Introducing the new Total Wealth Planner website—and a practical model of planning we can build together
A great deal of financial planning still begins with a professional asking for your information. You complete a fact-find. They build a plan in their system. You receive a report. Then life changes, and you may need the professional again to understand what your own plan now means.
What if we began somewhere else?
What if you held the living record of your life, used AI to explore your choices, and invited a planner into the conversation when their experience would genuinely help? What if professional support could grow when life became difficult and recede when you were ready to move forward?
That is the thinking behind the redesigned Total Wealth Planner website. It is a service you can use now and a working example of the planning model I want to build with other professionals.
Begin with your own operating system
The first step is free. On the new Self OS page, you can start with four connected tools:
- Financial Activation Measure™ helps you reflect on your present confidence and activity in earning, saving, investing, security and taking action. It is a starting point for understanding what support might help, not a pass mark for independent living.
- My Life Record™ lets you build a private record of your goals, values and important information in your own Google Drive. You control what you share and with whom.
- Navigator™ helps you model lifetime cashflow and ask what different choices could mean for your future.
- Total Wealth Plan™ helps bring money together with work, health, relationships, family, time and purpose in one continuing planning conversation.
These tools do not know everything about you. AI can miss context and sound certain when it should be asking another question. That is why the starting point is capability: understand what the tools show, test their assumptions and recognise when you need another person’s judgement.
You can begin with whichever question matters today. You do not have to book a meeting, move an investment or become a paying client to start planning your life.
The support dial moves. Your agency stays.
There are times when working alone is enough. There are times when it is not. A bereavement, a pension decision, a change in health or a family obligation can turn an ordinary question into a consequential one.
The Support Dial makes that change visible. Its 90/90 principle is simple: 90% of people, 90% of the time, can manage their own finances with the right support. It is a design principle for proportional help, not a rule that everyone must manage alone.
You can use free tools for ordinary planning. You can book a Second Brain Session for one difficult decision. You can keep an Independent Financial Lifeguard within reach for reassurance and early warning. During a major transition, you can choose more structured support. When that period passes, you can turn the dial down again.
The continuous part is your OS and your agency. The variable part is how much professional time you need.
What does a planner do when the client has AI?
More than ever—but the value lies in a different place.
A modern planner does not need to control inaccessible client information to be useful. They help someone see the whole system, test assumptions and AI outputs, organise complexity, navigate change, avoid costly mistakes, decide with confidence and recognise when specialist expertise is needed.
Imagine someone asking, “Can I afford to work less?” Navigator can model different income and spending paths. Total Wealth Plan can draw out what the change might mean for family, health and purpose. But someone still needs to ask: Are these numbers reliable? What has been left out? Is the current job damaging the person’s capacity to earn at all? Which decision can be reversed, and which cannot? Does a pension, tax or legal question require a different specialist?
That is where professional judgement earns its place. The planner works with the person and their tools. The person retains the record and the decision.
Why build the website this way?
I wanted the site itself to demonstrate the relationship it describes. A visitor can start for free, see how the tools fit together, understand the boundaries of AI and professional support, and choose help in proportion to the problem. The About page explains my own role and shows how whole-life planning has helped people examine real decisions.
This is also a practical invitation to professional planners. If we believe planning should restore human agency, our service design has to prove it. Where does the client’s information live? Can they continue without us? Do our fees rise and fall with the work? Are we willing to say when another specialist is needed? Can we regard a client needing less of us as a success?
I do not claim to have finished answering every question. The Academy of Life Planning is building the tools, standards, training and professional support for a wider community of Total Wealth Planners™. This website is one working example. Other planners will bring experience, challenge and ideas that make the model better.
I would like to build that future together: a profession that combines human experience and AI capability while leaving the client more capable after every encounter.
An invitation to begin
If you are planning your own life, start your Self OS for free. Measure where you are, create your record, explore a question and see what becomes clearer. When you need a second brain or a lifeguard, the support is there.
If you are a planner, explore the site as a client would. Try the tools. Ask where the model could serve people you cannot economically serve today. Ask where your expertise would make a real difference—and where it should step back. Then get in touch through the Academy if you want to help build and deliver it.
The plan should belong to the person living it. The profession should help them use it.
Steve Conley is founder of the Academy of Life Planning and a Chartered Financial Planner. Total Wealth Planner™ provides educational financial planning and decision support, not regulated recommendations on specific financial products. Where regulated or other specialist advice is needed, the appropriate professional should be involved.
