Financial planning is something that you may have heard someone at your bank speak about. It is a term that financial advisers may refer to when speaking about financial freedom.
But what is financial planning?
Financial planning is the process of taking a complete look at your finances and building a specific financial plan to reach your goals.
Here are five tips from Janine Horn, financial adviser at Momentum to help you with your financial planning:
Risk
Horn said: “I refer to risk as being the instances of the unforeseen. This includes the effects that something happening to you will have on the people participating in your financial life and your assets.”
“Knowing your numbers means you can successfully plan should a life-changing event occur and rely on your risk cover to support a potential financial shortfall such as hospitalisation, loss of income, and disability.”
According to Horn, financial planning can help people plan for unexpected risks as best as they can.
Having a valid executable will
There’s this misnomer that when one has nil/few assets, one does not need a will. But you may have a car, money, and belongings.
It’s false to think that if a person has little or no assets, they don’t need a will, but they don’t think about what will happen to their car, money, or belongings.
According to Horn, having a valid executable will means upon death, even if it's prematurely, a will still needs to be in place.
There are a few key concepts of a valid and executable will:
– the way your will is structured
– who are the witnesses to the will?
– the witnesses have not been mentioned in the will as recipients or beneficiaries of proceeds or inheritance.
Build wealth early
Wealth is often thought of as just money, but wealth is a mindset.
Horn said that the wonder of compound interest is the way that money doubles over time.
She said: “If you look at the chessboard definition, one ends up with more than a quintillion if one starts at one block and doubles up on every consecutive block. By the end, you may very well reach the number quintillion, so the earlier you start building wealth, the better.”
According to Horn, when starting financial planning, people should:
– Start a unit trust portfolio
– Start a money plan, and
– Start a wealth creation journey
Mortality and morbidity rates now indicate that people are living longer, which means that we may be living longer after injury, illness or a life-changing event.
Concerning retirement planning, people need to plan to have enough money due to their longer lifespans, and with that notion comes the notion that people need to work longer.
Horn said: “Think about it: if you work from your mid-20s right up until 60s, you may well live past 90. And so, in simple maths, every year that you’ve worked means that you need to have saved to live comfortably for every year into old age. Let that land.”
Saving your money
Saving refers to investing in emergencies and short, medium, and long-term financial goals.
Horn said: “Saving for a goal is also about comparing the cost of debt and credit versus the cost of saving for that specific desired goal/item. So, if you compare the cost of debt, consider interest, and consider how long it will take you to achieve that amount needed for your goal.
“You will also see that interest often erodes money. And remember the definition of emergency speaks of an unknown event at an unknown time. This emergency fund should therefore not be used unless that emergency happens.”
Live within your means
When people are younger, they often think that they are invincible and that money grows on trees somewhere, but it's important that young people learn to live within their means.
“Living within your means” speaks to setting up a structured and disciplined budget and a money plan that people will hold themselves accountable for.
Here are steps people can take to live within their means:
– Weighing their wants against their needs.
– Pay yourself last by taking care of your debt, living expenses, savings, financial planning risk and needs first and then paying yourself.
Income protection
Whether you are a full-time worker, part-time worker, business owner, or entrepreneur, income protection is necessary to help people protect their ability to earn an income.
“Income protection can be up to 75% of your net income and protected up to age 70 and sometimes for the rest of your life,” Horn said.
“What this allows for is for money to be paid monthly to sustain yourself financially and to continue with your money plan in the event of an income protection claim. So protecting your greatest asset is also protecting your income,” she said.
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