You work hard over many years to achieve financial success and independence, naturally you want to protect it by making smart choices with your money.
The problem is there’s too much information
(and a lot of it is contradictory).
How do you choose?
We were never taught how to manage money, and our choices have increased in complexity.
Meanwhile the financial services industry just keeps selling one investment story after another.
If only there was a way to focus purely on the things that were important to you.
WHY WE EXIST
Yellowtail Financial Planning is an award-winning independent firm looking after the financial affairs of individuals and families.
Other wealth managers mainly concern themselves with managing the investments you have today. Our way of working looks at how your assets need to support you and your lifestyle now and into the future, and uses that knowledge to inform the financial decisions you make today.
Our clients find the financial planning enlightening and informative, and provides the clarity they need to make good financial decisions.
ContactIndependent research shows that people without a clear financial plan are more likely to make poorer financial choices, and our experience supports this.
They might take too much (or too little) investment risk, pay more tax than they need to, or not save enough to ever achieve financial independence.
There’s an exchange between Alice and the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland which boils down to this; if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.
Clarity
You’re never going to be completely sure you’re making the best decisions until you have clarity about the outcomes, goals and objectives you’re working toward.
Over the years we’ve met thousands of people seeking financial advice, yet it is rare for someone to come with a crystal-clear vision of their long-term financial goal. Usually, it’s a bit vague.
People may talk about stopping work at a specific age but are unclear about what it means financially. Often the answer to a question about how much income is needed in retirement is based on guesswork. And nobody really factors inflation in.
Imagine how productive our work would be if the outcome was defined with precision. Instead of “I want to retire at age 60” the objective was “to retire in 10 years with an income of £75,000 in today’s money, which after 3% annual inflation increases to £100,793”.
Getting clear on the outcomes is very important, though often plays ‘second fiddle’ when people are mostly paid to manage your money.
The initial time we spend with you is about clarifying your long-term vision. It’s unlikely to be right first time, because in our experience a person’s long-term vision tends to change over time, more so when our circumstances change. Nevertheless, the better we are at defining what your ideal future looks like, the better we are at focussing on achieving it.
With long-term clients this isn’t a one-time planning session. We work alongside them year after year adapting to changes and helping them stay on the right course.
Control
It’s a worrying thing not being in control of things, especially our finances. Yet many people we speak to will say they don’t feel fully in control over matters related to money. And money is one of those areas which can easily trigger irrational behaviours in people.
It’s often a result of not having enough clarity about what their money is doing for them, and not knowing how hard their money needs to work to keep them secure. Too often control is handed over to someone whose only interest is managing investments.
Our Financial Planning approach is different to the traditional Wealth Management service because instead of taking control away from you, we give you the answers you need to make choices.
We don’t expect you to understand every nuance of an investment or tax strategy, but we want to explain things clearly enough for you to reach the right conclusion. Where the traditional ‘wealth manager’ makes investing look complicated to justify an expensive management fee, we strip the complexity away.
Confidence
Clarity and information alone aren’t always enough for us make confident decisions. And without confidence we’ll feel uncomfortable taking the next step.
When the economy swings from good to bad our confidence is shaken. Increased inflation and taxation may cause us to worry but the biggest threat to our confidence is when our investments fall in value.
Share prices fall with alarming frequency. That can make us uncomfortable and reduce our confidence in Stock market investments. It may lead to holding too much money in interest-bearing accounts which is often a mistake, yet without confidence it’s hard to look beyond a simple deposit account.
We’re often most confident about ‘risky’ investments when things are doing well, and we’re least confident when markets have fallen. Successful investors have learned to be confident when everyone else isn’t, but that’s another story.
To help you invest with confidence we take historical investment returns and using the best and worst periods show how different investment choices have performed historically.
We don’t encourage unnecessary activity when markets rise and fall. Instead of chopping and changing your investment strategy we want you to have the confidence to ‘stick with the plan’. It’s hard to do because the financial services sector and the press seems to react to every market movement. It takes a confident person to ignore the noise, stick to the plan, and ultimately keep more of the overall return. We work to give you that confidence.
Working with us will make you better informed about how hard your money needs to work, how well you can cope with financial shocks, and how much money you need to achieve and maintain financial independence.
You will have an action plan of things to do immediately, and what can go on the ‘to-do’ list. You will know which plans and investments are ‘fit-for-purpose’ and where improvements can be made.
Whether you work with us on a one-off project, or ongoing, you will have a clear picture of how your money works to support you, helping you make good financial decisions in the future.
