Although Wall Street tries to convince us that financial planning is too complicated for an ordinary Main Street citizen to understand, financial planning is not rocket science. This story provides a process map or flow chart for the entire financial planning process. Each process step in the flow chart then becomes a separate chapter. For each chapter, a list of the best books, best articles, and best short stories are given so you can explore each step in more detail. You can select the process steps that you are most interested in and then read the supporting books, articles, and short stories to quickly learn more details about those particular steps. The financial planning flow chart used in this short story is tailored towards retirement planning. The same basic process can also be easily modified and applied to the goal of saving adequate funds to pay for your children’s college expenses.