Balance Financial Planning helps you achieve your financial goals.
Balance Financial Planning helps you achieve your financial goalst
Balance Financial Planning helps you achieve your financial goals.
How we help
Building wealth is a gradual process, so it’s even more important you make well-informed decisions on how to keep it working for your future. Understanding your financial options can be challenging and sometimes overwhelming. Whatever your goal, we will work with you to provide clarity, independent expert advice, peace of mind, and a financial plan to help you live today, and secure tomorrow.
How we help
Building wealth is a gradual process, so it’s even more important you make well-informed decisions on how to keep it working for your future. Understanding your financial options can be challenging and sometimes overwhelming. Whatever your goal, we will work with you to provide clarity, independent expert advice, peace of mind, and a financial plan to help you live today, and secure tomorrow.
Areas of expertise
Pensions & Savings
Financial Planning
Investments
Retirement Planning
Inheritance Tax Planning
Health Insurance
QUESTIONS WE HELP ANSWER
Pension consolidation
Should I consolidate my pensions?
Many of us have moved companies and accumulated pension pots along the way. If you have a defined contribution pension, then typically consolidation is a good idea. The tricky part is getting started, discovering where your pensions are invested, and what’s worth keeping. Often, neglected pensions remain in default lifestyle funds out of sync with your risk profile and retirement goals. We can help, by running a performance and charges comparison of your existing pension funds versus your risk profile and ambitions. We’ll review the results of our report together before deciding a suitable course of action.
Of course, savings could run out during retirement, however this is considerably less likely to happen with solid forecasting regarding income and spending. We use a powerful, tried and tested, cashflow modelling tool, which considers additional elements such as investment growth and inflation. We’ll also stress test some realistic scenarios and the results will provide visibility of your retirement finances and guidance on sensible spending patterns in the early years, without overspending.
We believe every investment should have a purpose. By discussing this with you, discovering your time frame, investment experience, and reviewing your financial situation we’ll make an investment recommendation appropriate to your objective. Being independent, we can research the whole investment universe to find suitable investments tailored to your unique situation.
How can I feel more secure in my financial decisions?
Making financial decisions can be daunting, discussing them with a financial adviser can give you security. We’ll listen to your concerns, review your circumstances, and clearly explain the options, so you can make an informed decision. We’d also recommend putting a forward focused financial plan in place, that we’ll review annually, to provide ongoing re-assurance in the decisions you make and their likely future outcomes.
Living off pension income can be unnerving, but it doesn’t need to be. Using powerful modelling tools, we can create forecasts to provide you with clarity on your retirement finances. This will enable you to see how much your current investments and saving rate are likely to provide at retirement and taking your future spending into consideration, will show you how long your money is likely to last. If your pension isn’t going to provide as much as you need, we’ll look at what changes can be made in the near time to improve this situation.
A lifetime of savings subjected to 40% inheritance tax at the time of death, does feel a little harsh. That said, government allowances reducing how much of your estate gets taxed do exist. Early planning is essential. Some options require seven years before they become free of inheritance tax. The key regarding inheritance tax planning is to not leave it too late. Please get in touch and we’ll explain your options.
How will my family cope if I get cancer and lose my income?
Cancer is an indiscriminate illness. If it hits you, you may not be able to work, which could last up to 2 years or even longer. Having enough income to pay the bills would be a natural concern. We can help put the right amount of insurance in place to provide the income your family needs and leave you to focus on what really matters.
Deciding whether to take a tax-free lump-sum payment before you retire or buy an annuity can have a substantial impact on the future value of your pension pot and how long it lasts for. We can work with you now, to create a financial plan assessing the options for when you come to retire. Don’t wait until retirement age. The sooner you have a plan the better equipped you will be.
This is a very common question, and the answer is different for everyone. Firstly, understanding how much you spend now is key. Secondly, estimate how much you think you’ll spend when you retire. Other factors need considering such as expected levels of inflation, growth on investments, state pension, other income, and life expectancy. This all adds to the complexity. Fortunately, we have a comprehensive forecasting tool that can do the heavy lifting and together we can plan for how much you are likely to need.
Should I prioritise paying off debt or saving for emergencies?
The answer depends on two things. Firstly, how costly the debt is. It’s generally beneficial to pay off high interest rate items such as credit cards and unsecured loans as a priority. Secondly, and more broadly, individual circumstances need careful consideration. The amount paid towards clearing debt versus saving for emergencies depends on each unique financial situation. For example, having a mortgage is often a necessity and so regularly contributing to an emergency fund is typically done whilst continuing making mortgage payments. Reviewing finances and providing tailormade advice on an ongoing basis is the backbone of Balance Financial Planning.
How can I avoid losing part of the company if a shareholder dies?
The death of a key person in a business can result in shares moving to the deceased’s family who may prefer to receive a cash sum rather than shares. If the other shareholders don’t have the funds to buy the shares, competitors could buy the deceased’s shares. This may make the situation worse. We can arrange a cross-option agreement to ensure you have the option to purchase the shares, in the event of a shareholder’s death and an insurance policy, so you’ll have the money to pay for the shares.
Our extensive advice journey is designed to provide you with clarity and time to make informed decisions. For best outcomes we take a holistic approach and look at all aspects of your finances, however, if you prefer, we can focus on any specific area you require advice on.
Initial Consultation A chance for you to explain your needs, to hear how we can help and importantly for you to get to know us. Contact us for a free of charge consultation.
Discovery In a discovery session we aim to gain a deep understanding of you, your financial situation and your goals. You will also have the time to ask questions and see if we are the right fit.
Research & Analysis We’ll assess all the information you’ve provided, consider what is working for you, what can be improved and, if anything new should be introduced.
Recommendation You’ll receive our extensive recommendation report, which, based on the information gathered, will recommend a plan for achieving your goals. We’ll talk through the plan, discuss any choices you may have and agree on how you wish to proceed.
Implementation We will take on the responsibility of putting all the agreed changes into action.
Ongoing Forward Planning Because circumstances change, we’ll regularly revisit your plan, at least every 12 months, to make sure it continues to work for you, and considering any changes in your circumstances.
Free of charge initial consultation
To find out how we can help, please get in touch to arrange an initial chat.
