The idea that Financial Advice is only for hugely wealthy people making sophisticated investment decisions is a common misconception. In practice it can be beneficial throughout life, no matter how many zeros you have in your bank account!
When it comes to the serious issues in life, most people depend on experts to help them make the right decisions-and planning the financial future of you and your family and business should be no different.
The following is just a brief list of the areas where you may benefit from the value of Independent Financial Advice.
You can also read this article in Liverpool’s most read magazine YM Liverpool. Pick up a copy around the city or from our office.
Buying a home or remortgaging
An Independent Mortgage Adviser can help you work out how much you can borrow, what the cost of the loan will be and the best term to put your mortgage over.
With all the changes over the last 18 months, an adviser will conduct research with consideration to furloughed income, part time income, benefit income, agency work, contracting etc, even bad credit and with a rise in the self- employed, only an Independent Mortgage Adviser can search the whole market for the most suitable lender and product for you, completely impartial. Read more about the state of the mortgage market a year after Covid
Starting a family
An adviser can help you adjust to new circumstances, including showing you how to save money for your children’s future and taking out suitable protection, such as health and life insurance to ensure family members are not left financially burdened when they are young and vulnerable.
Starting Investing
When you want to begin saving for the future, an adviser can help with working out what type of saving is right for you, ensuring you avoid any scams or get quick rich schemes. Saving doesn’t have to involve risk and having the right amount of cash emergency fund should be the priority.
Investing for your retirement, a rainy day, holidays, dream homes, or grandchildren, all need to be balanced with your attitude to risk and your financial objectives along with ensuring you don’t pay more tax than you need to, if at all.
Starting a business
An adviser can help put your new venture on a solid financial footing, whether that’s having the right business loan in place or ensuring your family finances are in good shape in case you struggle to get the business off the ground and ensuring you have the right type of insurance cover for any unforeseen circumstances to the business or employees.
Getting Divorced
If your life changes significantly, so will your financial position. An adviser can provide financial advice to help you reorganise your finances to meet new commitments, as well as your new circumstances, along with any issues around pension benefits that may need to be shared.
Bereavement
When a loved one dies, finances quickly raise their head and there are likely to be considerable financial implications; an adviser can help you to resolve these issues, in dealing with any policies or plans that will need advice and having an impartial ear.
Planning for Retirement
Increasingly, we are expected to put by more money for old age and with personal and state pension ages being extended, an adviser can help you build up enough tax-efficient savings and investments for later life and suggest efficient ways to access them.
In Retirement an Independent adviser can help manage your existing investments and savings to ensure they continue to give you the retirement you enjoy and help protect what you have built up over your working life and examine such things as Equity Release and implications of future ill health or potential care costs and needs.
Leaving a legacy
Most of us want to be able to pass on our wealth to our families once we’ve gone; an adviser can help you plan to do that, considering potential tax liabilities your beneficiaries may be exposed to along with considering Wills, Gifts and Lasting Powers of Attorney.
Sceptics may ask ‘What’s the point of financial planning? What’s the point of any planning? We’ve just lived through the most turbulent, changeable 18 months in any of our lifetimes.’ Read the FCA Financial Lives survey-
What the last year and a half illustrates is not that there’s no point to financial planning: rather the reverse – that it is more important than ever. Pandemic or no pandemic, house sales continue, we still must save for our retirement and – with a hefty bill for Covid to pay – the Government is still going to tax us on our savings, investments, and our final estate.
Don’t delay contacting us if you wish to review your financial planning needs.
