Measure the effectiveness of your financial decisions by how well they advance your retirement objective.

You are frequently confronted with financial decisions. Can I afford the mortgage on a second home? Can I afford to quit my job and leave my unvested options so I can start a new business venture? Can I buy my building? Can I take time off when I have a baby? Can I pay for my children’s private education?

Many times when people ponder these questions, they don’t have the option to consider the complete financial picture, or the future implications these decisions will have. Usually, people and their financial professionals don’t have the resources to uncover and analyze their complete financial life. Financial professionals typically work in different areas and are isolated in their expertise. Opes Advisors brings them all together.

That way, when you come to a critical juncture that calls for making a big financial decision, you can consider the impact the decision will have on your personal balance sheet – a document that puts your entire financial life into one holistic view – and ask these questions:

• Can I afford this relative to my long-term plans?
• Does this action help or hinder my long-term financial objectives?
• Will this decision pull up or push out my target retirement date?

To help you answer these important questions, Opes Advisors recommends you follow a personal balance sheet approach, in which you can run many different scenarios through your current financial situation and understand the impact your decisions will have – especially the impact they will have on your retirement.

With complete information, you can make decisions today that you will be happy about in the future.