Concept Kitchen: A Financial Planning Recipe
If you’ve ever followed a recipe — maybe your grandmother’s go-to lasagna or something new from a food blog you stumbled across — you’ve already practiced a kind of planning. You set out with a goal, gather what you need, make adjustments along the way, and trust the process to deliver something meaningful.
In many ways, financial planning isn’t all that different.
At YeskeBuie, we don’t think of planning as tracking numbers or checking boxes alone. It’s about creating a process that supports the life you want to live. Much like crafting a memorable meal, successful planning blends knowledge, intentionality, and a healthy dose of creativity. Let’s explore how the steps of cooking can illuminate the art of financial planning.
The Ingredients: Income, Investments, and Values
Any good dish starts with solid ingredients. In financial planning, that means your income sources, savings, investment accounts, insurance policies, and maybe most importantly, your values.
What matters most to you and your family? What kind of life are you building?
Just like a chef shops based on the meal they want to create, we build your financial plan around what’s meaningful to you. Maybe it’s retirement on your terms. Or helping your parents. Or putting a child through college. Or giving generously. Your pantry — the things you’ve stored up and set aside — should reflect the life you’re shaping, not someone else’s idea of it.
The Recipe: Your Financial Plan
Of course, ingredients on their own don’t make a meal! You need a recipe that brings everything together with purpose and timing. Your financial plan acts as a thoughtful framework that helps combine your resources with your goals and lays out the steps to move from one to the other.
Our planning process is grounded in decades of research and shaped by real-world experience. We believe in diversification, long-term investing, and strategies that are backed by evidence and tailored to your unique circumstances. Like a favorite recipe that’s been refined over time, our approach is meant to be clear, consistent, and flexible enough to adjust as life changes.
Adjusting the Seasoning: Life Happens
Even the best recipes don’t always go as planned. Maybe your oven cooks a little too hot, or you realize you’re out of basil and have to get creative. It’s the same with financial plans — life happens. Things change. Surprise expenses pop up, job opportunities shift, the market moves, and family priorities evolve.
That’s why financial planning isn’t just a one-and-done thing. It’s more like checking in on the meal while it’s cooking, tasting along the way, and adjusting as needed. We’re always here to help make those tweaks, whether it’s rebalancing your investments during our Two Week Look, calculating your new Safe-Spending Target, or updating your Net Worth Statement. We’re here to help you season to taste whenever life calls for it.
Sharing the Meal: Living Big
And then there’s the best part. Sitting down to enjoy the meal. Taking a breath, sharing it with others, and appreciating what went into it.
That’s what financial planning is really about. If saving and investing are ingredients, living a life that feels full is the plated dish. For you, that might look like taking a family trip, retiring with confidence, supporting causes you care about, or just feeling a little lighter knowing your financial world is in order. Live Big® is personal to every chef (or Client).
We’re in the Kitchen with You
Consider us your sous chef. We’re not here to hand you a recipe and walk away. We’re in the kitchen collaborating with you — gathering ingredients, refining the process, and making adjustments as life unfolds.
As we often say here at YeskeBuie, our goal is to be “good people to think with®.” We’ll create something thoughtful and enduring together. Our plans are built around your story, your priorities, and your vision of what a good life looks like. So, if you’re ready to revisit your recipe or try something new, we’d be more than happy to connect!