To form your plan, we start at the end with your life goals, and work our way back…
In a nutshell, lifestyle financial planning has turned personal financial advice on its head. In days of yore, the process started with products, which were used to fill gaps.
However, lifestyle financial planning is not about products at all, because it starts and ends with you.
It starts with helping you understand the life that you want, what that looks like and the events and possessions that will make up that life.
This might include paying for your children’s education right through college, buying a second home, changing your car every few years, going on three holidays a year when you retire or planning for your long-term care later in life.
It might also consider the legacy that you want to leave after you die.
THE PLANNING PROCESS
Once we understand what your life looks like, we look to put a price on that life. And then, taking account of your income, your expenditure, your current assets and debts, we look to see if you are on track to afford that life.
We don’t look at this as some faraway target, instead we look at your financial resources for every year of your life from today until you die, and whether you have enough to achieve all of your financial goals or not.
Our video below explains the Agathos planning process in visual terms with a typical example.
Sometimes it’s great, we can demonstrate to a client that they have enough money to do everything they want.
In fact, only last month we were able to demonstrate to a client that she can afford to retire today from the job she no longer enjoys, rather than in four years time as she had assumed herself. How liberating that was!
Often though, it’s not quite so simple. When some of our clients dream, they dream big! And their current financial situation just won’t deliver the life that they want. But this is where we earn our corn.
FINANCIAL SOLUTIONS
Through examining your financial situation in detail, we can identify solutions to help you achieve the life that you want. Solutions that might include,
- Reducing your tax liabilities, both personally and within your business
- Reducing your expenditure through careful budgeting
- Getting your money working harder for you
- Enabling your investment portfolio to match your risk and reward expectations
- Developing a wealth plan to ensure you have enough money to live as you wish in the future
- Protecting your family financially against unforeseen events that may undermine your financial plan
- Developing a plan to transfer your wealth to your loved ones in a tax efficient way
- Creating your legacy
Of course, if you need financial products as part of these solutions or guidance in relation to your investments, we have expertise in these areas too.
After all, we know that for your financial plan to be achievable, every aspect of your financial life must be under control. We help you get the right products, at the right price to suit your specific circumstances.
implementing your plan
And then we actively work with you year after year, reviewing and altering the plan to ensure that your lifestyle objectives are achieved.
This will involve honest and sometimes tough conversations – for you to achieve your hopes and dreams, maybe you have to spend less today and save more for the future. No pain, no gain!
But we have these conversations with you, so that you know whether you’re on track or not. We review the plan and the solutions put in place.
- Are you managing your spending as needs to be done to achieve the plan?
- Are the solutions that were developed delivering as expected?
- Have your goals changed and do we need to revise the plan?
These valuable, active conversations ensure you will stay on track to achieve the lifestyle you desire.
So, financial planning today helps you achieve the life that you want. It starts with you and your lifestyle objectives and ends with you and the achievement of those lifestyle objectives.
When you can live the life you want, without the risk of running out of money, our job is done.
Lifestyle Financial Planning
Is transforming the financial lives of clients, is now being offered by a small number of financial planners in Ireland. The common attribute of these planners is that they have qualified as Certified Financial Planners (CFP), the highest standard available and globally the most recognised qualification for personal financial planning specialists. We are delighted in Agathos Financial Planning that Michael is one of the advisers in Ireland to have achieved this level of expertise.
About The Author…
Michael Geoghegan QFA CFP, previously of Canada Life and The Irish Government Foreign Affairs Dept., is the Managing Director of Agathos Financial Planning. At the top of his field for nearly 20 years, he is a renowned expert in taxation and trusted adviser to some of Ireland’s wealthiest individuals and businesses.
Contact Michael
FEEL FREE TO SHARE THIS INFORMATION…
BOOK A
MEETING
WITH MICHAEL
– no fee for initial consultation –
CONTACT US BY
EMAIL:
michael [at]
agathosfinancial [dot] ie
OR SUBMIT THIS
BOOKING FORM
