Give me a thousand dollars and I will tell you to spend less and save for retirement.

When I meet someone at a party and tell them I’m a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®), most give me a blank stare. Some tell me they think their insurance guy tried to sell them one last year.

Others say they have no need, and an enlightened few ask if I think they should set up a plan. Here is what I wish I could say in response: a successful plan isn’t a report. It’s a process to be worked on and tweaked over time.

If you’re young, you probably need a budget more than a financial plan. Mint, YNAB, Acorn, and a few other sites are free and a great place to start tracking your spending and budgeting for large purchases. As life becomes more complex, it’s time to look for a more sophisticated solution.

I’m sure someone has tried to sell you a plan. Insurance Agents and Investment Advisors like to talk about financial plans. Some like to brag about how good they are at them and how important they are to you. Some even try to sell them with additional upfront costs. They then hand you a stale report showing you information about what you already have and what you could have if you follow their advice.

Or worse: "you might not make it, buy this new policy."

In my experience, most planners fall into two buckets: the static plan sellers and the dynamic planning partners.

A static plan is a start, and is certainly better than nothing. However, it’s not the optimal approach either. It’s more like an old gas station road map - you know, the kind grandma has folded in the back seat of her town car.

A dynamic planning partner is like upgrading to Waze. Not only are we going to show you where you want to go, but we are going to walk you through the steps to get you there on time. We will be with you through the journey and updating you along the way. We can alert you to potential road blocks and re-route you when better options come along.

There are three main questions you need to answer when creating a long term plan:

• What do you have today?
• Where do you want to end up?
• What do you think is going to happen along the way?

The first is easy - here are the assets I have. The second is tougher - I’d like to retire at 60, pay for my children’s education and buy a condo in Florida. The third is impossible.

Well, ok, not impossible, but it’s really tough to predict what is going to happen over the course of your career. It’s especially tough if you are asked to make those assumptions today with no chance to revise them over time.

A static plan asks you to input your assumptions today about your future income, expenses, assets and rate of return. Then it compounds those assumptions for 30 or 50 years. That’s a great baseline, but not worth much when things change tomorrow.

What happens when you realize your house is too small or you want to consider sending your child to private school? Should your extra cash go into a 529 or your IRA? Is it reasonable to assume your income and expenses are going to grow at the same rate every year? What happens if you don’t get that raise? What happens if you do?

These are the types of questions we answer for our clients, and we do so by continuously reviewing and adjusting your plan as life unfolds. Some clients like to review their plans annually, others prefer to do it only when there is a major life event or when they need help making an important decision.

As you get older, the questions change, but the approach remains the same. Do I have enough to retire this year or should I work for a few more? When should I start to take social security? Which accounts are the most tax efficient to pull from to meet my living needs?  How much can I give my kids today without running out of money?

Your plans at 75 might not look like your plan at 90 because your life at 90 might not look like your life at 75.  At 75 you may say, "well, I already out lived both my parents, that’s fine if I run out of money at 93."  At 90 you’re saying, "93’s a little early, let’s shoot for 105 instead." Hopefully you were updating your plan along the way.

So, do you need a plan? Yeah, probably.

Do you need to pay for the plan up front? I wouldn’t.

Instead, I would look to create a long-term relationship with a trusted advisor. I’d look for someone who’s going to understand my long term goals and work with me to achieve them over time. And I would look for someone who includes a dynamic financial plan as part of the comprehensive wealth management services they provide. Otherwise, you might be throwing money into a plan thinking it's Waze when it's actually grandma's map.