[NOTE] The video of this post is right here.
I have come to believe through 15 years of experience that for 99% of us, financial planning is dead simple. There are very very few people who need complex tax planning advice. Your Gary Barlows and Jimmy Carrs of this world might ‘benefit' from dodgy offshore 1% tax schemes, but most of us are just trying to amass enough money to live comfortably and not have to worry too much about money.
I think that those who benefit most from financial planning are the ordinary people, so I'm going to try to distil the financial planning process down, not quite to its lowest common denominator, but enough for most us. I'm aiming to do this in a book, which has a working title of SIMPLE Money.
Getting the basics right
You see, most people just need to get the basics right and the immutable laws of financial planning will take them where they need to be. The book I'm planning will be a dip-in, dip-out kind of book with clear sections about different aspects of the financial planning process, so that people can either read all the way through it, or just refer to the section which is relevant to them at that time.
Hopefully it'll be inspiring enough to encourage people to get to grips with their own finances, and empower them to do their own financial planning if they have the gumption to get on with it. There are no new techniques for building wealth, just different ways of explaining the time-honoured methods.
SIMPLE is an acronym:
S – Set-up – This is the basics of budgeting, cash-flow, having an emergency fund, setting things up s that your plan can can develop going forward.
I – Insurance – The protection you are going to put around your financial plan to make sure that your plan is not derailed by unforeseen circumstances. You know the stuff: Life assurance, Critical Illness, Income protection, things like that.
M – Making Money – Investments, the different kinds of assets, the way they work together in asset allocation, the different tax wrappers etc
P – Pensions & Retirement – fairly self explanatory, but why retirement planning is important, how to balance your one day needs against what you need to live well now.
L- Later Life – Long Term Care, Equity Release, planning for your death
E -Everything else – Wills, trusts, tax etc.
So I'm letting you into the secret of what I'm put to. I'm getting up very early in the morning to make a start writing this thing and get some thoughts down on paper. Let me know what you think.
In the videos I'll be going back to the roots of MeaningfulMoney, re-covering some old ground, updating posts and at the same time reworking them for the book.
Get in touch
Let me know if you think I should include anything, or whether you think it's a dreadful idea! Thanks as ever for your encouragement and your patience and your time in watching the videos, I really appreciate it.
Get in touch via the contact page, or just email me on pete [at] meaningfulmoney.tv. Or hit me up on Twitter: @petematthew
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