The Bucket Plan® Philosophy

The Bucket Plan® is a holistic financial planning process developed by Jason L Smith, Chief Visionary | Executive Chairman & Founder of Prosperity Capital Advisors. The Bucket Plan® works to incorporate all the client’s assets into one comprehensive financial plan.

This three-bucket approach helps clients segment money into “Now,” “Soon,” and “Later” categories aligned with their needs.

This plan addresses distinct needs by categorizing assets based on income, time horizon, and tax qualifications:

• Estate planning
• Insurance
• Investments
• Medicare
• Retirement
• Social Security
• Taxes

The key to a successful Bucket Plan® is strategically positioning and then protecting a portion of your client’s assets. You buy them a time horizon that allows you to invest the remainder for long-term financial growth and protection.

And you use three buckets to do so: Now, Soon, and Later — the foundation of The Bucket Plan® philosophy that balances liquidity, safety, and long-term growth.

This is the client’s safe and liquid money that they keep at a bank in a checking, savings, or money market account. The Now Bucket has three primary purposes:

• Emergency fund
• Planned expenses over the next few years
• Income for the first year of retirement

The Now Bucket contains easily accessible funds for planned and unexpected expenses in the first few years of retirement.

Because this bucket achieves minimal returns that likely won’t keep pace with inflation, the goal is to fund it appropriately — not overfill it.

The Soon Bucket is intended to contain the money your client will use sooner rather than later.

For younger clients, this is money they could access penalty-free if needed. For those retired or approaching retirement, it funds their first retirement phase:

• Charitable giving
• College planning
• Expenses
• Healthcare
• Insurance

This bucket is designed for the first 10 years of retirement, plus an inflationary hedge.

Its typically invested conservatively to offset your client’s increasing cost of living and to avoid the risk of withdrawing at a market low.

Your client has purchased a time horizon with the money in the Now and Soon Buckets.

The Later Bucket is meant to hold money they won’t need until the later years of retirement, allowing you to invest it in more long-term, growth-oriented positions:

• Annuities
• Estate planning
• Legacy planning
• Long-term care
• Medicare
• Social Security

As the client draws down the Soon Bucket, the Later Bucket replenishes it.

This is also where you educate clients on long-term care, disability, and legacy planning, a critical step in delivering a truly comprehensive plan.

We provide a broad selection of live, on-demand, and virtual training resources covering proven turnkey planning processes, best-interest financial planning and documentation, and operational strategies that help increase client conversion and retention.

During The Bucket Plan® 1.0 training, you learn how to navigate market volatility, taxes, inflation, and increasing life expectancies that challenge your clients’ financial goals.

This two-day training addresses these challenges by providing a proven process to effectively segment clients’ assets, accounting for vital factors:

• Income needs
• Time horizon
• Tax qualifications during the different phases of retirement

This process provides everything you need to document and implement the Bucket Plan® process in your own office:

• Educational materials outlining core client concepts, including the money cycle and pyramid of risk
• Worksheets for uncovering, subcategorizing, and inventorying all client assets for a successful retirement plan
• Cash-flow assessment documents for determining supplemental income needs
• Volatility tolerance analysis tool for determining investment risk comfort levels

Demonstrate your commitment to professional education and holistic planning.

Expanding upon The Bucket Plan® process, this training teaches you how to monetize your wisdom. You provide a competitive breadth of service to your clients in all areas of their financial well-being:

• Investments
• Insurance
• Taxes
• Estate planning
• Social Security
• Retirement income
• Healthcare planning

This step-by-step process for providing holistic planning simplifies the service you can provide, all while focusing on your clients’ best interest. During the event, you learn how to take crucial steps:

• Position the value of holistic advising to become a trusted client consultant.
• Deliver added value to introduce planning fees effectively.
• Integrate insurance, investments, taxes, and estate planning into a comprehensive plan.
• Create value and understanding with a packaged plan deliverable.
• Identify new opportunities with existing clients as annual reviews.

Take the next step to becoming a top financial advisor.

Following The Bucket Plan® training, you have the opportunity to increase your credibility by earning the BPC designation and CE credits.

The BPC designation is a FINRA-recognized professional designation, which indicates to clients that you’ve elevated your skill set. You’re a truly holistic advisor, delivering a best-interest planning process and a comprehensive financial plan.

To become BPC, you must have a bachelor’s degree or at least two years of industry experience and a life insurance license.

You must also hold at least one of the following:

• CFA®
• CFP®
• ChFC®
• Series 6
• Series 7
• Series 63
• Series 65

Additionally, you must undertake other tasks:

• Complete introductory and advanced e-learning courses and pass the included knowledge assessment.
• Fully attend The Bucket Plan 1.0 two-day training.
• Pass a comprehensive and proctored final exam.

The BPC designation is active for one year. You must have equivalent requirements combined with additional coursework to maintain the designation. We teach BPC advisors to use a set of planning tools that ensure a holistic financial planning process for your client.

Because an informed client makes better decisions, The Bucket Plan® emphasizes how to educate them on key concepts, such as the money cycle and sequence of returns risk.

The resulting plan accounts for your client’s income needs, time horizon, volatility tolerance, and tax situation. The outcome is a personalized and product-agnostic financial plan.