How to Fix the Missing Middle in Financial Planning

Hi Susan. I’m sorry those firms couldn’t help. Don’t give up—lack of clearly defined goals shouldn’t prevent you from getting a financial plan. Some planners focus on straightforward, goal-driven assignments because those are easier to quantify: when to retire, when to start collecting Canada Pension Plan or Old Age Security, or how to structure withdrawals from a holding company or a registered retirement income fund (RRIF). For clients with specific questions, the plan often becomes a technical exercise that can be solved quickly. But many people don’t have neatly defined goals, and that’s common.

When someone arrives without clear objectives, planners often default to retirement planning because retirement provides a natural anchor for the numbers. But that isn’t the only route. There’s a better step between an initial meeting and a final plan: scenario planning.

Typically, a first meeting with a planner is a discovery session. It’s a chance for both of you to get to know each other: your background, how you arrived at your current situation, what matters to you, and the financial picture—assets, savings, and anticipated future resources. With that information, many planners will try to jump to solutions. If you don’t yet know what you want, jumping straight to recommendations can feel premature.

The missing step: scenario planning

Scenario planning is the step most worth insisting on. It’s where you and your planner test potential futures rather than immediately choosing a fixed strategy. You model several different “what if” scenarios to see what is realistic, what creates gaps, and what feels achievable. The result is clarity: you discover what options are possible, which makes it much easier to form realistic goals.

Through scenario work, you’ll see how different choices interact with your cash flow, taxes, government benefits, and estate planning. As you test alternatives, you’ll often become more creative, identifying solutions that close shortfalls or reveal trade-offs you hadn’t considered. This process turns vague wishes—”I’d like to travel more” or “I want to slow down at work someday”—into concrete paths you can evaluate.

Most people who benefit from scenario planning test around four broad areas: home, lifestyle, family, and career. Examples include whether you can afford a cottage, add significant travel, retire early, change careers, or make gifts to children or charities. By modelling different combinations—keeping your current lifestyle, reducing expenses, increasing spending for a few years—you’ll learn what each choice would mean for your finances.

As you play out alternative futures, you’ll gain perspective on how life decisions affect your savings, tax position, access to government programs, and the structure of your estate. Over time, repeated modelling narrows your options and helps you spot which paths feel right. That clarity then allows you to set meaningful, realistic goals.

Start with continuity, go from there

A helpful starting point is continuity: model your current situation first. Ask, what does it cost to live the way you do now, and how long will your current resources support that lifestyle? From that baseline you can test incremental changes—more travel, downsizing, part-time work, or shifting investments—and see which scenarios are feasible.

After a scenario session you may find you already have enough information to make decisions for the time being. You’ll better understand how registered retirement savings plans (RRSPs), RRIFs, tax-free savings accounts (TFSAs), and other assets interact with your life choices. Let those insights settle—some ideas will percolate and become clearer with a little time.

Alternatively, scenario planning may leave you ready to move forward with a concrete game plan. If so, treat planning as an ongoing process: revisit your situation annually, re-run scenarios as circumstances or priorities change, and adjust your plan to capture new interests. Scenario-based financial planning gives you control by breaking big, vague hopes into testable choices and achievable goals.

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