Investing is about more than money

Traditionally the role of a financial adviser has been to help you grow your financial resources. This has evolved significantly in more recent times into a much broader role, as financial planners have developed the skills and the tools to provide a lot more value than this. Sitting at the heart of what we do now is helping you to identify the life that you want to live, and then through careful financial planning, guiding you on your financial journey to ensure you achieve your goals and dreams.

We believe that as part of helping you to identify the life you want to lead, it makes sense to think far beyond the traditional boundaries that might have existed. Yes your financial plan should include goals such as when you want to retire, where you want to live and how you will transfer money effectively to your loved ones. Each of these takes careful planning and sound investment of your resources. But we believe wise investment goes far beyond investing in funds, shares and other...

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Don't blow your financial future in your 40's – our 10 tips

In this first edition of our newsletter, we thought we would kick off by examining the different financial challenges faced by people at different stages in their lives. While it's never too early to start financial planning, once you hit your 40's it really has to be taken seriously to ensure you can live the life that you want to lead.

So here goes with our Top 10 Tips for managing your money in your 40’s.

 

1. Keep control of your lifestyle

For a lot of people as they enter their forties, the financial pressure starts to ease a bit. As a result of career progression and increased earnings, the bills (in particular the mortgage repayments) don’t look quite so daunting any more. And this is when people’s lifestyles can run out of control. Rather than putting their increased wealth to good use, they simply grow their lifestyle until this becomes the new “norm”. And as a result, that hard earned extra income ends up delivering zero impact to...

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What factors impact your investment returns?

Well there is no exhaustive list for this one – there really are so many potential factors that can influence your investment returns. When you ask a professional investor, they will often jump to factors such as the economy, sentiment and interest rates. All very relevant factors.

Some factors of course have bigger impacts than others. So, we’re going to set out below the factors that we see as potentially having the biggest impacts, focusing on the factors that you have some control over – either yourself or more likely with some assistance from us.

This is not an exhaustive list and these factors are not necessarily in order, however we’ll start with the factor that (maybe surprisingly to you) tends to have the biggest impact on investor returns.

 

Investor Behaviour

Are you surprised by this one? This factor definitely has the single biggest impact on investment performance. How many investors around the world panicked at the end of last year after...

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Lessons from a Mexican Fisherman

We’d like to share a story with you that originated back in 1963 when published by the German writer, Heinrich Böll. It’s a very short story, but perfectly captures one of the key messages that we stress with our clients.

The message is that while the amount of money you have or build up for the future is important, it is far more important to know the life that you want to lead and to have enough money to live that life. Otherwise, what’s the “right” amount of money to have, how much is “enough” for you? Is it €500,000, €5 million or €50 million? These are simply numbers.

Instead, it is far better to identify the life that you want lead – where you want to live, how long you want to work for, what you want to be able to do and buy in the future and how much money you want to be able to give / leave to loved ones. Once you are clear on these important life choices, we can then help you put a price on this life that...

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Claims are what count

As part of our financial planning conversations with you, we always bring the attention around to subjects that are not easy to think about – a serious illness or death visiting a family member or indeed yourself. We all naturally don’t want to spend too long thinking about this, but unfortunately for us to do our job properly it’s a subject that we simply must contemplate.

The reason for this is because we’ve seen the cost of not thinking about it. We can all picture the devastation, grief and loss that accompanies a death or serious illness. However we’ve also seen at first hand the catastrophic financial consequences that can follow. We’ve seen families losing their total income and the enormous financial impacts of a serious illness where home adaptations and specialist care services are needed. We’ve seen family members becoming carers because there are no alternatives.

So we spend time considering the best financial products to protect...

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5 ways we help you stay on track that might leave you wondering!

We are in the business of helping you to achieve the life that you want to lead, through wise management of your money and by helping you to establish sound financial behaviours. We know from experience that developing a financial plan for you is the first step to enabling you to achieve your desired lifestyle, followed by years and years of relentless and rigorous focus on this plan. It will never be achieved by short term tactical genius and taking bets.

In relation to your financial behaviours, our role is akin to being your (financial) guardian angel! The biggest factor in wealth destruction is very often the investor’s own misguided behaviours and actions. As a result the most important role that we can play is to stop you making mistakes that will impact your wealth. This is sometimes the unseen work that we do, so we thought it would be useful to give you a sense of a few ways in which we add value, without you probably even realising it!

 

1. Keeping a long-term...

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8 Great Financial Goals to improve your Lifestyle

We’re now well into 2019 and we often find that the finances of our clients settle down a bit at this time of year. The madness of Christmas is behind us,and a lot of annual financial commitments have often come and gone at the start of the year. Spring is a good time to take a step back and consider how you can maximise the impact of your financial resources in achieving your desired lifestyle.

We’ve done some thinking on this and have set out 8 ways in which careful management of your finances can positively impact your lifestyle goals.

 

1. Don’t live on the financial edge

We have come across a number of situations with new clients over the last few years in which they have relatively significant investment portfolios, but without any real liquidity. Their money is tied up in properties and other long-term investments.

One of the impacts of this is the discomfort it causes, as the conversation includes statements such as, “We’re fine once there...

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Is Income Protection really necessary?

Income Protection is sometimes described as the glue in a financial portfolio. The most devastating impact on your financial situation is likely to be caused by a loss of your income, and the inability to replace it.

Unfortunately, people lose their jobs from time to time. However inevitably what tends to happen is that these people pick up new roles elsewhere or take a new path in their careers. As a result, their income may drop for a period of time, but will usually pick up again before too long. These people are in the fortunate position of being able to work.

Being unable to work because of illness or injury is a whole other matter. Little or no costs are moved from your life, in fact new costs may emerge such as medical expenses, care fees etc. On the income side, there are social protection benefits available, but in reality these deliver no more than basic subsistence payments. So there is often a lot less money coming in, with sometimes more going out…

Income...

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Your 70's onwards – looking after yourself & others

In this final instalment of our age-related articles, it is now the turn of the more senior members of our communities – all of you in your 70’s and older. This group have some very specific financial challenges, so here are some thoughts on wisely managing your financial affairs.

 

Stay healthy

A decline in health costs money, no matter what support you get from insurance policies and the state. Your house may need to be modified, you may need to pay carers, you may need to install expensive equipment etc. There are a whole range of areas in which ill health costs money.

While of course this is not fully under your control, do everything you can to stay healthy. Eat well and continue to exercise as much as you can, even a short walk every day makes a difference. Look after your mental health too – maintain social contact with family and friends and keep your hobbies and interests going as much as you can. Staying healthy will be a boon for your finances.

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What does your future life look like?

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...

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