7 Handy hints for personal insurance

1. Be careful buying personal insurance without advice; some cheap life insurance policies pay only if you die by accident (only about 20% of deaths are caused by accident)
2. Unless you are personally underwritten when you apply, do not assume you are covered for pre-existing medical conditions
3. ‘No medicals’ insurance could mean that the insurer starts asking questions to determine payment (if any) when you make a claim
4. It is a myth that applying for insurance means having a medical. Most people are insured on the basis of their medical disclosure in the application and a report from their family doctor (you give written permission for the insurer to write to your doctor in the application form)
5. If an insurance company wants any medical testing done (commonly a blood test if anything) they will pay for it and will arrange to send a medical professional to your door at your convenience
6. Never assume you are uninsurable.  An insurance underwriter may exclude some insurance but not all; or exclude certain pre-existing conditions; or increase the premium to reflect higher risk
7. If you are thinking insurance, think trauma insurance because suffering a serious illness (e.g. heart attack, bypass surgery, cancer, stroke) is statistically your most likely health event

 A good adviser will tell you what is in the fine print.  Personal underwriting and truthful disclosure when you apply is the way to guarantee you will be paid at claim time.

Call me direct on 0408 756 531 or email gary@garyweigh.com

For more helpful financial & business planning Australia information, check out our financial planning services

The post Welcome to my financial planning & business planning Australia blog first appeared on Gary Weigh.

Business exit planning specialist

Ten (10) great reasons to plan your business exit are:

1. To protect the most valuable asset you own
2. To leave on your own terms
3. To second guess the unexpected
4. To make your business sale-ready
5. To attract the buyer you want at the price you want
6. To secure the sale or succession arrangements you want
7. To be eligible for the small business CGT concessions
8. To secure your retirement
9. To bequeath your wealth in a fair and protected manner
10. To keep the family business in the family until you decide otherwise

If you value the business asset that you have spent half a lifetime building, then nurture, protect it and allow it to work harder for you.

For quality business planning

Call Gary on 0408 756 531 or email gary@garyweigh.com

The post Why plan your business exit? first appeared on Gary Weigh.

Gary Weigh, principal

Answer the following and then ask yourself if you are prepared for these outcomes.  Are you taking unnecessary risks with the future of the most valuable asset you own.  Business planning could save you a fortune if misfortune strikes.

1. “If you died tomorrow, would your business die with you?”
2. “Would you be happy to allow your family to inherit your business debts?”
3. “Would your spouse be interested or capable of replacing you, after inheriting your share of a business in which he or she had no previous involvement?
4. “How well do you think your spouse and your business partner would fare together in business if you died?  Is it something that either would want?”
5. “If you were the surviving business partner, how would you feel about being locked in business with your deceased business partner’s spouse?”

The fact is that most owners don’t have a ‘plan B’.  There is no protection or fall-back strategy in place because mostly, the owner’s focus is in the ‘now’ and not in the future.  There is also a general lack of education and risk awareness.  So business planning tends to be replaced by eternal optimism that nothing will go wrong.

However, Murphy’s Law states that whatever can go wrong will go wrong.  It is only a matter of when and how severe.  When a business starts to suffer, there remains a continuing obligation on the owner to repay business debt, personal debt, leases, contractual payments and other expenses.

Finding a buyer at short notice can be difficult and receiving fair value for your equity is going to be impossible if the business is steadily losing money.

To find out more about Business Succession and Owner Exit planning:

Contact Gary on 0408 756 531 or email gary@garyweigh.com

The post Business risks & outcomes you never think about! first appeared on Gary Weigh.

The reality is that your business, like every other business, has its ‘ups’ and ‘downs’.  Good people come and go, owners become jaded, stressed, and sick.  Accidents happen and with increasing age, an owner chances of dying prematurely or suffering a critical and debilitating health event, significantly increase.

Larger businesses can cope in the owner’s absence because there are enough people and systems to carry on.  However, this is not the case in smaller businesses.  If the owner is absent, the business usually suffers.

Why?  Because, when misfortune strikes and there is no ‘plan B’, it doesn’t take long for the sudden silence and inactivity to cause customers to go elsewhere.  Revenue falls, and market value falls with it.

Planning a prosperous exit, under any conditions, expected or unexpected, is critical because it represents the culmination of your lifetime of work.  It is your one and only opportunity to cash-out an asset which may even exceed the value of your home.

Furthermore, the after-tax and after-debt proceeds from a sale may have to last you and your family for the rest of your lives.  So it is no small undertaking and certainly not the time to be forced into discounting years of sweat equity.

The post Will you receive fair value for your business? first appeared on Gary Weigh.

When you think about ‘business planning’ do you think about it only in terms of planning a business start-up or an add-on venture?

