Editor's note (August 2026): This post was published in January 2022, when I held the Certified Student Loan Professional™ designation. I no longer hold it.
We all have a plan for our lives. Sometimes these are plans for tomorrow. Other times they are plans for the rest of our lives. But life rarely goes as we planned. So does that mean it's not worth planning? Nope! Plans work in theory and never perfectly in real life. The point of a plan isn't to guess the future correctly — its purpose is to lay out ways to pursue a current goal and change when life changes. So when life doesn't go as planned, it's time to start a new plan.
A plan only works in theory. In reality, life never goes exactly according to plan. We build a plan and implement it, knowing it will need to be updated many more times.
As a financial planner, I work with people to create financial plans knowing they'll need to be revised. Sometimes it's years before an update is needed. Other times, before we even get started.
Five years ago, I lived in Dallas and worked for a public accounting firm, planning for a career in Mergers & Acquisitions. That plan was wrong. Less than a year later, I moved to Sacramento with my now fiancée, who had accepted an offer to attend law school, and took a job as a financial analyst at an aerospace and defense company. My new plan was to build a career there and become a CFO someday.
That plan was wrong too. In my spare time, I found myself reading more about personal finance, and as a CPA, friends and family were already asking me their money questions. I found a real passion for making this information easy to understand, and eventually left aerospace to join a well-known financial advising company, planning to learn directly from the titans of the industry.
That plan was also wrong. One month in, COVID hit, and I was transferred to the parent company's lending department for a year, working on Payroll Protection Program loan originations — far from the client-facing role I'd signed up for.
When that program ended, I thought I was finally heading back to the plan. Then another email arrived: the young-advisor development program was changing, and I'd be starting in a bank branch office instead, away from the experienced advisors I'd planned to learn from.
Over that year and a half, I kept learning more about financial planning, and one of the best parts of the industry is that it rewards advisors willing to take a risk and start their own firm. I used the savings from my previous jobs to start Developing Financial, a firm focused on helping young lawyers build a solid financial foundation — a natural fit, since my fiancée is a lawyer herself. I earned the Certified Student Loan Professional designation, built a process to identify clients' financial goals, and my fiancée found a job in San Francisco, so we moved to start both of our careers.
Months later, my firm is off the ground, and I'm helping clients make better decisions. Everything is finally going according to plan — for now. Because as I've learned, life never goes according to plan, and that is okay.
Five years ago, I never imagined I'd be engaged, starting a business, and working as a financial planner. Yet here I am.
When working with clients, we make comprehensive plans to achieve everything they want in life right now, but I know it's only the plan for right now. When a client comes to me with a new idea, we don't discount it or push it off until the current plan is fully implemented — we pivot and make a new plan. Life is uncertain, and we can't know where we'll be in 1, 5, 10, or 50 years. Instead of sticking rigidly to a plan, we change the plan.
Changing a plan doesn't mean the plan failed. It means it worked as it should — laying out the steps we need to reach where we currently want to go, while staying flexible enough to pursue something else if needed. That's what makes a good plan.
Looking back on my plan from five years ago, it couldn't have been more wrong, yet I never look back with regret. When life doesn't go as planned is when life becomes worth living.
If you have a plan now, it's probably not the plan you had envisioned years ago. But here you are. A financial plan can put you in a position to succeed today — and when those plans change, I'm here to help you make the corrections to pursue your next big goal.
Have questions of your own?
I’m not taking new ongoing clients right now, but I’m still glad to offer a free 30-minute Meet & Confer — to answer your questions, add you to the waitlist, or point you toward another advisor.