How to plan and arrange your savings and investments requires some serious thought. What are your goals and objectives? How much risk are you prepared to take or perhaps more importantly, what risks are you not prepared to take?
Maybe you don’t have a specific goal in mind and instead just wish to put a sum of money away somewhere in hope of beating high street interest rates.
Whatever your objectives are, it is vitally important to establish a clear and concise strategy that takes care of the immediate and foreseeable financial needs as well as those for the longer term.
It is also important to consider repaying any expensive debts.
Creating a Strategy
It really is worthwhile taking time to create a plan or strategy. Defining your strategy should give consideration to the following three objectives;
- Immediate financial needs
- Foreseeable financial needs
- Longer term financial needs
How much you choose or need to allocate to each of these objectives will be down to your personal requirements and circumstances yet once defined, a basic structure is created to which planning can be applied. With this comes the need to consider personal taxation, access requirements and the amount of risk you are prepared to take.
As you can see, there is a lot to consider and our specialist consultants are at hand to help you define your strategy and create a structured solution that will cater for your personal financial needs.
Tax Efficiency
Any sound Savings or Investment strategy should always give consideration to arranging your affairs in the most tax efficient manner. Paying less tax quite simply means more money left in your pocket which of course has to be a good thing.
In helping you to plan your savings and investment needs, your consultant will analyse your current and future tax position to help you manage your affairs as tax efficiently as possible. In doing so, there are some obvious things we can all do such as maximising ISA allowances and considering pension contributions but there may also be some less obvious things to consider, such as;
- Making a Will and ensuring it is up to date
- Power of Attorney
- Considering how your Property, Savings and Investments are owned
- Mitigating Inheritance Tax Planning
- Avoiding Capital Gains Tax
Understanding Risks
When thinking about risk relative to finances, the first thing most people think of is ‘how much am I going to lose?’ Risk is about being prepared to accept the possibility of a negative outcome in exchange for one that may be positive.
Some people are out and out risk takers, some are very conservative and of course there are all the variants in between. It is therefore important to understand what your risk profile is and what financial capacity you have to afford any financial losses should they occur.
But it is also about understanding what risks you need to take in order to achieve your objectives. Our belief is that investors should not take any more risk with their financial decisions than they absolutely need to and that risk levels should be monitored from time to time by holding regular financial reviews.
Tax Planning is not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.