The One-Page Financial Plan

The One-Page Financial Plan

Carl Richards (2015) *A Simple Way to Be Smart About Your Money*

The Sharpie moment that started a book

Carl Richards is a certified financial planner, a New York Times columnist, and the man behind the napkin sketches that have shown up in personal-finance pieces for over a decade. He has spent thousands of hours sitting across from couples who walked into his office wanting one thing. They wanted him to tell them what to do. They had already collected the books, the magazines, the spreadsheets. None of that helped. They were paralyzed, not because they were lazy or stupid, but because the financial-services industry had buried the simple truth under a mountain of options.

One evening Richards sat at his kitchen table with his wife. They were trying to settle a real decision about real money. They had savings accounts and an investment process and insurance policies, and yet every time something concrete came up, they would drown in detail. He grabbed a Sharpie and a piece of card stock from the printer, and he asked himself a single question. If he had to fit every important thing about their financial life on one page, what would survive?

He wrote four lines. The first was about why money mattered to them at all. The other three were specific things they intended to do that year: max the retirement accounts, fund each kid's education account, save the rest for a future house. That was it. He set the card aside.

A month later, another decision came up. Another long conversation began. Halfway through, he stopped. He went and found the card. The work had already been done. They followed what they had written and moved on with their day. That moment of relief is what the book is built around. Most of what passes for financial planning is theater. Real planning is a short, honest answer to a few questions you can keep on a single sheet of paper and refer to when life puts a decision in front of you.