Zooming towards a plan

I had some Zoom calls with clients this week about personal financial planning.

I’m joined at the meetings by an Independent Financial Advisor (IFA). He’s the expert and runs the meetings and I observe and occasionally chip in if the conversation strays into my realm of a client’s business interests or tax matters.

My IFA buddy and I have been doing these meetings together for a few years now. What strikes me is that surprisingly few people plan their finances and align the management of these with the their personal life goals.

Stuff just tends to happen. 

We have various jobs and accumulate several pensions. Maybe we invest in a buy to let property because it seemed like a good opportunity at the time or we inherited mum and dad’s house and decided to let it out. We have a few ISAs and maybe some premium bonds. We were made redundant from our last job and started the consulting business. We still have a hefty mortgage on the family home. 

And we don’t have a plan.

This is a typical scenario for a reasonably ‘successful’ person in their 50s. They have a patchwork of assets, active and potential income streams but they are not joined together into a coherent strategy.

Often its at this stage that people will start to think they need a plan. 

Maybe they’d like to retire and they don’t know if they can afford it. Maybe they want to help the kids out now and leave them a reasonable inheritance. Maybe they just want to travel the world and enjoy life when they still can.

This is where a good IFA can really add value by pulling all the strands together and helping to construct a plan. I’ve seen cases where an advisor has been able to present options which individuals had not considered or thought would be unrealistic. 

In short, a good plan can be transformational. It can bring clarity, open up new horizons and turn possibilities into realities.

Not everyone is ready to commit to a plan of course and many people will leave our meetings still undecided and will carry on as before. 

An exploratory meeting can be a great way of unblocking the inertia. An external expert looking at your situation and putting forward some options you may not have considered can be a catalyst for change.

That change, in the context of a plan which can then be implemented, can be the difference between muddling through and living life as you really want to.

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