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Strategic Advice

Strategic Advice is all about developing a personalised solution to assist you in achieving your financial and lifestyle goals.

To use a travel analogy, there is no use in us trying to tell you that you need to put your swimming costumes into your suitcase if you plan to go to the Swiss Alps to ski! There are few important things we would need to ask you before we could tell you what you need to pack into your suitcase, namely:

  • What is your final destination?
  • When you would like to arrive there?
  • What you want to do there?
  • How much spending money would you like to have?
  • Where you would like to stopover along the way?
  • When do you want to arrive at each stopover?
  • How much spending money at each stopover?

Only after finding out the answers to these questions would we be able to tell you what to pack into your suitcase.

So how does this relate to strategic advice? Let’s look at the questions above from financial planning perspective.

Travel Strategic Advice Example
Your final destination Where you would like to retire Honolulu
When you would like to arrive there Your retirement age Age 60
What you want to do there Your retirement lifestyle goals Relaxing on the beach
How much spending money would you like to have Your retirement income $80,000 p.a.
Where you would like to stopover along the way Your lifestyle goals Renovate home
When you want to arrive at each stopover Timing of your lifestyle goals 2014
How much spending at each stopover Cost of your lifestyle goals $100,000

Once we clearly understand what you want to achieve on your financial journey (for example, holidays, cars, children’s education, and renovations) our role is to analyse your current situation and prepare your flight plan or ‘strategy’. This may involve the re-prioritisation, modification or deletion of some of your stopovers or ‘lifestyle goals’ if they were deemed to have an adverse effect on the achievement of your ‘final destination’ or ‘retirement goal’. Once developed, our strategy maps out the steps you need to follow to reach your final destination at retirement, whilst enjoying your lifestyle goals along the way! Only after the strategy is developed, can we recommend what to put into your financial suitcase.

 

Back to our travel analogy…

Imagine you are on a flight which was headed towards Los Angeles. Your pilot sets his course and only looks at his gauges upon take off. Early into the flight the plane encounters a strong breeze from the north and the plane deviates from its intended flight path, however your pilot is unaware because he is not checking his gauges. Do you think you would arrive at your chosen destination? I think not! Your fate could end up like this:

So why would anyone embark on a financial journey and not check their financial gauges, such as their income, expenditure, debt, income and investment performance. Thankfully, a pilot will check their position at regular points along the way so they can make the necessary changes to their flight path to keep heading in the right direction.

We need to do the same on life’s financial journey.

At Strategic Planning Solutions we can assist you in knowing where you are on your financial journey, helping you to stay on track by maintaining a regular, two-way relationship with you so we can have a clear understanding of your current lifestyle goals and changing circumstances. Key to our ability to help you is the provision of our exclusive Cash Flow Monitoring Service (please follow the link to find out more).

We look forward to being able to provide you with outstanding strategic advice to help you on your financial journey! All you need to do now is contact us now to arrange a time to meet to discuss your current circumstances and how you may be able to achieve your future goals.