Financial Planning

Financial planning is all about assessing your objectives and investor profile and finally developing a plan for the future. Because everyone has different investment needs, you need to have your own specialised plan. Even if you are a skilled, knowledge investor, there will be times when you require some help.

What to expect from your financial planner
When you meet our financial planners, we will follow a process designed to identify the investment and savings strategies appropriate for your personal financial needs and objectives.

The first meeting
To fully understand your financial situation one of our advisors will use the first meeting to gather facts about you, your income, existing investments, plus your future lifestyle needs and objectives. It will begin with us learning as much about you as possible. It will help if you bring with you:

• Details of your income, expenses, assets and liabilities;
• Details of your financial commitments, including mortgage, car loan and credit card;
• Details of your savings accounts, superannuation and any investments such as managed investments.

This initial no-obligation meeting with is completely confidential. You should discuss with the advisor that the next steps are and what the cost of a financial plan will be. It’s your money, and you are the final decision-maker.

Developing your financial plan
After identifying your needs, the financial planner will make an analysis of your personal situation and present their investment and insurance recommendations to you in a written statement of advice.

The statement of advice will take into account:

• your present financial circumstances
• your assets  and your income needs
• current government regulations;
• economic, tax and social security issues
• insurances
• your lifestyle choices for the future

The advisor will ensure at this point that you thoroughly understand their recommendations.

The follow-up meeting
When you are ready to put your financial plan into action, your financial planner can assist you with the process of implementing their investment and insurance recommendations. This includes the completion of application forms to establish these investments and/or insurance policies.

The integrity of the advice you receive is built on a support infrastructure that each financial planner can draw upon. This includes a substantial research capability, monitoring and development of professional standards, training and the technological and management resources required to offer competent and consistent advice.

Investing basics
The first step in the financial process is to identify your objectives. These objectives will probably be largely determined by your stage in life and the length of time you have to invest, as well as any personal investment preferences you may have.

Take a minute to picture your future. What do you see? Think about your objectives: what you want and when. Financial objectives are usually divided into the following categories based on how long you have to achieve them.

                             Short-term (0-2 years)
                             Medium-term (2-5 years)
                             Long-term (5 years or more)

Your investor profile
Once you’ve clarified your financial objectives, the next step is to determine what type of investor you are. This is called your investor profile, and it is largely determined by two important elements:

• Time horizon - the amount of time you have to invest before you need to use your money. As highlighted above, this will determine whether your objective is short, medium or long term.
• Risk and return - the rate at which your investment grows or declines (the rate of return) is generally linked to the investment’s risk level. Risk has traditionally been thought of as the variability of returns or the potential to lose your capital. Investments that can produce high return or losses are usually those with higher levels of risk. Another way to think about risk is as the likelihood that your investment goals will not be met.

Typically, the longer your time horizon, the more risk you can afford in your investments. Investors must balance the amount of investment risk with the returns they need to earn to reach their goals within the time they have.

Your advisor will consider your time horizon, attitude towards risk, concerns about taxation changes, and concerns about inflation, your experience with investments and financial needs and objectives. These help determine your investor profile.

Your asset allocation
Once you and your advisor have worked out your investor profile, the advisor can help you choose investments for your needs and objectives. This is commonly called your asset allocation.

• Your asset allocating will be made up of different types of investments with different levels of risk and potential return. There are two main categories of investment:
• Defensive asset are designed to protect your savings from a significant loss in value, but they generally earn a lower rate of return. They include bonds and cash investments.
• Growth assets have historically earned higher rates of return, but they also carry higher risks. They include shares and property investments.

Gearing into investments
Many investments, such as listed property trust and property syndicates, and most companies, whether listed or unlisted, borrow money as part of their normal operations and hence are already geared. Caution is required when gearing into an investment that is already geared to ensure the overall level of gearing is understood. If the level of gearing is excessive, even a modest downturn in the economy could reduce the value of the investment below the level of the borrowing. Realisation at that time would not only mean that the investor had lost whatever equity they had invested, but they would still have at least part of the loan to repair.

Investments to suit every need
Investments fall into several different categories which are listed below. Your financial planner will recommend a strategy using appropriate investments for you depending on your financial needs, objectives and investor profile.

Please contact a WealthyLife Financial Advisor on 1300 366 910 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it   for an appointment.

Disclaimer:  Wealthsure do not provide the licence for all departments (ie Real Estate, Finance, Lifestyle Planning) in WealthyLife to provide advice. 

GENERAL ADVICE WARNING

We have not taken your circumstances into account when preparing our website content so it may not be applicable to the particular situation you are considering.  You should consider your circumstances, as well as any relevant Product Disclosure Statement (PDS), before making any investment decision or recommendation.  Any recommendations or strategies should not be acted on without a full understanding of your current situation and future goals and objectives by a fully qualified financial planner.  You should consider seeking your own independent taxation advice before making any investment decisions.  Past performance is not indicative of future performance.

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