In many of our articles, I bang on about the importance of having a long-term financial plan. The simple reason for this is that most people don’t have a plan, even if they work with a financial planner. A survey in the USA revealed that although 75% of their citizens engage in financial planning, only 15% actually have a plan.
The assumption I come to from this is that if someone doesn’t have a plan, then they have a transactional relationship with someone which is focused on their money and the products they get sold or buy.
Other studies show that people who think longer term about their life and finances end up having far more wealth than those with a short-term focus on both. This again shows the benefits of thinking and planning long-term. The irony around planning itself is that once the plan is written, it is old and may even be redundant because life happens and can change in a second. Planning is a verb. It is ongoing.
I have also seen this with many of our existing clients. When we first start working with them, 99% have no plan in place at all, but they do have some savings and investments. Once we have assisted them in building a longer-term plan which mirrors the life they want to live, we see this change. In most cases, after 3-5 years, they are well ahead of where we planned for them to be financially. Either they have settled debt quicker than expected, or they have accumulated more investment wealth than we estimated at the beginning of the process.
The more personal the plan is, and the more ownership they have over it, the more successful the financial journey becomes.
Many people avoid the process of planning properly because it seems scary and because they know it will likely reveal that they have let things slip in one way or another. Often, they find finances confusing and difficult to understand, and in many cases discussing finance leads to conflict in the home.
I would encourage anyone who does not have a plan to consider creating one. Once you learn how to work with that plan, it will give you more control and peace of mind. If this task seems too daunting to take on by yourself, give us a shout, it’s what we do.