In my case, I was invited by a friend to a free dinner and presentation put on by her financial planner. She thought he was good, and it was a free dinner for me.
That night I learned that I could use equity in my home to invest in shares. I didn't know that before. I also learned about the tax effectiveness of negative gearing. This lead to investing in a managed fund, using no cash – just equity in our home and borrowed money.
This doubled in value over 10 years, after losing value for the first 2 years. (This was during the early nineties recession)
I then got educated in how to invest in property and shares myself, and took the money out of that fund, to do my own investing.
I have been my own financial planner ever since. And I reached my target net worth 10 years early.
Why did I bother to do it myself? Why didn't I just keep using our financial planner? There are 2 reasons:
1. I am a control FAN. I like being the captain of my own ship. I am confident I can steer well, once I've got the required knowledge. I am generally more confident about running my own show, than having other people run it for me.
2. During the period when we held the managed fund, our financial planner suggested a number of investments to me that I couldn't see merit in. Some friends that I had referred to him took his advice – without any discussion between us at the time – and lost quite badly. This reduced my confidence in him.
A lot has changed in the financial services industry in Australia in the last 10 years or so. These days, financial planners, or advisors, are considered by the industry to be financial PRODUCT advisors. Their role is to help you choose which financial product you will invest your money into, once they have helped you with a financial strategy.
When you know your best overall strategy, you can then use a financial PRODUCT advisor to help you with particular investments that will be part of that strategy, such as superannuation, managed funds, shares, or property trusts. You will also need a financial planner to help you decide on the best products for risk management. That is – insurances to protect your wealth.
So. . . getting back to the question of why would you visit a financial planner. . . . here are the 2 main reasons:
1. Because you have a strategy that you want to execute, and it involves investing into some financial products (eg: managed funds, property trusts, bonds, etc.), or taking out some insurances.
2. Because you don't have a strategy and want some help creating one.
A WORD OF WARNING
I think you will do yourself a huge favor by getting educated about how to determine your own strategy first, before seeing a financial planner. It is YOU who knows what is best for YOU.
In fact, that is my mission. To help you understand what wealth really is, how much you are targeting, who you really are, and what the best strategy is, for who you really are.
So if your reason for considering a financial planner is reason number 2 above, why not get some education, put on your thinking cap for a bit, and turn reason number 2, into reason number 1!
(By the way, I will be authorized as a financial planner Brisbane soon, because I require this status in order to teach my students about certain strategies.)
(If you have found this article by using financial planner Brisbane as your search term, you are welcome to contact me to discuss your needs.)
