Planning clients act on between meetings. Analysis only your advisors deliver.

What planning does for your firm

Two layers of planning

Athena splits planning the way your firm already works. Clients get the everyday plan in your app, always current and easy to act on. Your advisors get the deeper analysis and the formal report — the work that shows why a client pays for advice.

A plan for every household

A plan document captures one moment, and most firms can only afford to build one for the top of their book. With Athena, every household gets a plan the moment its accounts are linked, and it keeps itself current as balances, income, debts, and goals change.

More than twenty planning engines run on one household model — retirement and Social Security, cash, debt and credit, college, tax, insurance, home, and estate — so every recommendation knows about the rest of the household’s money. Your hundredth smaller account is on a plan just like your largest client, with no advisor hours spent producing it. How the engines work is in our planning methodology guide.

One clear next step

Between meetings, clients act on one clear step, not a binder. Athena ranks every recommendation by how much it will improve the household’s financial health, and your app shows the top one first: capture the employer match, build the cash cushion, pay down the expensive debt.

When a client asks why, Athena AI explains it in your firm’s voice. Each step moves their Financial Health Score when they act, so progress feels real and they keep coming back. How the score is built is in our Financial Health Score guide.

Every spare dollar gets a job

Most planning stops at a chart. Athena places the dollar. When a household has money to spare, Athena ranks every place it could go in one order, by after-tax benefit and the household’s financial health, and shows the client exactly where it goes next.

1. 01

   Employer match

   Free money first, before optional extra debt payments.

2. 02

   Expensive debt

   Overdue and high-rate balances, in the right order.

3. 03

   Emergency fund

   A cash cushion sized to the household.

4. 04

   Roth or pre-tax

   The right account for their age and tax bracket.

College savings and new accounts sit in the same ranking, so clients never have to guess between competing goals — and your advisors never have to referee them.

Advanced planning for your advisors

The app handles the everyday. When a household faces a bigger decision — when to retire, whether to convert to Roth, whether the estate plan still fits — your advisors open the advanced tools in Mission Control. They work from the same household record the client sees, so nothing is re-keyed, and every result can become a report the client keeps.

That is the value clients can’t get from an app on their own, and the reason the relationship is worth paying for.

Monte Carlo on your firm’s assumptions

Run a retirement simulation on any household in seconds: 1,000 market paths by default, up to 2,000, with correlated returns across asset classes. See the chance of success, the range of outcomes from the 10th to the 90th percentile, and the chance of running out of money by age.

Because every projection on your book runs on your firm’s own capital market assumptions — held-away accounts included — the numbers your advisors show match your investment view, not a vendor’s default.

Tax planning that compares strategies

Show a client what a Roth conversion is worth before they make it. Athena compares conversion strategies side by side against doing nothing, over a horizon of up to 40 years:

1. 01

   Fill the current bracket

   Convert up to the top of the household’s bracket each year.

2. 02

   Stop before IRMAA

   Convert without pushing Medicare premiums into a higher tier.

3. 03

   Stop before NIIT

   Stay under the net investment income tax threshold.

4. 04

   Spread until RMDs

   Even out conversions before required distributions begin.

Your advisors can add realized gains, charitable giving and QCDs, and withdrawals from each account type, and see RMDs, IRMAA room, standard versus itemized deductions, estimated payments, and state tax in the same view. Each case saves to the household and prints as a branded tax planning report. These are planning estimates for advice conversations, not tax preparation.

Wills, trusts, and insurance reviewed

Upload a client’s will, trust, powers of attorney, and insurance policies, and Athena reads them, adds what it finds to the household, and flags what deserves a conversation.

• Estate documents

  A will that’s out of date or written for another state, no guardian for minor children, no successor executor or trustee, or a trust that still needs funding.

• Beneficiaries

  Account and life insurance beneficiaries that don’t match the will, a missing contingent, or a minor or the estate named directly.

• Life and disability

  Group life that won’t follow a job change, a policy loan eating into the death benefit, or a long disability waiting period.

• Home, auto, and umbrella

  Dwelling and liability limits, uninsured motorist coverage, deductibles against cash on hand, and whether an umbrella is needed.

Statements, tax documents, and prior plans go in the same way, so a new client’s stack of paper becomes a plan before the first meeting.

The plan report your clients expect

When the analysis is done, your advisor generates a full financial plan report, branded with your firm’s logo and colors — the deliverable clients expect from a planning engagement. It covers the household’s health and what to do first, then each area of their financial life: balance sheet and cash flow, retirement, investments and risk, tax, every kind of insurance, debt and credit, education, and each estate document. Sections fill from the household’s own data, so the report fits the client instead of padding every chapter.

Retirement simulation reports go further, with every scenario compared, the year-by-year table, your firm’s capital market assumptions, the methodology, and versioned disclosures. Share either from Mission Control and it lands in the client’s documents in your app; a copy is archived for your records.

Reviews that start with progress

Because clients act between meetings, reviews stop being a reset. Your advisor opens Mission Control and sees what changed for the household, what the client already did, and the next step queued up — the emergency fund that’s now full, the debt that’s paid down, the score that climbed.

The hour goes to what’s next: the retirement scenario to walk through, the conversion to decide on, the report to hand over. Clients leave every review with proof that working with your firm is paying off, and households that see progress stay, add assets, and refer their friends.

One platform instead of a separate planning tool

Firms often buy a planning tool such as RightCapital or eMoney for the analysis and the report, then keep client data current somewhere else. With Athena, the Monte Carlo, the tax planning, the document review, and the report sit on the same household record as the client app, Mission Control, and investing, so the plan your advisor presents is the plan the client acts on.

Planning ties into the rest of the platform: next steps show up in the client app, your advisors work exceptions in Mission Control, and tax decisions connect to tax-aware investing. See why firms choose a single platform on Why Athena.