The best outcomes are unlikely to happen by chance
Planning for the future helps deliver better outcomes, allowing you to Live More.
A good financial plan starts with you, with your own life plan. This is about what you do and why you do it, what you want your lifestyle to look like now, and where you want to go in the future. We help focus on this, to move beyond short-termism, to achieve what is important to you.
Our financial planning illustrates the effect various decisions / actions will have on your future; our Financial Forecasting tools provide graphical and insightful visualisations of these impacts over time. We transform our client’s perspectives, giving an alternative way of seeing the world and to See Clearly new possibilities for the future.
Financial lives can often be disparate and unconnected – multitudes of products, mountains of paperwork and no clear overarching plan - causing stress and unease. We organise financial lives, allowing you to Take Control, replacing stress with confidence and clarity.
A disjointed financial life with no overall plan in place is far less likely to be optimally structured. Bringing all your resources (both human and financial) together and refocussing on them on your ‘Why’, leads to better outcomes and better chances of living the life you want. Live More.
Areas of Planning
Financial Planning is at the centre of virtually everything Collingbourne does; it is the context through which all decisions are made. In building your Financial Plan, these are just some of the areas we may look at;
Retirement planning / financial independence
Usually the biggest transition in someone’s life and one that needs careful planning. What do you want your life to look like in retirement; what will you do and how much will that cost? What financial resources will you need to fulfil that and when can you accumulate that by? Do you already have it?
For those already retired, could you afford to spend or give away more to achieve your goals? Are your retirement plans sustainable?
Our Financial Forecasting can help you answer these questions, make the most of your resources and help you live the life you want with financial peace of mind.
Risk and returns on capital / investments
How much risk are you taking with your invested capital? Is this appropriate for you and your financial circumstances? Is the expected return on these assets sufficient to meet your financial plans? Are you getting the return you should - after costs and tax - for the risk you are taking?
Our ‘Risk Budget’ process can help you decide how much risk you should take, based on your emotional tolerance, capacity to accept risk and need for returns. Our Investment Management services can provide insight and analysis into the level of risk your investments are currently taking and whether you are getting fair levels of return.
Contingency Planning
The biggest risk to most people’s financial lives - prior to achieving financial independence - is that of death or serious illness. The loss of income from an earner (or childcare and support from a non-earner), either through death or disability, can be disastrous to a family if the appropriate plans are not put in place.
Our Financial Forecasting can help assess what financial resources you would require in the event of death or disability, to keep your financial plans on track should disaster strike. We can then ensure the appropriate contingency policies and assurances are in place to meet these requirements.
Tax Planning
Tax is one of life’s certainties and saving it shouldn’t be an objective in and of itself – we always focus on what your financial plans are actually for. However, your affairs should always be structured in an efficient manner.
By not unnecessarily incurring avoidable tax, the use of your resources can be maximised to best achieve your plans. This can involve taking advantage of the reliefs and exemptions available to you and locating assets and their associated income and gains in the most appropriate structures and ownership.
Business profit extraction / remuneration
The key asset for most business owners is their business; it must be fully incorporated in financial planning and harnessed effectively, to achieve objectives. A key decision is over what to reinvest within the business and what to withdraw. Broadly your business will generate your wealth and your other assets will protect it.
Once this has been decided, it is a case of how to access those funds effectively. We work closely with tax advisors on how to draw amounts, when and through what vehicle (e.g. employer pension contributions). This is particularly important around the time of exiting the business, however this is achieved (e.g. sale, winding-up, MBO etc).
Estate & Legacy Planning
Good legacy planning is basically about getting the right money into the right hands at the right time. Having first planned to protect your own lifestyle for the rest of your life/lives, we can help work out how much surplus wealth, if any, you may have now or in the future, to achieve your legacy goals.
You can then consider what you would like that wealth to achieve - the people you want to benefit and the effect on their lives you want to achieve. It’s vital to get the right ownership and control structures in place to achieve this, and of course to save Inheritance tax where possible.
Book a 15 minute consultation with Martin Strutt.
Talk to our Financial Planners about how to improve and plan for your financial future. Our Financial Planners:
Put the client first – in our office when we discuss a particular issue for a client the most clarifying question we ask is “if we were the client what would we do in this situation?”
Fierce independence – our only criteria for working with service providers and other professionals is that they deliver great solutions for our clients at a competitive price (even when at some inconvenience to ourselves)