Financial planning is the comprehensive ‘tying together’ of all of your financial affairs. On other pages of this site, we talk about the services we provide in specific areas of your financial profile. Financial planning ties all of these together and looks at your profile from a wholistic perspective. This means ensuring consistency with the way you manage everything that you do. Making sure, for example, that the way you manage your superannuation interacts with your business planning, your insurance planning, your retirement planning and your estate planning. Effective planning in any one of these areas will add value to your financial management. Effective planning across all of them will super-charge your finances.
Financial Planning Solutions
Investing means becoming wealthier by buying and sometimes selling assets that provide income while you hold them and capital when you sell them.
There are two ways to invest and three broad types of investment. We can assist you with all of them.
The two ways to invest are directly or indirectly. Direct investment is where you buy and hold investment assets in your own name (or in the name of some entity that you control, such as a family trust or a self-managed super fund). Direct investment is typically the best way to make property investments, and many people like to buy shares directly as well. If direct investment is what you are after, we can help you find the right investments to make and the right ways to manage those investments. A big part of this is making sure that you buy the asset in the right hands. Sometimes this is yourself, but sometimes it is not.
Indirect investment is where you employ an investment manager to buy and hold investment assets on your behalf. We can assist you to identify the managed investment option or options that best suits your circumstance and your goals, and then show you how to access the particular benefits of managed investments to minimise your risk.
The three broad things in which you can invest are shares, property and cash fixed/interest. The specific choice of investment types, and the way in which you mix these choices within your portfolio, is different for each person. We take the time to assist you to identify which type or types of asset class makes most sense, and then assist you to make either a direct or indirect investment accordingly.
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Contact usMost people think of superannuation as a tax-favoured way of saving for your retirement. For employees, it is compulsory. For self-employed people, it is optional. For everybody, it is a great idea.
But superannuation is about more than retirement planning. It is actually a cornerstone of most people’s financial plan. This is because ‘super’ touches every other aspect of your financial planning. The way you manage your super impacts on how you manage your insurances, your other investments, your tax planning, your retirement planning, your marriage, your divorce, how and when you might help your adult kids out financially, your estate planning and even how you repay your own mortgage.
It is super by name and even more super by nature.
There are three types of super fund: retail funds, industry funds and self-managed superannuation funds. Different clients are suited to one or more of these types, and sometimes it makes sense to use more than one type in combination. We help you select the best type of fund for you. We then help you make best use of whichever option you take. This is important because super can and should be incorporated into your thinking about everything to do with your finances.
If you decide to manage your own super (a ‘self-managed super fund,’ or SMSF), we assist with all facets of establishing and maintaining this fund. This includes the facilitation, through our legal team, of all documents needed to start and then make best use of your fund.
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Contact usRisk insurance policies are financial products that will pay the policy holder if the ‘insured event’ – such as becoming unwell and being unable to work – happens.
Insured events include things like temporary illness, permanent illness, temporary injury, permanent injury, or the premature death of the insured person.
Risk insurances insure your good health, which is actually your most important financial asset. That is why risk insurances are almost always the essential first step in any financial plan. Insuring yourself against a loss of income or earning ability allows you to ensure that life for you and your loved ones goes on with the quality you want, even if something unwanted happens.
We provide the complete range of risk insurance services: death cover, total and permanent disability (TPD), income protection and trauma cover. We help you calculate the type and amount of each cover that you might need, as well as discuss other ways that you can protect yourself against financial loss.
We also show you how to minimise the premiums, especially after-tax, without unnecessarily compromising the quality of the policy or the level of cover that you acquire.
If cash flow is tight, we can assist you to find ways to insure yourself that minimise the demands on your day-to-day income. And, of course, as financial planners we can help you find ways to enhance your income. This makes everything more affordable, not just your insurances.
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Contact usIf you get your debt right, financial security will follow.
That’s why we make debt management a key part of your financial plan. It is one of the first things we look at for all of our clients.
Debt touches most things that we do. Few of us buy homes without taking on a mortgage, and even fewer can afford to make an investment without any debt.
But it is not just this ‘big debt’ that matters. There are other types of debt as well. Who doesn’t have a credit card (or three)? Or a car loan? Or even a HECS debt that needs to be repaid? Managing these debts properly adds significantly to your ‘bottom line.’ When you save money on debt repayments you free yourself up to move forward somewhere else. The money you save can be used to make extra super contributions, to seed an investment, to upgrade your home or just to do something nice like take a holiday or eat out a little more often.
