Families across Australia and worldwide often face crucial and challenging decisions when faced with adversity or key life events such as inheritance, business growth, career development, divorce, family planning, retirement or as their lives change. At Boutique Advisers we pride ourselves on assisting our clients to make well considered and confident life decisions – read below on our approach and how this can work for you.
Get to know your current situation well
The starting point for any well-formed plan is to understand and digest your current financial situation in detail. We want to know your financial position now so we can understand your starting point. It’s important to draw a line at past financial decisions made so you can focus on what’s possible for this point herein as the first step towards a financial life plan. From there we present your position to you in a clear and concise manner, through an important tool that we refer to as your A3 Family Advice Map.
Understanding your goals and ‘why’
As a next step, we want to get to know you on a deeper level and understand what drives the decisions you make. From a high level, this would involve working through what’s important to you or your tangible goals, why they’re important and other areas that influence decision making and lastly who in your lives matter. This last element leads to further discussion on your eventual life legacy, which is an important and crucial longer-term consideration for your wealth management plan.
Strategy and options
Once we have a good understanding of the above, collaborating with a financial planner on strategic directions and pathways forward is often the most valuable and impactful part of our initial client journey. We often present clients with different scenarios and projections that have varying financial outcomes with important benefits and considerations, both financial and non-financial in nature. All options and projections are presented visually prior to narrowing down what strategy is best suited to you and your family, which is an effective way to come up with your final written plan.
A formal plan to follow
Once you’ve decided on the best pathway forward with professional guidance, it is helpful to have an executive summary and document to reference that you can come back to as your financial plan progresses. This document outlines what you need to do to achieve all your goals, why the strategies were chosen and helps you to understand how you’re working towards the best way forward for your family.
Tracking your progress and navigating changes to your life plan
Once you’re on your chosen pathway, it’s important to ensure that you remain on-track and have someone who can hold you accountable. As financial advisers, we love regular catchups with our clients and celebrating the successes you achieve. As your life changes you need to ensure your plans adapts, so having someone who can provide considered and revised advice is helpful in this regard.
Please reach out to Boutique Advisers if you’re facing significant life decisions that you could use some guidance on.
Sean Hocking works with successful individuals and families across Perth and Australia-wide to provide peace of mind and clarity around their financial future. Having a roadmap in place, which clearly articulates what’s important to them in the years to follow, gives his clients the confidence to make clear and informed decisions throughout their financial life journey.