Financial Planning

Good financial planning is simply about analysing your needs, with suitable rigour, then getting a strategy in place, before considering whether you need products to make it work

Sounds obvious, but traditional financial advice focuses on the product sale first and incentivises advisers to fast forward to that bit. We place a lot of emphasis on your lifetime cashflow planning. Most of the value we add is in our spreadsheets (spreadsheets on steroids, using market leading cashflow planning tools). You probably have income, outgoings, assets, liabilities, and goals. We can help you get these all to line up, to serve your plans in the best way across all the different phases of your life.

'What’s your number? Tell me what’s your number'

It starts big – what does your access to capital and income look like over your whole life? Do you have enough money to spend what you want when you want? This will involve discussions, and building plans, around how much you’re saving, when you might retire, whether to save or invest or pay off debt.

Then you’re into the detail, which is also important, but it should all serve the bigger goals. Clever investment and tax planning strategies are no good if they aren’t the right kind of clever for you. If you’re investing, what is the right approach to risk and return? What is the most tax efficient way to structure things?

We’re big believers in incremental gains – most people can achieve their goals through disciplined investing, to a plan, with properly managed risk, and by making the most of all your tax allowances.

The truth is you probably don’t need edgy tax saving schemes or ultra-risky investments to meet your goals. You just need a good plan and help sticking to it.

That last bit is important. Because no plan survives contact with the enemy, we do our best work for clients when we have an ongoing relationship where we review things regularly, and where we can add value over many years.

We really believe that it’s never too late (or too early) to build a financial plan. Here’s what a lot of our clients look like when they first engage with us:

• You might be funding pensions and ISAs, but not have much of a sense of what it is all going to translate into further down the line - for example, what retirement will look like and when, realistically, it might be.
• Wealth is often built up without too much thought about how it all slots together. Perhaps it’s spread across various pensions from past employment, with an assortment of product features and investment approaches. It can be hard to keep tabs on whether everything is still set up in the best way for you.
• Are the costs reasonable? Older plans can have charges that are a much higher than what you could pay now for something similar.
• What are you invested in? How are you measuring performance? What are the expected returns and how much risk are you taking in exchange?

Your capital is at risk. The value of your investments (and any income from them) can go down as well as up and you may not get back the full amount you invested. Investments should be considered over the longer term and should fit in with your overall attitude to risk and financial circumstances.