The Best Guide for the Neston Area

Neston-based Financial Planner Asks - 'What's Your Number?'

Here is the latest blog from Alan Mellor, Chartered Financial Planner and Managing Director of Phillip Bates & Co Financial Services in Neston.

Alan Mellor, MD of Phillip Bates & Co Financial Services Ltd.

During a year, I will get asked lots of different questions by clients.

Some clients have a desire to help their children, perhaps to get a first foot on the housing ladder. Others might be thinking about taking early retirement. And some might want to invest in something significant, such as a second home in the UK or abroad.

It is impossible to answer these and other questions like them in isolation without considering the bigger question of ‘What's your number?'.

No two clients are the same. There may be some similarities, but each financial plan is different and is developed with the long-term view in mind. It is only by sitting down and taking the time to understand a client's lifestyle now and the one they want in the future, that you can begin to work out the number that someone will need to aim for to live the life they want into older age.

While a key part of my job is to advise on the right investments for clients to help them maximise their wealth, a more enjoyable, and important, part is helping them to spend their money when the time is right.

A couple of recent examples involved a retired couple who had always wanted to buy a second home abroad. When the time came to do so, they ended up spending more than they had initially anticipated. I subsequently got a phone call asking me if their long-term plan was still on track and was delighted to be able to tell them that the additional investment was fine.

A second example concerned a couple in their early 60s whose dream had always been to buy a Harley Davidson and spend as much time as possible touring Europe. We'd built it into the long-term plan many years earlier and now it is fantastic to see their dream being realised!

These are two examples where clients knew exactly how they wanted to spend their money in retirement and had been working towards this end goal. For many other clients, it is far less clear and, indeed, on many occasions I help them to come up with a wish list of things they would like to do when time and money allowed.

Putting in place a long-term financial plan is not the fun bit. The fun bit is watching the plan come together and to reach the stage in life where you can spend some of your accumulated wealth on getting the most from your retirement years.

Please contact us if you would like to arrange a free initial consultation.

• www.phillipbatesfs.co.uk

Report this article as inappropriate

Comments

You need to log in before you can do that! It's only a quick registration process to join the AMA network and completely free.