Financial health check for executives on the move

Andrew Curtis, Anthony Harding & Partners

"Business achievement supports personal aspirations and is inextricably linked to wealth creation: senior executives tend to be so immersed in their businesses that they are rarely able to give the time they would wish to their personal finances."

Do you recognize yourself here?

• You are considering a career change but are not sure what this will mean for your objectives for yourself and your family.
• Quite rightly you focus on your career, but you don't feel you have the same control over your personal finances, or have a consistent overall strategy.
• You have accumulated a raft of pensions and don't know what to do with them, or what "pensions simplification" means.

These issues are important enough at the best of times, but a career move brings into sharp relief the vital need not only to know where you stand now, but also to have a clear grasp of all the implications of the change you are contemplating.

The key issues

If you have aspirations for example to buy a holiday home, extend your house or move to a bigger one, or help your children onto the property ladder, these can be more effectively provided for if you plan for them.

Thoughts about retirement take on a new perspective if you think of it as the achievement of financial independence, which may have to support you and your spouse in your chosen lifestyle for anything up to thirty years or more.

Tax, regulation, and markets can and frequently do change, and your own situation will change too from time to time. It is always sensible to review your personal finances regularly.

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The financial planning life cycle

You need to understand where you are. When you are young and single, you spend, and when you marry you wish you had saved more because there are the costs to be funded of, for example, spouse, property, children, education, and holidays.

Principal earners, whose income supports all this, should think about making provisions against inability to earn through illness or premature death while their family is still dependent on them. Saving becomes a more practical proposition when the children start to leave the nest, and if necessary you can top up investment for retirement.

The focus of life then changes again and needs reviewing against objectives and resources. This is the time to think about inheritance tax planning and, further ahead, provision for care for yourself and your spouse in case this should one day be needed.

The proposition

There is a fundamental logic in aligning corporate and personal aspirations. If you know where you want to go, and if you know what your business is planned to deliver in the foreseeable future in terms of salary, bonus, pension and tax free cash, it must make sense to align personal objectives alongside these corporate deliverables.

It is just like running a business. To get the best results you have a plan, which you follow through and review regularly. The same principles drive effective personal strategies. You should pick this up now before any more time flies past.

First you take stock, which means organising your financial information, writing a personal balance sheet, and working out a simple personal cash flow showing income against current and anticipated annual expenditure. This is a good opportunity to check that everything is in order - and how many of us find time to do that?

Then you set your goals, which is very much a personal process. It is not the role of financial planning to tell you what to do, but rather to help you achieve your life goals through proper management of your personal finances. This is the time to think about objectives and how much needs to be put aside for them, where it is coming from and where it is to be put in the meantime.

It is also the time to clarify your thoughts on retirement. If you have not done so, you should think about when you want to retire and what you want to do then, how much you will need to sustain your desired lifestyle, and how this is to be funded.

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What we will do for you

This is nothing like as difficult as it sounds, and is precisely what we at Anthony Harding & Partners will help you do. Anthony Harding is one of the elite Certified Financial Planners, and a Director of the Institute of Financial Planning. He has enormous experience, and started his company in 1983. Andrew Curtis has 25 years' experience in investment, financial planning and private banking. He is a Fellow of the Securities and Investment Institute and holds the Certificate of the Personal Finance Society.

Our job is to help you do the things you ought to be doing but find it difficult to get to grips with. We will do a financial health check for you. We can then build with you an individual strategy to achieve your personal and financial objectives. A simple two tier service structure enables us to stay alongside through regular reviews to ensure things keep on track, and to be there to help whenever advice and action is required.

We believe in the values of sound long term relationships with our clients. We provide reliable strategic engagement for your benefit, and will help you stay in touch and take informed decisions on the way forward.

Your benefits

You take control of an important area of your life, and keep in touch with your milestones.

You create the ability not just to achieve your personal goals but to stretch them and make the most of opportunity.

You gain the reassurance that your personal finances are in order and structured according to your aspirations and objectives for yourself and your family.

You are free to continue to focus on your career.

For more information contact Andrew Curtis on 01258 840043 (Wimborne office), 01962 883881 (Winchester office), or admin@hardingpartners.co.uk

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