Financial PlannersNewsRetirement Planning Retirement Planning With Financial Planners Perth

Close to Retirement? It Might be Time for a Financial Checkup.

Retirement planning is one of our specialties. We have more than 40 years of combined experienced helping Perth residents get the most out of their retirement years. Our financial planners can work with you to devise an individual plan that can help you develop and meet a specific set of goals. This can help ensure your desired retirement lifestyle.

While it is always better to start retirement planning as early as possible, we realise that a lot of people are too busy living their lives to think about it. We know that it’s easy to see retirement as something far off in the future, only to wake up one day and realise that the future is coming up pretty fast.

The Process

Basically, the sooner one decides to work towards retirement, the easier it is to help them reach their financial goals. We like to have our clients choose a specific retirement date and how much money they want to have waiting for them when they get there. From there, it is easy to make a solid plan and start executing it.

If Retirement is Coming Soon

For those who are approaching retirement age and didn’t follow a plan or for those who just want to make sure they maximise all of their resources, we can help. No matter what you have done in your past, we can help you maximise what you have.

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Financial PlannersNews Track Your Spending for One Month

Can You Track Your Spending for One Month?

If you work with a financial advisor in our Perth office, one of the first things you will probably be asked to do is to figure out your monthly expenses. There is also a pretty good chance that your financial planner will advise you to create a budget.

Knowing monthly income and expenses is one of the first steps to getting a handle on your financial situation. The better you are at this, the easier it is for a financial planner to provide you with your desired results.

Why Track Spending?

Usually, when someone tracks their spending accurately, it is a true eye-opener. They usually find a lot of surprises and have no idea they were spending so much money on entertainment or any of many other things. Accurate tracking allows you to see exactly what you are spending instead of guessing based on what you want to remember.

What to Do

Spending is easily tracked on your smartphone. Both iPhone and Android have plenty of apps to help you easily and accurately track every bit of money you spend. If you don’t like any of the apps, you can create a spreadsheet or just use a piece of paper.

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Financial PlannersNews Too Busy to Invest? We can Help.

Too Busy to Invest? We can Help.

Financial advisors in Perth are nearly ubiquitous. There are seemingly so many financial planners around that we can get “placed on the back burner” by many. As a result, people who have worked hard to make a good amount of money may just be letting their money sit in bank accounts and making a minimal amount of passive income.

Our Process

At Approved Financial Planners, we make it easy for you to invest. We require an individual consultation and some basic information. We will assess your risk tolerance. When we have taken all of your individual factors into consideration, we will devise a financial plan that makes sense for you.

We will present that plan and with your permission, execute it for you. You spend minimal time and effort but are able to reap the benefits of our financial planning. After we know what you want, we can research investments for you and do all of the paperwork. That means all you have to do is sign the documents.

At Approved Financial Planners, we help minimise your market risk by diversifying your investment portfolio. We do check in on a regular basis so that we can adjust your investment strategy to fit your goals, current lifestyle and financial situation.

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Financial PlannersNewsSuperannuation Fund Is Self Managed Superannuation Fund Right for You

Is a Self Managed Superannuation Fund (SMSF) Right for You?

A self managed superannuation fund (SMSF) is great for some people, but inappropriate for others. Our financial advisors have over 40 years combined experience in the Perth area. One of the things we have learned at Approved Financial Planners is that no person’s financial situation is the same as another’s. Consequently, you will need an individual consult before you know whether an SMSF is right for you.

Advantages of SMSF

An SMSF allows you to exercise greater control over your financial future. You decide where your investment money goes. You are free to choose an aggressive strategy if you want, dependent on how averse or open you are to risk.

Since an SMSF is usually obtained by paying fixed fees while industry and retail super funds receive a percentage of the funds you invest, those who have more money in their funds may pay a lower percentage for administration costs.

An SMSF provides you with greater levels of transparency, control and flexibility. Also, changes in laws governing SMSFs now allow them to borrow money. This allows you to invest in assets such as rental properties and other, more diverse assets.

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Estate PlanningFinancial PlannersNews Estate Planning in Perth

Is it Time to Think about Estate Planning?

For most Perth financial planners, estate planning is a touchy subject. As with life insurance or disability insurance, nobody wants to think about the unthinkable happening to them. Most people see death as something that will happen “later” and disability as something that happens to someone else.

Sadly, the cold, hard fact is that a lot of people do die before they think they will and many become disabled due to accident or illness. When someone dies, his or her family is already filled with grief. The worst thing that could happen would be to compound that grief by not having made arrangements for your family to be able to access your assets in their time of grief and need.

What is Estate Planning?

