Giving clients’ finances a health check

investmentnews.com:

As the famous quote goes, nothing is certain in life except death and taxes. Carolyn McClanahan, founder of Life Planning Partners, knows both intimately, having started out as an emergency room physician. “Now, nothing seems as challenging as that,” she says.  

That’s not to say, of course, that death never comes up in her work as an advisor, it’s just that now she helps clients prepare for it, instead of helping them delay or prevent it. As for taxes, they’re one of the reasons she changed careers in the first place.    

McClanahan’s introduction to the world of financial planning was born of personal necessity. Her husband had inherited a modest sum and wanted to use it to make a career change. He was an engineer, but he wanted to be a track and field coach and a photographer. Not wanting to become the sole breadwinner, McClanahan insisted that they speak with an expert.    

“We interviewed all these financial planners to see if my husband could change careers and none of them really gave good financial planning advice,” she recalls. “It was all about investments. They didn’t do cash flow planning, budgeting or help us figure out tax efficiency, or any of what we expected from a financial planner.”    

Soon, it wasn’t only her husband looking to change careers, after McClanahan decided to go back to school to learn about financial planning. By 2004, she had founded her firm, offering comprehensive financial advice on a fee-only basis. “I fell in love with it and haven’t looked back.”    

Despite the career U-turn, her training as a doctor still provides the backbone for her financial practice. “When I became a financial planner, I didn’t realize how just how many intersections there were between health and finance,”