ELISA Questionnaire

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Basics

1. Name: *

2. Email Address: *

3. Are you a US taxpayer?

4. Where is your primary residence (state/country)?

5. How old are you (and your spouse, if married)?

6. If you have children or other beneficiaries, how many and how old are they?

7. What questions, or types of questions, are you hoping to answer with this exercise?

Risk Aversion

For each question below, please choose the answer closest to your actual preference. For these questions, we suggest focusing less on the questions' specific setup and phrasing, and more on how you weight the underlying scenarios in terms of how much the change in spending would impact you.

8. A demon sneaks into your bedroom and proposes a coin flip: heads you get to increase your annual spending by 20%, tails you have to decrease it by 20%. How much of your annual spending would you pay to make him go away?

9. You're shown an investment opportunity, and you're certain it's 50/50 that it'll work out. If it works out, you'll become a multi-billionaire. If it doesn't work out, you'll lose everything you put into it. What is the maximum fraction of your wealth you would invest?

10. Suppose you could take a bet: 50% chance your annual spending increases by 50%, but 50% chance it decreases. What is the largest spending decrease you'd be willing to risk?

Balance Sheet

11. What's your approximate net worth, if possible divided between:

Primary Residence:

What would you estimate its fair market rent to be?

Other residential real estate:

Investment real estate:

Taxable investments:

Non-taxable investments (Traditional):

Non-taxable investments (ROTH):

Bank accounts or Cash equivalents:

Other:

12. About how much unrealized gains are in taxable assets?

Income

13. About how long do you expect to continue having earned income (if at all)?

14. What average pre-tax income do you expect to earn over that period?

15. Are there different income scenarios you'd like to explore?

16. How much social security (pre-tax) do you expect to receive (jointly with your spouse) if you start receiving it at 70?

Spending

17. About how much do you currently spend (not including taxes or insurance), if possible divided between:

Fixed/non-discretionary expenses (excluding mortgage):

Mortgage:

Discretionary expenses:

18. Please describe how you would feel about the following medium-term (one to several years) changes in your annual total spending. For example: routine, annoying, painful but doable, impossible, etc.

Reduction of 1%:

Reduction of 3%:

Reduction of 5%:

Reduction of 10%:

Reduction of 20%:

Reduction of 30%:

19. If the 30% reduction is possible for you, what reduction in spending would be effectively impossible for you, or which you'd like to take no risk whatsoever of falling below?

Gifting

20. In your own words, how are you generally thinking about how much to spend on yourself vs. gifting to others (family, philanthropy, etc.)

21. If you have no more income and the only thing you can invest in is a 0% real-rate asset, then your real spending + gifting over your lifetime must equal your current wealth today (excluding taxes). In this case, if you were forced to decide right now, what fraction of your wealth would you choose to spend on yourself vs. gifting to beneficiaries?

Other

22. What else, if anything, should we know in thinking about your big-picture financial circumstances?

Upload Additional Documents

You can upload additional documents (PDFs, images, spreadsheets, etc.) when you submit the form.

Elm Lifetime Investing and Spending Questionnaire