The Role of Financial Planners in your retirement goals
For some people, retirement seems a simple thing: just have a company pension, savings plan, a couple of policies, and maybe an investment account…and Bob’s your uncle – or a pretty close relation.
In reality, it’s not like that. There are a myriad of options, information, choices, diversity, alignments, emotions and events that affect your decisions; in effect, ensuring your retirement funding will meet your retirement dreams is a whole different matter from just having a good savings plan.
Generally speaking, the more complex your financial situation, the more likely you are to benefit from a financial planner. But even if your financial plans are simple, you will still need and benefit from the wise experience of a professional. In essence, financial planning helps you define your monetary goals and develop a plan of action to achieve those goals.
What Financial Planners do
- Financial planners can be specialists in defined areas, such as taxes or managing investments, or general practitioners, offering advice on everything from budgeting and investing to insurance and retirement planning. A financial planner can be especially helpful when you’re faced with a life change – such as marriage, divorce, retrenchment, owning a business, or an inheritance.
- Financial planning is the process of defining your financial goals. Your financial planner will analyse how much money you will need to be comfortable in retirement. The planner helps you set targets and create the milestones along the way to check your progress. Then, together, you lay out a plan of action necessary to reach those checkpoints and goals.
- This will necessitate taking an inventory of your finances, then creating a plan to meet your current financial needs and ultimately, your long-term goals. In essence, financial planners can help you reduce spending, pay off debt, and invest in the best options to suit your future plans.
- Financial planners can provide an objective perspective, bringing expertise to decisions about how you should invest your money, what your financial priorities should be, and what sort of insurance coverage and other protections you need.
- Financial planners use your current income, savings, and investments to project what you will have when you’re ready to retire, and what to do with this money when you reach this stage.
- Financial planners are paid in various ways, so make sure you understand how they’re paid before you start working with one.
- Point of warning: if you meet a planner who tries to sell you a product right away, they are not helping you plan, they are trying to sell you something and may not have your best interests at heart.
How you benefit from using a Financial Planner
To give good advice, a planner must gather personal and financial data about you in order to evaluate the rate of return you will need to achieve your retirement goals. This information will include: when you aim to retire, your current age, personal relationships, spending habits, assets such as your home, as well as savings, debts, investments, and any income avenues.
A financial planner’s chief task is to educate and empower you to make good financial retirement decisions that will allow you as much financial freedom as possible. Equally important, your planner will track your financial progress and ensure you are meeting your goals, and will provide support should circumstances change unexpectedly.
A financial planner will advise on:
- what you can do differently to meet your goals more effectively,
- how much money you should be saving for retirement.
- the types of retirement vehicles you can choose from.
- whether you should pay off your bond or refinance your existing one.
- estate and tax planning services.
- whether you are carrying the right insurance, and how much you need with regard to life insurance, disability, health insurance, etc.
The subject of finance can be emotional for many people. A financial planner offers a balanced, impartial approach and ensures that none of your financial decisions are driven by emotion. In short, they provide a valuable learning curve along with peace of mind – exactly the tools you need to make sure you can enjoy a comfortable, happy retirement.
Empfin Solutions – the team that keeps your team happy
We’re an Old Mutual franchise with our primary focus on the three main areas of concern in everybody’s financial planning:
- Your Company Benefits – advising on, and servicing umbrella pension and provident funds.
- Your Personal Financial Planning and Provision – Estate planning, Wealth Creation and Retirement Planning.
- Your Assets – motor and household insurance.
Always striving to be a trusted partner in facilitating financial solutions for organisations and individuals, our dedicated team of fully accredited, experienced professionals have a passion for satisfying customer needs and providing a truly client-centric service.
Find out how you can benefit at: www.empfinsolutions.co.za
