Financial plans don't fail in spreadsheets, they fail at stress points -- parents that need more help and care than expected, a business sale that took longer than anticipated, prolonged market volatility. As Matt has observed during his career, it's not the stressors themselves that cause problems with the financial plan, it's the behavior around those stressors. A good financial plan includes flexibility to deal with changing life situations, and is revisited and revised periodically to account for them.

Another quiet killer is unnecessary complexity, too many just-in-case provisions or backup strategies. Plans setup with too many contingencies can require constant attention to work as intended. In these plans, it's not the decisions that break them, it's the fact that people don't have the time to monitor them! As Matt says, simplicity is not laziness, it's durability.

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