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What it is
A plain-language planning tool built for Chief & Council. It shows what a settlement can do for members today and for seven generations, using your own numbers, in minutes.
Little Tree Capital
Little Tree Capital
See what your settlement can do, for your people today and for those not yet born.
A plain-language planning tool built for Chief & Council. It shows what a settlement can do for members today and for seven generations, using your own numbers, in minutes.
Shaped the planner around how Nations really plan capital: many priorities, limited cash, and a series of smaller payments for planning, feasibility and design before the big build. She also brought the multi-year planning approach it follows.
Contributed the financial foundations from their teaching notebooks: moving money through time, building diversified portfolios, and simulating thousands of possible futures. They also framed the liquidity planning at the heart of Step 3.
The vision: to demystify and democratize financial complexity for our communities, so every Nation can see its choices clearly and decide for itself.
Survival was the strategy.
Keeping money "safe" made sense when survival was the goal. Over a generation, safe has a cost.
Illustrative only: compound growth at steady average yearly returns, before possible fees. Real returns rise and fall year to year. Not a forecast or a guarantee.
Traditionally, wealth was making sure future generations were protected, fed, connected, and strong.
You don't have to choose between today and tomorrow. Choose the balance. Every amount here is in today's dollars.
Wealth ≠ Greed.
Wealth = Capacity.
Land · Education · Business · Language · Culture
List what the Nation wants to fund and build, in order of priority. The planner checks each one against the fund, year by year, and shows what's affordable now, what fits if it starts a little later, and what needs a partner. Enter each building project in three phases (planning and feasibility, design, then building), each with its own cost and year, because the smaller early payments come well before the big construction payment.
How the planner decides. Priorities are checked from the top down. An item is funded only if, at the expected return, the fund stays above your protected amount in every year for the next 60 years, so today's plans never borrow from our grandchildren. If it doesn't fit, the planner tries starting it up to 10 years later. Confidence then tests the plan against 1,000 possible markets, good and bad. The examples are illustrative; replace them with the Nation's own priorities and estimates.
Clarity changes what becomes possible.
Change any number and watch what happens. Adapted from financial-literacy notebooks shared by our trusted partners.
Money invested today grows, so a payment promised in the future is worth less than the same amount in hand today. This is how you compare money across time.
Bring every future payment back to today's dollars and subtract what you put in. If the total (the net present value) is above zero, the investment earns more than the money would elsewhere. The IRR is the return at which it just breaks even.
Put in what a program costs each year and work backwards to what must be set aside today. If the fund earns more than inflation, a large enough fund can pay for the program every year, forever.
Picture two investments. One is steady, like bonds: it earns about 5% a year and barely moves. The other grows faster, like stocks: about 15% a year, but with big ups and downs. When they don't rise and fall at the same time, the dips in one are softened by the other. So adding a little of the faster one can make the whole mix safer and better-paying than the steady one on its own.
Now five kinds of investments: hedge funds, real assets, global stocks, bonds and cash. Each dot is one possible mix of them. Higher dots earn more; dots further right swing more. The best mixes sit along the top-left edge, giving the most return for the risk. The ★ marks the best balance of growth and safety.
Building-block returns, swings and correlations come from our trusted partners' teaching dataset and are for learning only.
Every investor has a thousand places their money could go, and nobody can predict next month's markets. So instead of guessing, we play the future forward a thousand times, each with its own ups and downs around the long-term average, and see where the money is likely to land. That turns a guess into a confident choice. It's called a Monte Carlo simulation.
How we walk together.
Every question is welcome. Ask about your numbers, or the ideas behind them, in your own words.
The AI planner sees the numbers on this page and nothing else, and answers in plain language. It's a learning tool, not financial advice.
Answers are generated by AI and can be wrong. For decisions, talk with your Little Tree team and your own advisors.
Build it better.
Turn what Council has decided into a written Investment Policy Statement: the rules the fund lives by.
An Investment Policy Statement is the Nation's written rulebook for its fund: what it is for, how much risk is acceptable, what it will and won't invest in, and how Council stays involved. Answer eleven short questions. The planner combines your answers with the numbers above and writes a first draft you can edit, save and take to your advisors.
Click any wording in the draft to edit it before saving. Highlighted text still needs a decision from Council.
The next 150 years cannot look like the last 150 years.
Your Little Tree team, Mike David and Michelle Bryant-Gravelle, can sit with Council and finance staff to load the Nation's actual priorities and costs, and begin an Investment Policy Statement together.
An illustrative planning and learning tool from Little Tree Capital. Not financial or legal advice. Returns are assumptions, not promises; investments can lose value. Lessons adapted from financial-literacy notebooks shared by our trusted partners. · Start over with the original numbers
