will be up to you to follow through, we can recommend online or other tools to help you. If you think you need more guidance, you might choose our Financial Coaching services through which we can provide additional support, encouragement and accountability to help you stay on track.