Have you ever thought about why you do what you do?
This question was put to me yesterday. Here is my response:
I am a financial planner because I believe the biggest value I can provide people is to help identify and achieve what is most important to them in life.
If I can help clients with this I will gain far more satisfaction that I could ever do by just recommending a particular pension policy or ISA.
I believe this because, at the end of the day, the financial products you may have (pensions, ISAs, life assurance etc etc) play a very minor role in your financial future. By far the biggest influence is understanding if you are going to be able to live the life you wish to without any money worries. And, if you are not, what actions need to be taken to ensure you will not have any money worries.
You see, the reason we all go to work is partly to pay for our lifestyles now but also (ultimately) to ensure we can afford to maintain those lifestyles when we no longer wish to work. After all, are you really planning to downgrade your lifestyle in retirement or will you be forced to?
For many of us, because we hadn’t done the planning bit in time, the point at which we wish to stop working comes long before the point that we can afford to stop . Rather, we just carried on hoping that we would get to the end of our careers and find we had enough in the pot. Hoping is no strategy.
So, by helping clients to uncover what is important to them (and I mean more than owning a nice car or house) we can together determine what is achievable and act accordingly. Much more inspiring than “I recommend you establish an ISA with provider XYZ because…..”.
That is why I do what I do. What about you?
