What To Know About Life Cycle Financial Planning
Key Takeaways:
Life cycle financial planning considers the unique challenges and priorities of different stages of life to thrive in every stage.
The five stages of life cycle planning can be used to guide your comprehensive planning and meet client needs.
Holistic, visual planning supports client trust, clarity, and long-term satisfaction.
Financial planning isn’t a one-and-done task; it’s an ongoing conversation. As your clients’ lives, goals, and circumstances evolve, their financial plan should evolve with them. Regular check-ins ensure their strategy stays aligned, relevant, and ready for whatever comes next.
With concerns around inflation, economic volatility, longer retirements, and caregiving needs, clients are increasingly relying on financial advisors for guidance. Advisors can utilize financial life cycle planning to help clients navigate financial decisions throughout all life stages.
Naturally, there are differences in how people manage their finances. This is where life cycle financial planning comes into play. Financial planners can stay relevant and valuable by anchoring their guidance to each phase of the client journey. This article will share how to use life cycle financial planning to help clients thrive at every stage.
What Is Life Cycle Financial Planning?
Life cycle financial planning refers to the process of identifying and managing financial needs and challenges that arise at various stages of life, from childhood to retirement and beyond. This type of planning is extremely relevant in 2025’s complex economy because clients are facing economic uncertainty now more than ever. Life cycle financial planning considers age-related financial challenges to help clients navigate different life stages.
By understanding and preparing for the unique financial considerations of each life stage, advisors and clients can effectively work towards a financially secure future.
There are five stages of life cycle planning:
Teenage years (13-17 years)
Young adulthood (18-25 years)
Starting a family (26-45 years)
Planning to retire (45-64 years), and
Successful retirement (65+ years)
The financial life cycle can also be divided into three stages, distributed across the five stages of the life cycle.
Wealth accumulation: In this stage, clients work to build a strong foundation for their legacy. They embrace the daily grind and put in the legwork to build wealth. Clients are focused on saving money and planning for the future. It’s also when retirement planning should ideally begin.
Wealth preservation: With the groundwork laid, it's time to secure one’s wealth. At this stage, individuals begin to consider retirement planning after years of accumulating wealth during their working years. During this stage, your clients reassess their investments and their retirement goals.
Wealth distribution: A client’s savings and investments will finally pay off in this final stage. For most clients, this typically occurs during their retirement years; therefore, it’s vital for your clients to complete arrangements for essential tasks such as estate planning and end-of-life planning.
It’s essential to recognize that financial life cycle planning is a client-focused and adaptive process, rather than a linear one. Financial advisors should provide holistic, visual, and scenario-based guidance to clients.
Asset-Map helps advisors engage in meaningful planning conversations through its unique visualization features. Next, we’ll outline the stages of the financial life cycle and share tips for advisors to incorporate them into their planning sessions.
Key Stages of the Financial Life Cycle
1. Building a Foundation (Early career, 20s–30s)
In the first stage, clients will focus on gaining and maintaining financial independence. Many clients may have pursued a college degree and incurred student loan debt. Clients in this stage will plan their careers and life goals, incorporating their desired lifestyle and income projections.
Depending on the person, this can also mark the beginning of their wealth accumulation stage, where they start to consider their financial future, such as establishing a rainy-day fund and building their investment portfolio.
Advisor tip: Help young clients visualize income vs. expenses using budgeting templates to instill discipline early.
2. Accumulation and Growth (30s–50s)
Unlike the previous stage, where your clients can coast on their own and only be responsible for themselves, some might begin to have others to think about at this stage. In the accumulation and growth stage, many clients may have started a family, own a home, or are working towards owning one, and are focused on padding their retirement savings.
Whether a client’s goal is a house full of kids, sharing their home with a spouse, or anything in between, the biggest part of this stage is preparing for the financial responsibility that comes with having a family. Additionally, clients will want to start planning for their children's higher education.
Advisor tip: Map multi-goal funding visually using Asset-Map to show tradeoffs and opportunities to clients.
3. Pre-Retirement (50s–60s)
As your clients approach retirement age, it's important for them to focus on financial planning that will help them achieve their retirement goals and prepare for a financially secure future. Children typically move out during this stage, making it easier to save money than in the midst of family years.
Retirement planning hopefully started when a client began their career, but starting late also happens. This is the stage when clients should be full speed ahead on seriously preparing for retirement. Preparing for retirement may involve contributing to retirement accounts, such as 401(k)s and IRAs, and considering Roth conversions. Also, clients should begin healthcare planning and projecting their retirement income, including Social Security.
Advisor tip: Show client income streams, timing risks, and tax exposure in one view using Asset-Map.
4. Retirement and Income Distribution (60s–80s)
In retirement, clients will depend on Social Security and their retirement savings to maintain their chosen lifestyle. This stage is all about careful income planning. It is also the time when clients will focus on withdrawal strategies for their retirement accounts to ensure their retirement funds last while meeting Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs).
Clients in their 60s and beyond will also prioritize risk mitigation, with portfolios typically shifting toward more conservative allocations to preserve capital. Individuals should also plan for long-term care needs since healthcare costs rise with age.
Advisor tip: Help clients “see” how spending, inflation, and market volatility intersect using visual maps.
5. Legacy and Estate Planning (70s–90s+)
At this stage, clients are focused on transferring wealth to younger generations. They will work with an advisor on legacy and estate planning to ensure their wishes are respected. Clients should have wills, trusts, and other estate planning documents solidified to promote a seamless transfer of assets. Family communication is important during this stage to ensure that final expenses are planned for and that beneficiaries understand the client’s designations.
Clients at this age may also be interested in charitable giving and contributing to causes they support. Financial advisors can help clients set up tax-efficient philanthropic gifts to charities.
Advisor tip: Use Asset-Map visualizations to make legacy planning less abstract and more values-driven.
How Asset-Map Supports Planning Across the Life Cycle
Asset-Map is used by advisors to create client buy-in using “show, not tell” tactics. The advanced visualization features enable you to streamline client conversations using easy-to-view financial maps. Asset-Map’s visual planning features make abstract topics like future scenarios or tax risk feel tangible to clients.
Advisors who leverage visual planning tools like Asset-Map are more likely to retain multigenerational clients. Visualizations help entire families better understand your clients’ financial picture.
Learn more about Asset-Map’s features.
Helping Clients Thrive at Every Stage
As financial advisors, we want to improve trust, clarity, and long-term client satisfaction. Using the financial planning life cycle, you can tailor your advice to each stage of life. Empower clients to thrive at every stage with holistic visual planning.
Explore how Asset-Map supports planning conversations for every life stage by scheduling a demo today!