Patent ID: 7921048

Claim:
A method for developing a long-term financial plan using a financial modeling and counseling system accessible over a wide area network comprising: projecting expected yearly income for a period of time based on user-provided historical financial information and external market data, said historical financial information relating to user income and expenses, and said external market data including at least one of interest rates and inflation rates; projecting expected yearly expenses for said period of time based on the user-provided historical financial information and the external market data; providing investment coaching over the wide area network for any projected surplus of income after expenses, said investment coaching including investment advice, tax advice, product recommendations, and additional information for recommended products; providing financial coaching over the wide area network for any projected deficit of income after expenses, said financial coaching including tax advice, business funding advice, spending advice, and investment portfolio balancing advice; wherein the investment coaching and financial coaching are each directly provided to a user through a customized automated coaching interface, and are each directly provided to the user through customized independent counseling from a live advisor; and wherein access to the customized automated coaching interface and independent live advisor counseling is provided over the wide area network according to a user-selected service level agreement selected from a plurality of available unique service level agreements, wherein each of the available unique service level agreements includes a unique combination of amounts of accessible customized automated coaching, customized live advisor counseling, and the external market data, and wherein the user introduces life risk events into the at least one of the income and expense projections and wherein the automated coaching interface performs a life risk analysis, the life risk analysis comprising calculating an impact of the life risk events on a cash flow of the user based on the life risk events, actuarial data, the expected yearly income, and the expected yearly expenses.