Be your own financial planner

Looking for business building tips in Brisbane?  If you are really interested in your own financial wellbeing, become your own financial planner.  Sound impossible?  It’s not as difficult as you may think.

An extraordinary amount of knowledge is required to be a professional financial planner in Australia, but only a fraction of that knowledge is required when you only have one client – yourself!

Think about it!  With only one set of circumstances to understand and one set of goals to achieve (i.e. your own), and no compliance issues to worry about, you only need sufficient knowledge to plan your own financial future.

Let me say upfront that while it is desirable to be involved in the planning of your own financial future, it is dangerous to do the same for others because their circumstances and aspirations are different to yours.  Please refer them to a licensed professional.

In financial planning, the big knowledge areas are taxation, insurance, superannuation, retirement, Centrelink & DVA payments, and estate planning mainly because each is a broad area and there are so many rules to understand.  The other important knowledge area and one that causes a lot of frustration for people, is ‘investment’.

There are so many products and so many options that even the most knowledgeable financial planner does not know them all.  Also, people assume that if a financial planner recommends an investment product, it is guaranteed to make money.  Such is not the case as the GFC has recently demonstrated.

Therefore, if you are seeking to improve your financial wellbeing, it is important to understand the concept of risk.  Risk exists in all investments, bar none.  The value of investments can go up and they can go down.  There are different types of investments and different types of risk, so the real skill is to uncover and understand the risks that are relevant to your particular investment.

Understanding risk requires thorough research – deeper than the glossy brochure.  Also, the closer you are to managing the investment yourself, the clearer the risks are likely to become.  However, that requires some experience.

For more business building tips in Brisbane, check out my Aikido Secrets blog site at http://www.aikido-secrets-to-calm-success.com

Next time – Starting with a budget

Gary