What actually goes into a financial plan? The six FP Canada planning areas
Most people encounter financial planning one piece at a time — a mortgage renewal here, an RRSP question there, a "should I get more life insurance" conversation after a life event. FP Canada's Financial Planning Practice Standards describe six areas a complete plan addresses together, because they interact with each other more than the piecemeal version suggests.
The six areas, in plain language
Financial management — the everyday picture: income, spending, debt, and cash flow. Everything else in a plan is built on top of this.
Insurance & risk management — what happens if income stops unexpectedly (disability, death, illness) and whether existing coverage actually matches that risk.
Investment planning — how savings are allocated, and whether that allocation matches the timeline and purpose of the money (a house down payment next year and a retirement 30 years out shouldn't be invested the same way).
Retirement planning — whether current savings, combined with CPP, OAS, and any workplace pension, are on track to support the retirement income someone actually wants.
Tax planning — not just this year's return, but the sequencing of accounts and income sources over time (see, for example, the RRSP-vs-TFSA tradeoff, which is really a tax-planning question in disguise).
Estate planning — what happens to everything above when someone dies: wills, beneficiary designations, and whether they're actually consistent with each other.
Why the interaction matters
These areas aren't independent checkboxes. Insurance coverage affects estate planning (a gap in coverage becomes an estate problem). Tax planning affects how much retirement income is actually usable after tax. Financial management — the cash flow picture — determines whether any of the other five plans are realistic at all.
A plan that only addresses one area in isolation isn't wrong, exactly — it's just not complete, and the areas it skips can undo the value of the one it covers.
A checklist for evaluating any plan
Whether it's a document from an advisor or something generated by a tool, it's fair to ask:
- Does it address all six areas, or just the one I asked about?
- Are the areas connected to each other, or treated as separate documents?
- Does covering all six mean it's right for me? (No — completeness of coverage and suitability for your specific situation are different questions. A complete plan can still rest on assumptions that don't fit your life.)
Mensari is an educational decision-support tool, not licensed financial, tax, or legal advice. It illustrates tradeoffs based on the assumptions you provide — always confirm decisions with a qualified professional before acting.
Mensari is built directly around these six areas — the same structure FP Canada describes, run as a deterministic pipeline so the areas stay connected to each other rather than six separate answers.