I've got to be blunt. Your financial success depends on it.

Wall Street is feeding you a narrative that's fatally, dangerously flawed when it comes to financial planning.

They make the assumption that you're going to live this way or that and, in doing so, produce a whole bunch of fancy charts, full of calculations intended to show you how much you need to save to meet their projections.

The hope is, of course, that you'll become a valued, or should I say valuable, client – meaning you're going to generate tons of commissions to line their pockets for having prepared a deep look into your financial affairs.

The reality is very different.

Those same fancy-pants charts – which, by the way, can cost you a "planning fee" ranging from $100 to several thousand dollars – usually have the opposite impact: People realize they're so far from meeting their "goals" that they give up without even trying.

I've never liked that, but then again, I've never played by the rules, either.

That's why I'm so excited to tell you this…