Your Financial Plan
No two people have identical financial circumstances, which is why it’s essential you have a custom financial planning solution that meets your individual needs and goals.
Your financial plan should give you clarity about your future. It should also describe exactly how your future will look, so you know where you are headed and when you are likely to arrive.
Understanding ‘Your Number’
Part of this process is to understand ‘your number’. In other words, the amount of money you’ll ultimately need for complete peace of mind knowing your future lifestyle is secure, ensuring that you don’t run out of money before you run out of life.
By getting to know you and what you want to achieve, we’ll be able to provide you with a detailed action plan that is focused on you.
Cash Flow Planning
An integral part of the lifestyle financial planning process includes cash flow modelling. This illustrates what might happen to your finances in the future and enables you to plan to ensure that you make the most of your money to achieve your financial objectives.
Cash flow modelling is a way of assessing your current and forecasted wealth, along with income inflows and expenditure outflows to create a picture of your finances, now and in the future. This detailed picture of your assets includes investments, debts, income and expenditure, which are projected forward, year by year, using calculated rates of growth, inflation, wage rises and interest rates.
We can use this information to assess what you are likely to need to save and the investment returns needed to achieve your goals. We can estimate whether your ongoing income is likely to be sufficient to sustain you for the rest of your life.
Showing You Your Future
Our process begins by providing you with highly detailed, lifelong cash-flow planning. You will learn how much you’re worth and how much you will have in the future, whilst set on your present course. We will then look at ways that you can become – or stay – financially secure, and the changes you may need to make if you do have a shortfall.
We look at ‘what if’ and ‘catastrophe’ scenarios, so you can always stay one step ahead should the worst ever happen.
Once we have created your financial plan, your forecast will show one of the following three outcomes:
- Not Enough. We will review your existing savings and investment strategy to establish whether there are any non-essential outgoings that can be reduced or removed without affecting your desired lifestyle.
- Enough – Just Right. We will just need to make sure this is maintained by reviewing your existing arrangements and making adjustments as your circumstances and regulatory rules change.
- More Than Enough. We would look at how much more you could spend or gift each year and how soon you could retire. We would also help you with your estate planning, so you can minimise tax and pass your money to the right people at the right time.
Helping You to Navigate Safely
If you will benefit by becoming a financial planning client, we will guide you through a series of simple steps. After we have created your personalised, lifelong cash-flow forecast, we will gather all relevant data and carry out a life planning exercise. As well as analysing your existing financial arrangements, we will also look at any life policies, pension plans, tax liabilities, Wills, enduring or lasting powers of attorney, etc. We will recommend any beneficial changes that align with your lifestyle and financial goals, considering an infinite number of flexible future scenarios. For example, changes to your expected salary, the profitability of your businesses, the impact of illness, etc. Our approach gives you full reassurance that all circumstances have been explored, so you remain in control.
4 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom
Your Milestone Adviser will help you gain greater control by navigating you through the following steps:
Turtle Step 1
The first step is for us to learn about you and to establish your personal goals, as this will determine your financial planning. Do you want to retire early? Would you like to save some money for future travel or luxury holidays? Do you want to set aside enough money to pay for your children’s future? Perhaps your main personal goal is to become financially secure, so you never have to worry…
Turtle Step 2
Next, comes the presentation of your detailed holistic and personalised Financial Plan. We will show you if you will have enough and map out your path to meet your lifestyle and financial objectives. We will explain the principles of sound value investing, which includes a personalised investment strategy. As part of this process, we will explore your personal attitude to investment risk and loss.
Turtle Step 3
If we can help you meet your goals, and you would like us to implement this for you, we will complete the necessary research to find the right solution for your situation. We will provide you with a suitability report, outlining our recommended action and why it is suitable for you, as well as obtaining all relevant paperwork to make the agreed changes.
Turtle Step 4
Your plans will be set in motion. We will review and monitor your progress on an ongoing basis against your lifestyle and financial goals. We will advise of any changes in relevant law and investment conditions, and the effects of any changes to your personal circumstances.