And it is not just a matter of minimising interest. We help you ensure that your loans are structured properly, so that you can optimise everything else that debt touches. This includes things like tax deductibility, asset protection, repayment prioritisation and personal maintenance.
We can also provide credit services to organise home loans, investment loans, reverse mortgages, LRBA loans for SMSFs, credit cards and all other forms of debt. Our credit services are all provided under the authority of a licenced credit provider within the Australian Credit Licencing System.
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Contact usThrough our arrangement with MLA Lawyers Pty Ltd, we facilitate a comprehensive range of estate planning services.
Estate planning is the process of ensuring that your wealth is directed according to your wishes after you die. Making sure your wealth goes where you want it to is not just a simple matter of preparing a will – although a will is almost always a key part of your estate planning. You also need to consider things such as your superannuation benefits, family businesses, assets owned by legal entities such as family trusts as well as assets owned as joint tenants, etc.
It is also vital that your estate planning be consistent with your current financial planning, to ensure that your affairs are handled as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible, both now and in the future.
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Contact usWe think property is probably the most important part of your wealth management strategy. This is because it is hard to become financially secure without owning at least one property. If you can own more than one, things get even better.
We advise on all forms of property: residential homes, investment properties and commercial properties. And we don’t just advise on your own property, either. We often find ourselves showing clients the best way to help their adult kids buy homes.
We always start with your family home. We do this because the family home occupies a special place for most Australians. Our home ownership rates are amongst the highest in the world.
Residential property also occupies a special spot in Australian investment history. It is historically the highest earning asset class, with an average annual return of over 8% compounding in the 10 years to 31 December 2015, and 10.5% per annum in the 20 years to the same date (source: ASX Annual Investment Report June 2016).
Homes account for around 43% of all household wealth in Australia. And, pretty importantly, they give you a place to live as well.
And this is just family homes. When you consider the impact of investment properties as well, you find that being wealthy is really a matter of owning property.
This is why property simply must be a significant part of your financial plan. You need to decide what to buy, how much to spend, how to borrow (and how much) and how to repay the debt if you want to make property investment work for you.
Basically, your wealth starts with property and expands from there. That’s why we do, too.
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Contact usAs the name suggests, a self-managed super fund is one that the members manage for their own benefit.
Self-managed super funds (SMSFs) are one of the most popular ways for Australians to hold their super benefits. SMSFs allow for maximum control over super benefits, which in turn means that super benefits are managed in ways that complement all other elements of a financial plan. This includes, of course, your estate planning (super benefits are not generally subject to your will and therefore you need to make specific arrangements for the posthumous management of super benefits).
Correct planning also typically allows SMSFs to be the most efficient way for retirement benefits to be held.
Our comprehensive SMSF service ranges from establishing a new SMSF, to managing contributions into and investments by new and existing funds, to ensuring that the fund complies with the various aspects of super law to which it is subject. We can also assist you to utilise your SMSF to optimise your life insurance arrangements.
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Contact usEverybody wants to retire as comfortably as possible.
It is never too early to start planning your retirement. For younger clients, retirement might be a little in the background, as we assist you with more immediate aims such as buying a home, paying off debt, managing your career and raising a family. But the fact that there are more pressing aims does not mean that retirement should be ignored completely, and we can show you how to manage your affairs so that what you do today also benefits you when you retire.
For clients closer to retirement age, we help you decide when and how to start to make the transition from working life to retirement. For some people this transition is a gradual process. For others it is more sudden. Either way, we help you ensure that you make the transition as comfortably and successfully as possible.
This can include things like planning for the potential use of Centrelink and other Government benefits.
For clients who have already retired, our aim is simple: to help you make sure your money lasts as long as you need it to. This means ensuring that you have invested your super in the right place and that you are managing the costs of your investments – including tax – as efficiently as possible.
Once again, we also ensure that your financial planning makes best use of Centrelink and any other government benefits to which you may be entitled
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Contact usGetting your planning right can make a real difference when it comes to qualifying for or maximising your Centrelink benefits. Our knowledge and experience will assist you to maximise your Centrelink entitlements without needlessly compromising your longer term wealth development and enhancement strategies.
Common areas of financial plans that impact on Centrelink planning include the family home, reverse mortgages, gifts and financial support to other people such as your adult children and the interplay of structures such as family trusts with the Centrelink rules.
We also assist clients with non-aged related Centrelink needs, such as disability or carer payments.
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