How a financial planner helps you.

The following list are the issues a financial planner manages on your behalf to help you attain your long term financial goals. Issues that generate more when a planner’s experience and knowledge adds to your own.

The things a Professional Financial Adviser Does for You:

THE FINANCIAL PLANNER:

• Cares greatly about your finances and long term financial plans
• Guides you to think about areas of your financial life you may not have considered
• Formalises your goals and puts them in writing
• Helps you prioritise your financial opportunities
• Helps you determine realistic goals
• Studies possible alternatives that could meet your goals
• Prepares a financial plan and/or an investment policy statement for you
• Suggests creative alternatives that you may not have considered
• Reviews and recommends life insurance policies to protect your family.
• Assists you in setting up a retirement plan
• Assists in preparing an estate plan for you
• Reviews your children’s custodial accounts
• Helps you determine your Superannuation Pension Required Minimum Distribution.
• Provides reminders about key financial planning data
• Checks with you before the end of the year to identify any last minute financial planning needs
• Guides you on ways to fund health care in retirement

INVESTMENTS

• Prepares an asset allocation for you so you can achieve the best rate of return for a given level of risk tolerance
• Stays up to date on changes in the investment world
• Monitors your investments
• Reviews your investments in your Superannuation or Pension plans
• Helps convert your investments to lifetime income
• Refers you to banking establishments for loan and trust alternatives
• Suggests alternatives to increase your income during retirement
• Records and researches your cost basis on securities
• Provides you with unbiased investment research
• Provides you with personal investment analysis
• Determines the risk level of your existing portfolio
• Help you consolidate and simplify your investments.
• Provide you with technical, fundamental, and quantitative investment analysis
• Provides introductions to money managers
• Shows you how to access your statements and other information online

TAXES

• Suggests alternatives to lower your taxes during retirement
• Reviews your tax returns with an eye to possible savings in the future
• Stays up to date on tax law changes
• Helps you reduce your taxes
• Repositions investments to take full advantage of tax law provisions
• Works with your tax and legal advisors to help you meet your financial goals

PERSON-TO-PERSON

• Monitors changes in your life and family situation
• Proactively keeps in touch with you
• Serves as a human glossary of financial terms such as yield, franking credits, P/E ratio, fixed interest, etc.
• Provides referrals to other professionals, such as accountants and attorneys
• Shares the experience of dozens or hundreds of his/her clients who have faced circumstances similar to yours
• Helps with the continuity of your family’s financial plan through generations
• Facilitates the transfer of investments from individual names to trust, or from an owner through to beneficiaries
• Keeps you on track
• Identifies your savings shortfalls
• Develops and monitors a strategy for debt reduction
• Is a wise sounding board for ideas you are considering.
• Is honest with you.

Source: donconnelly.com