A lot of people think estate planning is simply writing a will, but they are wrong. In fact, we recommend or refer the actual writing of the will to a legal professional who is qualified to do it. Legal professionals know more about the law and can help maximise your assets through innovative strategies that minimise the taxes that your beneficiaries will have to pay

The first step we take is to complete a thorough inventory of your assets. This not only includes your personal assets, but also assets held in discretionary trusts, investment companies, self-managed or retail superannuation funds and other investment vehicles.

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Financial PlannersNews Build Wealth By Reducing Debt

Can Eliminating Debt Help You Build Wealth?

We provide a full range of financial planning services to our Perth clients, but one of the first things we will probably ask about is your level of debt. At Approved Financial Planners, we have a firm belief that the road to effective financial planning begins with taking charge of your debt level and your monthly expenditures.

We can help you set up debts such as credit cards, student loans, leases, mortgages and personal loans in a way that helps you minimise interest payments that could be spent towards securing your future.

Debt Reduction: the Plan

We will recommend that you ask yourself a series of questions to determine how much you know about your current debt load. This will help you determine exactly where your money is being spent and how much interest you are paying each month. If you don’t already have a debt reduction plan, we can help you formulate one.

We can work with you to create a plan that includes a date for paying off your loans and how much money you want to owe at various milestone dates such as five years from now.

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Financial PlannersNews Building a Solid Financial Foundation

Techniques for Building a Solid Financial Foundation

We offer a full menu of financial services from our Perth office. We have financial planners and financial advisors who can help you plan your financial life from now through retirement. We can’t give any specific advice on this blog, but we would like to give you a general idea of what it takes to build a solid financial foundation.

The more solid your foundation, the easier it is for us to help you attain your financial goals. Here are some of the fundamental techniques that we can help you execute.

Budgeting

If you aren’t satisfied with your budget or your ability to create one and stick to it, we can help. If you have a consistent income and can stick to a consistent budget, it allows you to know exactly how much you can afford to invest every month. Once we know that, we can offer further assistance.

Managing Cash Flow

This is tied into budget, but also into your investment strategy. For many, budgeting and cash flow are a constant tug-of-war between enjoying life now and having enough for retirement later. Our financial advisors can take a look at your finances and help you come up with a plan that is comfortable for you.

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Financial PlannersInvestment PlanningNews Fears that Stop Would-Be Property Investors

Fears that Stop Would-Be Property Investors in their Tracks

Perth financial planners are often asked to oversee real estate portfolios for those who decide to use real estate as an investment strategy. As with any investment vehicle, real estate isn’t for everyone. In addition, we are not allowed to provide advice in this blog because everyone’s financial situation is different. However, we would like to tell you about four fears that often keep people from including real estate in their investment portfolios.

Fear of Paying Too Much

The axiom “buy low, sell high” has probably been around for as long as people have bought and sold things. Some people get so bogged down in research that they can’t make a decision to buy any particular property. Research is important, but so is action.*

Fear of Buying the Wrong Property

People are also afraid of buying the wrong property. This could be the wrong house or the wrong neighbourhood. This can often be overcome by creating a firm plan and sticking to it.*

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Financial PlannersInsurance ProtectionNews Financial Planning For The Self-employed

A Checklist for the Self-Employed

We like to think that financial planning is important to everyone in Perth, and that includes the self-employed. We know that many self-employed people tend to neglect financial planning services because they are always busy and don’t have the time. We visited the ASIC website called MoneySmart and found some information that can be helpful to the self-employed.

This information is general and is not a substitute for individual advice, but we thought it might be helpful for the self-employed to see what ASIC has to say about self-employed people and money.

Managing Cash Flow

Those who are self-employed tend to make a good living and earn a strong income. However, that income doesn’t always come in on a regular basis. For some, it can be months between pay periods. ASIC stresses that it is important for the self-employed to manage their cash flow properly to ensure that they have income during long gaps between “paydays.”*

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Financial PlannersNews What Falling Oil Prices Could Mean for You

What Falling Oil Prices Could Mean for You

At the beginning of the year, most of us reassess where we are in life and make resolutions. This is especially true when it comes to financial planning. Financial planners in Perth are quite busy at this time of year, helping our clients reassess and re-calibrate their goals.

This year, many of the questions revolve around falling oil prices: how long they will last and how they will affect our economy. We recently found a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald that contained a nice summary of current information along with quotes from some respected economists.

The Fall in Oil Prices: How Big is It?

On 19 June 2014, the price of oil was $115 USD per barrel. As of 13 January 2015, the price has fallen to $47.43 USD per barrel. Consequently, Societe Generale and Goldman Sachs have both lowered their oil price forecasts.*

When oil prices fell in the 1980’s and 1990’s, there was a rise in the US economy. This resulted in a corresponding rise in both the global and Australian economies. This has caused many fund managers to predict rising share prices for the latter portion of 2015.*

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