Have you been wondering about financial planning and how it could help you and your family live a better life? In this guide we are setting out to help you learn about financial planning, what it is, and how it can make a positive difference to you and your loved ones in a number of ways.
What is financial planning?
If you are looking for information about financial planning, the first question you will probably ask is what it entails.
Financial planning involves working with a qualified financial planner. This is a specialist financial adviser who helps individuals, families and business owners achieve specific goals. Such goals might include providing for a comfortable retirement, reducing tax liabilities, helping family onto the property ladder, buying a holiday home or maximising investments.
A financial planner will set you out a roadmap designed to help you reach your goals. They will guide you on an ongoing basis, ensuring the strategy they have come up with for you continues to perform. Financial planning covers a range of tactics, from estate and pension planning to tax advice, investment management and cash flow forecasting, to budgeting and optimising savings.
So that’s all about financial planning, in summary. Now let’s take a look at six things you might never have known about it.
Financial planning can:
1. Save you money
Professional financial planning can save you money in a number of ways. For example, it can help reduce tax liabilities, such as Inheritance Tax or Capital Gains Tax. It can also help you avoid making costly mistakes with investments, and generally streamline your finances.
2. Help reduce risks
Good financial planning can help you make savings in some areas that will benefit you in others. For example, you may be able to reduce a certain expense that will enable you to take out an insurance policy that replaces lost income should a key earner in the family become unable to work.
3. Help you save for a rainy day
There’s nothing worse than an expensive surprise, or a sudden change in financial circumstances, such as redundancy. A financial planner will help you manage your finances so that you are able to cope in emergencies, for example by advising you to choose investments with good liquidity that can be used at short notice when needed.
4. Assist you in choosing the right types of investments
A good financial planner will take into account all of your personal and family circumstances, financial goals, and attitude to risk. Only when they are satisfied that they have a complete picture will they recommend investments that suit your needs and ambitions.
5. Help ensure your family’s security
Providing for your family in the future is a key aspect of financial planning. Making sure that your loved ones will be taken care of financially should something happen to you is vital. A financial planner will help you choose the right insurance products, but more than this, will look at the full picture. From putting strategies in place to reduce Inheritance Tax payable when you die so that your family can get the most out of your estate, to appointing guardians and setting up trusts to take care of younger family members should you become unable to, they will ensure every base is covered.
6. Help you achieve the retirement of your dreams
Most people have personal dreams for when they finish work for good. Financial planning for retirement will help you get closer to those dreams by determining your spending needs and setting out your likely income, and then coming up with a strategy to make everything work. It may be that your retirement planner suggests ways to boost your income in retirement, or advises on paying more into your plan. Whatever advice you get will be fully tailored to your individual circumstances.
Partridge Muir & Warren: Your Trusted Financial Planners in Surrey
PMW has been advising the people of Surrey about financial planning since 1969. As chartered financial planners, we are noted for our dedication to the industry.
Our financial planning service is delivered by a respected team of chartered financial advisers, investment administrators, tax advisers and legal specialists, all totally committed to protecting your wealth, and assisting you in reaching your personal financial goals.
If you would like more information about financial planning and the service provided by the team at PMW, you are welcome to get in touch.