We hope that you have experienced the quiet evolution of our role in recent years. Going back in time, the role of the financial adviser was to help clients to identify gaps that they had in their portfolio of financial products, to find the best products to fill those gaps and to then put these products in place for clients. While this is still an important strand of what we do, our role has evolved in recent years into a much broader and more valuable service.
Now our role is one of being your financial guide, of helping you to identify the life that you want to live, and then helping you actually achieve this life. Today our most powerful conversations don’t start with a long discussion about your money – your assets and debts, your income and expenditure. Instead the conversation centres around you, yourself. Your hopes and dreams, what you want to achieve in your life and what living life on your terms looks like. When you are clear about your desired future life, only then does the conversation turn to being able to afford that life and how we can help you make the life you want a reality.
While developing a financial plan that will guide you to achieve your desired life requires all of our expertise, experience and financial planning tools, the process of achieving it is relatively straightforward. We take you through four main phases of work when working with you on our full lifestyle financial planning service.
Discovery
This is the most important of all of the stages. This is where we help you to identify and articulate your lifetime goals and ambitions, where we help you to visualise your future life in your own terms – the type of life that you will lead, the possessions that you will own, the positive impact you will have on the lives of others, what you will do and achieve in your life.
Until you know the answer to these questions, what are you financially planning for? Just building a pot of money with no idea of what it will allow you to do?
During this phase of work, we revert to the important old adage of “having two ears and one mouth for a reason”. Our role in this is to carefully ask you the right questions that will enable you to visualise your future life. And then we listen intently. It is not “airy fairy”, instead it is the most important conversation that we will have together, as we get to understand your hopes and dreams.
Planning
The second stage is where we apply our expertise and tools to develop the roadmap that will get you from where you are today to achieving the life that you want to live. As part of this, we may use some clever technology that enables us to map out your future cashflows for the rest of your life – how much money you will have every year and whether you will have enough to live the life that you want. Of course we are making a range of assumptions around this, but these assumptions will be fine-tuned during the lifetime of your plan to increase the accuracy of the forecasts.
We will show you whether you are on track to lead the life you’ve visualised, and if not what you need to do to get on track. We can demonstrate the impact of unforeseen events and how to plan for them, the impact of your goals changing and of course the actions you need to take, or financial habits and products you need to put in place to achieve the plan.
Implementation
This is the phase of work we are often most commonly associated with. It’s also the most straightforward of all of the phases. This is where we put the required financial products in place that will play a role in helping you to achieve your goals in life.
Your ongoing guidance
Regular contact and scheduled meetings sit at the heart of lifestyle financial planning. The ongoing interactions turn the plan into a real journey towards you achieving your lifetime ambitions. These regular meetings are the opportunity to review and restate your goals, consider again the assumptions used, review the progress and performance of the actions and products that were implemented, and to keep you on track in terms of your behaviours with your money and investments.
To help you stay on track, we know that we need to be with you at every turn, helping you to navigate your way towards your dreams. We value our appointment as your financial guide and will be in your corner helping you to make the best decisions possible throughout your life.
Our job is done only when you are living the life that you want to lead.
Do you know what your future life looks like and whether you will be able to lead it or not?