Capstone October 1, 2025

By Bryce Pease CFP® Accredited Investment Fiduciary® Casey Morris CFP® Capstone Pacific Investment Strategies, Inc. California, Colorado, Nebraska

Every once in a while, we are asked about the process of starting a financial plan.  Perhaps the most important thing a person can do to start the financial planning process is to determine their cash flow.  This applies to individuals, families and businesses.  It significantly helps to know how much money is being received each month and how much money is going back out the door.  

Notice we didn’t mention the word “budget”.  Many people we know don’t have a budget and if they do, they don’t follow it very well.  Small businesses don’t have the luxury of a financial officer tracking the cash flow for them like larger corporations do.  So it’s still extremely important to track it for ourselves.  One effective way to start is to record every item you spend money on and how much it costs  for at least a month (two months is even better!).  This is valuable because it begins to give you control over how much money goes out the door, it is also very eye opening to see where the money is being spent each month. Make sure you aren’t leaving any items out – all regular bills, gas, food, entertainment, birthday gifts, even the pop you buy at the gas station on your way home from work needs to be included. 

Once we look at our actual spending, we can ask ourselves if we really want to spend $5 a day on a slice of breakfast pizza at Casey’s.  Knowing most of us have limited amounts of money coming in, we can then decide how much we want to allocate to different expenses.  House and car payments are obviously not flexible and you add in all fixed expenses you know will be coming in over the next year.  Forgetting about a semi-annual auto insurance payment can be a real cash flow killer.  Once you get all of this information you are still not quite done.  

What about the unexpected expenses?  Like a bad tire or auto repairs?  We pretty much know there is always going to be something.  We personally find it’s easier to put away $100 a month rather than having to come up with $1200 all at once.  At this point you can begin to more effectively control your cash flow rather than being controlled by a budget.

Casey and Bryce

www.capstonepacificinc.com