Have you ever seriously thought about how you will exit your business on your own terms?  You are not alone.  It is common to be optimistic and trust that at sometime in the future, a buyer will emerge and offer fair market price.  It is not the reality for many.

It may be that you want your business legacy to live on through family succession.  That too can be a path scattered with unexpected challenges.

Like every other aspect of your business, it takes some smart thinking and hard work to achieve the outcomes you want.  To the best of your ability, you want to leave your business on your own terms, even if that exit is sudden and unexpected.

For more information check out my Exit Plan page at http://garyweigh.com/exit-plan

The post Plan your business exit first appeared on Gary Weigh.

Financial planning

It may be more intuitive to refer to financial planning as personal money management.  That is the art of generating income, managing household finances and accumulating assets.  You can do such a lot yourself with a little basic knowledge.

Most financial planners are well educated and really good at helping you with the more complex issues or those that carry a truckload of government rules (e.g. social security, insurance, super, retirement, estate planning).

The issue for most people is not that they don’t care.  It is that they don’t know.  People are simply unaware of what they don’t know and they don’t know who to trust to find out.  That is why it is essential to get information from someone trustworthy who does know.

Instead of picking up barbeque tips from friends, why not join MyProsperityForum for only $49.97 a month to have an expert on hand to guide you.  I personally work in the forum most of the time but I do invite guest experts from time to time.  It’s low costand high benefit for you and I am there when you need me.

The post A different approach to personal financial planning first appeared on Gary Weigh.

This is a question worth pondering.  Going bigger in business is not always better.  Your business only has to be big enough.  But big enough for what I hear you think!  Big enough to achieve the goals you set at the start.

The ideal size of your business is something that should be included in your start-up business planning.  You may not have all the answers but at least you should recognise that, with success, the problem is likely to arise.

For example, if you own a home business, the size of your house defines the physical limits of your business.  You don’t want it spilling over onto the footpath, while customers fill the street with their cars.

However, business growth is not always a voluntary decision.  After all, business is supposed to be driven by demand.  If you have something interesting to sell and people know about it, they will generally sign up.  The problem is that once you gain momentum it is hard to stop.

When you do decide to grow bigger, voluntarily or not, you come to realise that there are many interpretations of the concept of ‘bigger’.  For example, it can mean:

• More products
• More people
• Bigger premises
• More physical storage
• More digital storage
• More / bigger / better equipment
• More IT / online technology
• Replicating more of the same (franchising)

Which one is right for you depends on your needs and the needs of your business.

A word of warning!  One of the ironies of demand driven expansion is that a business can go broke doing it.  Sudden expansion can quickly drain cash that should be operating costs.

Follow @MyProsperityFor

The post To grow big or stay small? first appeared on Gary Weigh.

You think that because you own a business, your retirement is completely taken care of.  You assume that your business will provide everything.  There is nothing more for you to do!   On all counts, nothing could be further from the truth.

Running a business is no more than a choice you make in how you earn your income.  Some choose business income; some choose employer income.  Either way, those who take a deeper interest in planning their personal and family financial wellbeing will prosper in the long term.

Furthermore, as a business owner there is an extra layer of planning you should be thinking about.  That is, planning the future of your income-earning and capital-appreciating asset, and protecting the equity in business that you work so hard to build up.

There is no guarantee that your business equity will translate into the retirement lump sum you hope for.  There are just a few of the things that could go wrong and derail your dream:

1. Adverse circumstances (e.g. litigation, legislative change, customer desertion, obsolescence) force you to sell at a bad time
2. Your health fails you before you reach your ideal ‘sell out & retire’ scenario
3. Your business partner dies prematurely and his / her spouse becomes your new unwelcome business partner
4. You want your children to inherit your business but they are not interested
5. You don’t structure your business correctly to take advantage of the small business rollover rules
6. You don’t have a Will to control the bequeathing of  your personal assets or your business ownership and / or control
7. You have no emergency fund and no liquidity available should something major go wrong

Personal planning and business planning aren’t just esoteric concepts.  They are processes that help you predict, protect, or take advantage of the expected and unexpected things that life throws up.

Follow @MyProsperityFor

The post 7 surprises to bring a thriving business undone first appeared on Gary Weigh.

• Kate got a good solution to her product pricing (am I actually making money?) problem
• Narelle has started saving for a home deposit more because she has a simple budget tool to use
• Audrey read one of the many insider articles, ‘How much life insurance is enough’ and realised that she was leaving her two kids unprotected
• In the meet-up room, Narelle asked Kate to give her more information about her natural pain management products

Ask the most basic of business questions or financial planning questions and get a straight answer.  The best part is – it’s not about product, it is only about expert unbiased advice.

Join MyProsperityForum today and boost your money making skill

Follow @MyProsperityFor

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