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The Benefits of Financial Planning

• Do you have an old pension, endowment or investment policy that you are concerned about?
• Are you thinking about how you might plan for your retirement or how you will be able to pass on money to your family?
• Have you taken care of all your financial issues?

Ben Gibbs of Glazers Financial Services explains how the financial planning process works and why it is worth doing.

“I spoke to a woman recently who was approaching her sixtieth birthday and was very concerned about how she would afford to live once she stopped working. She owned her house and had paid off the mortgage, but only had a small pension and little savings.

We started by looking at her options using the house: she could rent out a room for tax free income, sell the house and buy somewhere smaller, or release equity (borrow against it) to free up capital and/ or income.

We then turned our attention to her pensions and helped her work out how much she might expect from the State pension and the other pensions she had contributed to.

We also looked at how she could get her savings working harder, and more tax-efficiently and how much more she could save over the next 5 years and what she might amass when she retired.

Finally, working with her solicitor, we helped her tidy up her will so that she could pass on some of her assets to her grand-children as she was keen that they would receive one or two heirlooms.

A tax, legal, pension or investment adviser might have looked at one or two of these issues, but we, as financial planners, were able to draw on our specialist knowledge to help her write a practical, flexible and workable plan. She was much happier once she had done this”.

Why plan your finances?

Perhaps it is useful to look at why other people do it. We find that two types of people use us to help them plan their finances:

• Those who know that they need to do something (such as the woman referred to above)
• Those who aren’t sure that they are doing the right thing

Those who know that they are facing an important set of decisions are usually pretty clear about what they want to achieve, perhaps as they approach retirement they want to make the best use of their savings and investments or they want to reduce any inheritance tax liability.

Those who aren’t sure that they are doing the right thing often want to get a professional opinion on a specific issue (they may want an old endowment policy, pension or investment bond reviewed to rethink a decision that they have made in the past) or they want a complete review or “wealthcheck” to make sure that they have covered all their financial issues.

Both types of people get the same thing from the financial planning process:

• An understanding of their position and the relevant issues and
• The confidence that comes from sorting out a problem and identifying and addressing an issue or set of issues.

How to plan your finances

Using personal finance software packages, magazines and self-help books you can do your own financial planning and we can point you in the right direction if you want to take matters further yourself.

If you feel that you don’t have the necessary information, expertise or just lack the time, it is worth talking to a financial planner, preferably a fee-based, certified financial planner, to look at your position in more detail.

We can help you tackle a specific problem such as reviewing your mortgage, your insurance policies, investments and tax position or look at the big picture and give you a full set of recommendations. In both cases, we will draw together our financial planning, tax, accountancy and legal knowledge to give thorough, well-reasoned advice.

The first step

At the initial stage, we usually talk through your concerns over the telephone or face-to-face so that you can get a good understanding of what we do, how we work and how we can help you. There is no charge for the first meeting, or the work we do at this initial stage, and many people who go on to become our clients, find this a worthwhile start to a useful process.

If you have any questions or would like to arrange a telephone or face-to-face meeting, please call Ben Gibbs or Michael Fairweather on 020 8458 7427 or email us at either ben.gibbs@glazers.co.uk or michael.fairweather@glazers.co.uk if you have a question or require further information.

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