Val Kumagai, BES, CFP ^®

Moving forward with a Team and a Plan

We began this process feeling very stressed out. Life felt completely overwhelming, and we had no idea where to start. We came to Val with a ton of questions and a difficult situation.

By our first meeting Val had put together a list of places to start and had begun to reach out to various professionals for us to interview as part of our team. She made sure that we had enough knowledge to make a good decision ourselves.

I’ve been managing my own money for a while and felt like I had a good understanding of our family’s finances. Working with Val opened up a whole new world of understanding and made me feel more secure moving forward.

Val worked patiently with us through this process, gave us so much information and helped us get organized. We are so incredibly grateful for all the help she provided us. We would still be trying to figure out where to start without her!

I was hesitant about the fees but Val far exceeded our expectations and we feel like we ended up receiving great value.

– Kelley R

One of the Best Investments of my Life

This was truly one of the best investments of my life.

I do not feel as overwhelmed and am feeling more comfortable and confident about my financial plan and reaching my goals.

Val took the time to learn about me as a person first, not just my finances. Additionally, not once was there any indication I should have completed or done some financial adjustments earlier in my life. She treated me as an individual and was willing to work with my challenges and share some ideas that would allow me to work with what I had.

– KB, RN

Feeling more confident & plan is coming together

Prior to working with Val on my pension decisions and financial plan, I had a lot of uncertainty and anxiety about money along with guilt, driven by my perception of how well (or not) I was doing managing my finances. I think I am now on my way to being “not stressed.” I feel more comfortable engaging with fiscal issues, and my anxiety has greatly decreased. Even though I have a lot of logistical work to complete as my plan comes together, I am not fearful as Val has helped me incredibly with planning and prioritizing.

Val is an incredible coach. I really had the feeling she was in my corner. I felt trust in her advice and that she cared about my life and future.

I felt that Val’s ability to explain financial issues to me was excellent. She is an incredible educator and offered a very humanized entry point in to the world of financial planning and money matters. I look forward to continuing to work with her.

– OS, Professor female

A Different Approach

We were both in a place where we needed to try a different approach when dealing with our finances. We were lacking confidence and feeling worried, unprepared, disorganized and guilty. Thinking about the future was often overwhelming.

Val was wonderful and very supportive. She is a great resource and really cared about our progress in meeting our identified financial goals. Our stress has eased greatly and we feel much better about our plans to reach our goals. Our confidence related to financial decisions has improved and I’m sure will continue to increase.

We appreciate having a plan and better oversight and tools as these have been key to managing our finances and goals. We intend to continue to work with Val to stay accountable to our plan.

– Sarah K.

We now have a plan!

Val is very pleasant, professional, knowledgeable, competent, organized and helpful. We think she is great and look forward to continuing to work with her during the coming year. We greatly appreciated all of her data analyses and suggestions.

We now have a retirement plan that factors in various sources of income and expenditures. The decisions made suit our situation and goals and we also learned important information about our life insurance.

All of our questions and concerns were addressed through the engagement and we plan to continue to work with Val as we work to complete some action steps.

– Sharon and Marco

Less Stressed and More Confident

We were feeling disorganized and confused about our financial picture before working with Val. We now feel more confident and less stressed and have plans to reach our goals.

Val has been tremendous. We have many more tools to make better decisions. Given our knowledge base, we will continue to learn as we go.

We feel we received good value and plan to continue to work will Val on an ongoing basis.

– Monica

No Longer Feeling Lost in my Finances

Prior to starting with Val, I felt so lost, stressed and anxious about my finances. She was incredible at simplifying everything, putting it into perspective and making it easier to understand how to make better financial decisions while still having a life balance. I now feel much more confident about reaching my goals.

As a young self-employed person, I feel like the systems and plans we created give me confidence that I am moving in the right direction and my stress level is definitely lower. I walked away from each meeting feeling well informed, with enough guidance to not feel overwhelmed.

I plan to continue to work with Val this year to ensure I stay on track with my goals. We’ve done so much with all the sessions so far that I’m not willing to let something so impactful in my life go just yet!

I can’t stress enough how incredible Val has been in my life. Her level of financial knowledge, her planning, competence and overall patience with me has been so amazing and I will forever be grateful for her guidance.

– Dan

Optimizing my financial well being

After working with Val, we feel more confident and less stressed about our finances. We are saving for a rental property and feel informed about how this purchase will affect our cash flow. Val also helped ensure our RSPs were set up in the most tax-efficient manner and that our estate documents are in order. Val did a great job explaining the process and logic behind her recommendations. We plan to continue working with Val to optimize our financial well being. I would recommend working with a Money Coach to anyone feeling uncertain about their finances.

– T.S. – Teacher and Artist

Confidence and Return on Investment

Having inherited money that would be added to existing savings and investments, I was feeling a lack of confidence around upcoming financial decisions and understanding how these would impact our retirement goals. I wanted to avoid feeling like “I wish I’d known that” in future years.

Val’s impressive in-meeting communications and professional expertise have increased our awareness of both our over-arching financial landscape as well as the interconnecting details. She accommodated and navigated varying viewpoints and goals sensitively and respectfully.

She instinctively recognized my need for a high level of detail and provided more than expected, ensuring all aspects were thoroughly addressed and confirming understanding as we went along.

The retirement plan developed, including details around tax strategies, provides confidence as well as simplicity for us to implement.

I am confident that this investment will return many-fold through the tax, pension and investment strategies that Val has presented. We very much enjoyed working with Val and would recommend her services without hesitation.

– Shelley S.

Excellent Financial Advice

Val Kumagai was a great resource and provided excellent financial advice, processes and support in a professional and caring manner. I highly recommend her services.

– Tina

Valuable advice

Before working with Val, we were feeling uncertain about our future financial picture. Val has been extremely thorough and helped set us up to make better decisions. She addressed all of our questions and concerns patiently and thoughtfully. We now feel more confident about the steps needed to reach our goals and have an actionable plan. We plan to continue to work with Val to stay engaged and keep on track. We would recommend working with a Money Coach and feel we received valuable advice.

– David

Clarity on my business and personal finances

I started with no knowledge at all, and my finances were feeling very chaotic. Val helped to clarify so much for me and created a system I can use to organize my business and personal finances and plan for any future uncertainty. I also have a retirement plan, which I didn’t have before, and I feel more confident that I will be able to reach my goals.

Val has been amazing, I’m so grateful that it was her who walked me through this process. Very responsive, supportive, non-judgemental, and knowledgeable. She was also able to teach me things I have tried to learn in the past but had not been able to “grasp”.

As a self-employed individual, I would recommend investing in Money Coaching services to others running their own businesses.

– Carly P.

Valuable retirement planning advice

We were feeling a lack of confidence regarding making good next steps as we approached retirement and we reached out to obtain a new and unbiased perspective. We now feel like we have an action plan and a better understanding of our current financial picture as well as a retirement projection that is realistic and comfortable.

Overall, Val stays very neutral and provides advice on the impact of all options. This gives us the information we need to make better financial decisions.

We really like Val’s approach to finance and the results from our meetings. It has been a positive experience and we plan to maintain this relationship and continue to work with Val going forward.

– Donna and Evan