What’s common between taking up a job offer, choosing your life partner, buying a new home/a new car and choosing which doctor to consult? The common characteristic is that one always takes someone’s advice, be it your elders, siblings, friends or experts, before taking the final call and this advice can change your life (or at least a part of your life 🙂). Why do we do it? Because a mistake can prove to be very costly and avoiding one could be highly beneficial.

Like everything above, financial planning is one area where avoiding mistakes is not only beneficial but it’s absolutely essential considering that lifespans are getting longer and people tend to live as long as their working life after retirement. Now would you like to leave your retired life dependent upon a Google search? All the world’s information is in your hands but do you have all the time in the world to look at it and stay updated ? The benefit of using expert, professional opinion stays undiminished even after the explosive growth in online information and sources. Being knowledgable investor is good but in many cases, in reality it is very difficult to pursue a DIY (Do It Yourself) approach. Let me present two important reasons here.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

Ever played Dartboard 🎯? Have you ever wondered what the different circles and numbers are for? Doing financial planning is sort of like playing Dartboard. You don’t know all the rules and you are not really an expert at it. So it’s more or less aiming at a circle shaped piece of cardboard and thinking that you know what you are doing. Similarly, it would be very difficult for someone to arrange and map out their own phased retirement plan (if this is their best option) when they come to retire. Or if someone chooses to take out critical illness cover, would they know what all things to consider and how to consider them? Imagine that you choose a critical cover based on incomplete knowledge and when the time comes, you discover that all this while you’ve been swimming naked.

Doing it day in day out

In an interconnected world, you would never know if an event taking place several thousands of miles away could have a bearing on your finances unless there is an expert watching over. Good financial planning involves a large amount of legwork. Legwork is a way of describing the large amount of research, dissemination of information and paperwork that needs to be done. To get great financial planning results there is a requirement to work with the right information, to keep records and to review matters regularly (which involves keeping up to date with all related matters, many of which change regularly). Your financial planner will do all of this for you. He/She gives you a peace of mind 😇.

All this can be summarized into one statement, an advice can change your life. There are many significant life events and getting expert advice with planning for important milestones like your retirement, your first house, your child’s future, your emergency savings etc can make a huge difference.

I am an independent financial advisor at Finvise and we are soon launching an app to simplify the way you get financial advise. We are now inviting new users on an invite only basis. Please sign up here if this interests you.