What is financial planning? It is a simple enough question that, if you ask a hundred people, you are likely to get a hundred different answers. Many will tell you that it is planning to get your current finances in order, or it is a means of obtaining something significant – such as a house, a car, or even a baby – in your life. While those answers may be correct to a greater extent, financial planning is about getting your financial future in order to prepare for when you are retired and no longer have an income to rely on.
Retirement is meant to be a momentous occasion; you no longer need to work and can make life easy. You have earned it, so you should spend it on enjoying life, but to get the most out of it, you need to make sure that you have a good plan, and don’t get tripped up by any surprises.
To make the most of your retirement, you need to have a strong financial plan, and that means using a reputable financial planner, but what will your planner help you with?
A financial planner will look at all aspects of your financial life and make suggestions about how you can change them to make your financial future more comfortable. In that capacity, they can look at your current situation with regard to the money that you have going into your pension pot and project how it is likely to grow until you retire, as well as your spending and debt.
This last point is essential as you certainly don’t want to go into your retirement with any debt at all as this will impact the money that you have available to you, bearing in mind that what you have in your pension pots is everything that you will have to live on. Debt such as mortgage repayments, loans and credit cards, and other unregulated spending will simply drag you down, so you need to ensure that they are finished. A financial planner will be able to discuss the options available to you and formulate a plan to make sure that your debt is repaid before you get to your retirement age. If you don’t do this, you may find that you either don’t have sufficient to see you through your retirement or have to continue working until you are in a position to complete your debts.
But a financial planner can do much more than this. Planning is about looking forward and considering the risks and creating a feasible means of overcoming them. This might be the need for a will to deal with your estate once you die, or considering the implications of what happens if you were to fall seriously ill and not be able to work. A financial planner can help you look at the options open to you and help you select the right ones for your lifestyle and pocket.
So, plainly a financial advisor is a great idea, but how do you find one who will work well with your circumstances? You can check through the local newspaper ads but that is likely to limit your field. A much better way is to carry out a local internet search, using a string such as Financial Planner Stafford, and seeing how many financial advisors come up.
A financial advisor will help guide you through the economic minefield and set you on the right course to ensure that you can really enjoy your retirement.
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