To help you make sensible decisions about your future, we’ve broken down the financial planning process into five stages. They are:
- Establishing your goals
- Gathering data
- Evaluating your current position
- Developing and implementing a plan
- Monitoring and reviewing that plan regularly
Once we have established your goals and gathered your data, it’s onto step three – assessing the financial provision you have made already.
It’s time to work out if your existing plans can meet the objectives we have identified as being most important to you.
Pull out that paperwork
So, you know what you want your financial future to look like, but will these aspirations be met by the plans you have in place? The only way to find out is to evaluate your current position.
This is the point in the financial planning process when we ask you to dig out that shoebox full of important stuff – and the odd Dominoes flyer! We need to see all of your existing pensions, savings, life cover, etc. to start building a picture of what provision you have made to date.
Forecasting the future
Let’s look at retirement as an objective. You need to assess each and every aspect of the financial planning you’ve done so far, however piecemeal, including provision made by employers (past and present). This means having details to hand of all relevant items.
You can check your state pension contribution history is correct by obtaining an online forecast. It is quick and easy to do, simply visit https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension and follow the instructions.
All private pension providers will supply you with an illustration of your predicted retirement date, if you request one. This will show how your fund is expected to grow and what income it is likely to produce. By adding these figures to your state pension, we can see how close you are to meeting your objectives.
It is important to check how these illustrations have been built, the charges you are paying, how your funds are invested and if they are correctly aligned to your risk tolerance i.e. how much you are comfortable with them going up and down in value.
Benefit from our expertise
The evaluation process is essentially a case of mapping out your existing financial landscape to see if there are any holes.
This is why the help of expert financial planners is invaluable. We have access to various research and analysis tools to fully investigate your existing assets and identify any shortfalls that might prevent you from meeting your objectives. If there are gaps, we can then discuss how best to plug them.
Next, we will outline how we develop and implement plans that ensure our clients are on target to meet their goals. If you would like to discuss your pensions and investments in more detail, don’t hesitate to contact us on (01246) 298181 or email: enquiries@belmayne-ifa.com
