How to Help Your Clients Achieve Financial Well Being With Their Refund

Tax season may be over, but as a trusted financial advisor, working with your tax clients is a year-round project. You can help your clients start planning to take an important step toward improving their financial lives by making recommendations regarding how to responsibly manage their tax refund next year. Encouraging clients to use some of their tax refund to pay down debt, or to save, can have a tremendous impact on their financial well being.

We have gathered some of the best resources from both within our Intuit® ProConnect™ files and other sources on the web to help you explain to your clients the benefits and next steps of how to manage their tax refund. They are listed below. You know your clients, their concerns and their lives the best, so while all of these won’t be the best fit for all of your clients, we hope you can find helpful resources for each of your clients, no matter where they are in their financial journey.

Should your client be paying down debt?

• Think Ahead. Plan for the Future: If your clients aren’t sure whether paying down their debt is the right step for them, this document explains many of the benefits to them. It is a great document to talk through as a first step in your conversation.
• Debt Repayment Worksheet: This document can help you talk with your client about their debt and their goals, as well as help set a plan for them to achieve their goals.

Should your client be saving?

• Showing Clients Why Tax Time is the Right Time to Save: This is a great resource on the state of savings in the United States. While it does include some basic information for volunteer tax preparers, it also includes some speaking points that may be useful for professional tax preparers who want to educate their clients on this topic.
• Savings Worksheet: This worksheet can help you take your clients step by step in setting the right refund saving goals for them.

Should your clients be planning for retirement?

Outliving Money is a Top Retirement Concern: This blog post shares top client concerns related to retirement, as well as top strategies planners employ when helping clients plan for retirement.

Once you have built out a plan with your clients, you can work with them to stay on track and revisit their goals, as necessary. This blog post on “4 Easy Ways to Stick to Tax Resolutions” offers some tricks to help your clients work toward their goals.

We hope these resources help you breach difficult topics with your clients so that you can better educate them on how to approach tax refund management responsibly, and help them plan ahead for a better financial future.