Right now in 2018, the Financial Planning Industry and the perception of Financial Planning itself is in a terrible way.
Over the last 15 years in the industry, I have seen terrible stories written of bad Financial Planning advice, clients who have been left worse off from Financial Planning and Financial Planners themselves struggling to describe and outline the value they provide clients.
All this has lead to the Australian public rightfully asking why they need Financial Planning Advice and Financial Planners described as not much better than used car sales people (hello to all the used car sales people out there).
The truth is, the value of Financial Planning is enormous. In our business, clients clearly understand our role, how we work to help our clients and what it is that we are working towards.
Financial Freedom.
That’s it.
That is what you need to know right now about Financial Planning.
I believe Financial Planning is about creating a plan to accumulate enough assets and wealth over a period of time that generate enough income to pay for all your living expenses.
It is about creating your own Freedom.
Financial Planning generally has been about selling a product (Life Insurance, Superannuation Fund, Investment account) that might help the client along the journey.
But these are just the tools needed to build the house.
To build the house, you need plans for what the house will look like, you need a builder to help you build the house (unless you want to do it yourself!) and then yes, you need the tools.
Financial Planning isn’t a one off transaction.
It is about a relationship built over time.
It can be broken down into several parts (more on that in future articles).
The value is in the increased chance of success that you have in your life of achieving Financial Freedom.
A fantastic coach for Financial Advisers, Tony Vidler, put together the diagram below (https://tonyvidler.com/) on both the value of Financial Planning and the potential success of working with a Financial Planner to coach you along the way.
