What is the main goal of financial planning?

by Sophie-Jane Keelaghan, MRICS DipPFS - Financial coach, money mindset expert, and experienced wealth managerPartner of St. James's Place Wealth Management Group

by Sophie-Jane Keelaghan, MRICS DipPFS - Financial coach, money mindset expert, and experienced wealth manager
Partner of St. James's Place Wealth Management Group

What is the purpose of financial planning?

The major purpose and reason for financial planning is to line up our financial and lifestyle ducks. Most people have a lot going on financially and with life in general, Cash and Investment ISAs, share options, business accounts, life insurance, pension plans, education funds, taxes, employee benefits, wills, power of attorney’s, and cash flow to mention a few.

It’s very important that we have informed reasons to base our financial and lifestyle decisions on.

A personal plan becomes like a rudder for your financial ship. Most importantly it gives you control financially which in turn reduces stress and will give you an improved quality of life. Plus it just makes sense; we plan everything else in our life so why wouldn’t we plan for the best use of the money we work hard for and create some financial freedom.

 

Is financial planning really personal? 

Yes it’s definitely personal!

As financial planners, we have a 4-step approach process:

  1. At our ‘Discovery’ meeting, we want to understand your current goals, both personal and financial, whether there are particular goals you would like to focus on with a planner over the year ahead, as well as understanding your financial awareness, so that we can support you in a meaningful way
  2. At our ‘Analysis Meeting’, we go through your numbers, so we have a clear understanding of your position at the moment.
  3. At our ‘Wealth Planning’ meeting, we go through your strategy document, which we will have prepared for you, and we agree the actions we will take together to help you to achieve your goals.
  4. Once the plan has been put into action, we meet on a regular basis, at our ‘Progress Meeting’, to review your goals as your life changes, and to make sure that your plans are working to help you reach them.

To get in touch with Sophie for an initial chat or to book in your own Discovery meeting, please reach out to her at this email: sophie-jane.keelaghan@sjpp.co.uk, or give her a call on 020 7638 2400/07970 299980

The Partner represents only St. James's Place Wealth Management plc (which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority) for the purpose of advising solely on the Group's wealth management products and services, more details of which are set out on the Group's websitewww.sjp.co.uk/products. The 'St. James's Place Partnership' and the title 'Partner' are marketing terms used to describe St. James's Place representatives.


WRITTEN BY SOPHIE-JANE KEELAGHAN

Sophie-Jane Keelaghan DipPFS, MRICS is a Partner of St. James’s Place Wealth Management, a FTSE 100 company which has £71.4bn of client funds under management.

Sophie-Jane is a financial coach, money mindset expert, and experienced wealth manager. Sophie-Jane became professionally qualified as a Chartered Surveyor in 2007, before being made redundant in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2009.

During this period of personal financial chaos, Sophie-Jane sought advice and quickly realised how few financial advisers there were out there who she could relate to, and who could relate to her, a 27 year old female professional. As well as this, the language that the advisers used when they spoke to her seemed unnecessarily complicated and full of jargon, and so guess what, she didn’t make a strategic plan with an adviser, and instead just focused on paying her bills every month!

Sophie-Jane decided to retrain and to become a financial adviser, and she has spent the last 7 years growing her business, through recommendations. Her specialisms are tax-efficient investing, retirement planning and financial protection. Sophie works with business owners and City professionals, both male and female! Sophie-Jane is passionate about making financial planning more engaging and enjoyable, and then watching how this helps her clients to achieve their personal goals.