Understanding the Challenge: The Need to Begin

Abstract

The process of personal financial planning is both a challenge and an opportunity. A challenge because of the need to sometimes perform rigorous financial calculations, and an opportunity because of the ability to grow, often significantly, your wealth (or, in financial-planning language, your net worth). This chapter introduces a new way to engage in personal financial planning: the Protect Accumulate Defend Distribute (PADD) process. More broadly, the book describes, in depth, the challenge of the process and the opportunity that comes from effectively engaging in it.