When you’re trying to get ahead with your money as a young professional, it’s hard to know what your options are. You can end up confused, suffer information overload, and in many cases end up paralysed by choice.
Because you want to do what’s going to give you the best outcome but aren’t sure what this is, and are worried about making mistakes.
So you do nothing.
This means you miss opportunities, and suffer through slow/no progress. It can be hard to know what you should be doing or how to get started.
Most young professionals recognise they need help to get their money strategy into shape and work smarter to set up their ideal lifestyle. But at the same time, they don’t know who’s right to help them, how this all works, or what sort of things an Adviser does and doesn’t cover.
And it’s no surprise why…
Financial Advice is something that can be extremely different from one adviser to another. Some just help clients manage their superannuation, some only investments, others just work with life insurance, and some only work with people that already have a lot of money.
But there are other Advisers out there that work with clients on their entire financial and lifestyle strategy. These Advisers can help you manage your cashflow, buy property, build an investment portfolio, manage your superannuation, reduce your tax bill, and help you build a clear path from where you are now to the money and lifestyle goals you have for the future.
This last category or Advisers look at your entire situation and ensure all elements of your money strategy are working together. They also focus on lifestyle outcomes along with financial outcomes so you can get the financial outcomes you want, while enjoying your most important lifestyle outcomes along the way.
I’ve been working with a client now for a little while, I’ll call him John. John was introduced to me by a mutual friend professional event I was speaking at. We got to chatting about a bunch of things, and eventually the conversation turned to work.
John was a Designer, an area where I’m completely useless but one I find fascinating. We spoke about John’s work and I was peppering him with questions about where he gets his inspiration from and confessed I draw better whiteboard pictures for my clients at a quality level only slightly better than a primary school child.
Eventually John got to asking me about the work I did. I told John I was a Financial Adviser. His first response was “so you help people with their super?”. I’ve had this conversation a few times in the past so am well practiced. I explained to John that I did help people with their super, but because I work mainly with young professionals, this is probably the smallest part of what I do and one of the least important to my clients. John looked a little confused.
His next question “So you buy shares for people and help them invest?”. I gave John the same response. He was now intrigued.
Next question “So what do you actually do?”. Now we were making progress!
I told John I helped people set up their ideal lifestyle. John was interested. He asked how. I answered: by helping them make smarter decisions with money. John was intrigued.
John asked me how we go about this, and I told John about the three steps necessary for any young professional to be successful with money, which are being conscious of your money, clarifying your options, and being consistent. I could tell he was keen to know more.
When I explained to John the areas I typically cover when I work with my clients, going through their income, cashflow, property strategy, investments, super, and overall strategy and lifestyle planning, it’s fair to say he was shocked. John told me he had no idea there were people that could help with all these areas.
John told me he had been wanting to get some more structure in his money strategy for about two years, and had been searching around online trying to figure out what his options were. John told me he was confused about what the best strategy was and was suffering from information overload. He said he was more confused now than when he started his research and was no closer to making any improvements to his strategy. We decided to talk again.
After helping John set up his plan he was pumped with his results. We helped John cut his tax bill, start an investment plan, and get himself set for his first property purchase. John was stoked.
I think John’s position is fairly typical and I’ve seen this loads of times. Most people don’t know what’s possible when it comes to getting good Financial Advice, and they think they need a huge pile of money to get any benefit out of this process.
Explore your options when it comes to outsourcing and getting good advice to help you set up your plan. Find the right person that can give you the right advice and you’ll get ahead faster. You’ll avoid traps and the common mistakes that hold people back. And, you’ll do this all without having to spend all your spare time crunching spreadsheets and doing research on the internet.
