Financial Planning doesn’t always involve buying financial products.
Sometimes it doesn’t even involve keeping the financial products you already have.
What it does involve is making good decisions about your financial future and it definitely involves enabling people to see if they can do what they really want to do.
Take Rosie for example.
She came to meet with us because her previous financial adviser had retired.
He had done a really good job of helping her to build an investment portfolio made up of a Stocks and Shares ISA and a General Investment Account.
She had been offered an on-going review service by the firm who had taken over from her retired adviser but she was less comfortable with them possibly because they intended to significantly increase the fees she was being charged but with no discernible increase in service.
“What is this money actually for?” I asked her. This question sometimes catches people on the back foot.
[tweet_box]”What is this money actually for?” Has your financial adviser asked this question yet?[/tweet_box]People we meet sometimes spend so much time engaged with what is happening to their investment portfolio that they don’t actually focus on what the money is meant to do for them.
Rosie gave it some thought and told me in a good deal of detail what she would really like to do.
The house she lived in was lovely but she would much prefer to move to another town in the same county where the facilities were better.
She would like to buy a modern apartment with less need for upkeep within level walking distance of the town centre and all that it had to offer.
She would keep her current home but let it out to produce a substantial rental income that would enable her to live the life that she wanted.
“Well why don’t you do that? I asked. She was surprised.
“I thought you would convince me to keep my investment portfolio and use your investment management services”, she replied.
It seems to me that this is something a lot of people expect when they come to see a Financial Planner but I frequently find that our advice is not to invest.
Why take investment risk when you don’t need to do so?
Financial Planning is a robust system of finding out exactly what a person’s relationship with money is all about.
Rosie cashed in her investment portfolio and purchased her apartment.
She secured a suitable tenant for her house and this week dropped me an email to tell me all about it.
She is fully aware that swapping her investment portfolio for a new apartment and letting out her home carries some risks, just different risks to having an investment portfolio.
It’s a real delight when money makes people happy and that happens quite often with Financial Planning.
