Lifestyle financial planning can be a difficult concept to explain, but it needn’t be. While a financial planner sells you products and arranges investments with a view to making you money, a lifestyle financial planner advises on what products and investments are best for you, based specifically on what you want to achieve from life.
Financial planner = products and investments
Lifestyle financial planner = products and investments specific to your lifestyle goals and only if relevant to helping you achieve them.
So then, is a lifestyle financial planner the same as a life coach? No. While a life coach can help you realise where you want to be, they don’t have the financial knowledge to help you get there.
Life coach = helps you realise what you want from your future
Lifestyle financial planner = helps you realise what you want from your future and then looks at the finances to help you make this a reality.
So you could say, that with a lifestyle financial planner, you are getting the best skills and expertise from two separate, but related professions – financial planning and coaching.
CAN YOUR CURRENT FINANCIAL PLANNER NOT JUST CHAT TO YOU ABOUT YOUR LIFESTYLE TOO?
Well they could, but it would only really be in the same context as if you were to talk about a friend or family member about where you wanted to be years from now. Lifestyle financial planning requires more specialist training to cover all manner of scenarios. It’s not simply a case of sitting down, saying you want ‘x, y and ‘z’ out of life and then expecting to be told which investments will magically make this happen.
We use a dedicated lifestyle financial planning process and specialist software to map out a range of scenarios to show not just want you want, but what is likely to happen based on your current situation. This allows us to make a number of projections that show what needs to happen at certain stages of your life if you are to stay on track to get to where you want to be during retirement.
If you want help simply working out what you want from life, you’re probably better off just speaking to a life coach. But if you have the desire to set goals and the passion and ambition to actually make those dreams happen, then we can help you with the specialist lifestyle financial planning advice that you need to be able to accurately project, plan and see your dreams become a reality.
Contact us to find out more about lifestyle financial planning.
This article does not constitute financial advice and should not be construed as such.