Wealth management helps you reach financial objectives. Regardless of your financial circumstances, here are four important aspects you should be aware of to help guide your investments.

Wealth management is an all-inclusive approach to managing your finances. Often, high-net-worth individuals hire financial advisors due to the complexities of their asset portfolio – these assets can range from stocks to real estate, from super to SMSF.

However, private wealth management doesn’t have to be limited to millionaires, share investors or real estate moguls. If you have any sort of asset portfolio, and want to make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck, wealth management under the direction of an experienced financial advisor can help you achieve a better financial outcome than you can imagine.

In this article:

1. Learn the Objectives of Wealth Management

2. Understand Your Life Phases

3. Know the Different Wealth Management Services

4. Stay Updated on What’s Happening

1. Learn the Objectives of Wealth Management

Wealth management has three primary objectives:

Wealth Generation

Comfortable retirement doesn’t come easily, even for the wealthy. You must build the foundation, create the necessary means, and implement the strategies. However, these stages of wealth creation or generation don’t have to stress you out. Leave the planning to your financial advisor. There are some things you should always remember:

Wealth generation requires patience, discipline, time, and long-term goals. This means you must follow the plan throughout its implementation.

Wealth Protection

Wealth creation takes time. Thus, it’s logical that you need to protect what created. Wealth protection includes proper risk management strategies and insurances. It could also mean a pragmatic (but still proactive) approach to your investment, allowing you to minimize risk but still managing to increase the value over time.

Everyone has their own level of appetite when it comes to risk; some like conservative approaches, while others want riskier tactics. Whatever your financial goals are, make sure you communicate your willingness to take risks to your financial advisor, since it will have direct bearing on the strategies/investment approach they will recommend.

Wealth Sharing

Philanthropic goals are a great way to give back to your community. You can also incorporate this objective into your wealth management for tax benefits. Be clear in discussing these goals with your financial advisor.

2. Understand Your Life Phases

Understanding where you are in life, both in terms of age, career, and goals, helps you determine how aggressive or conservative your wealth management approach should be. Identifying these life stages help you and your financial advisor identify the specific strategies for increasing wealth in the long term. Here are the commonly used life stages:

Career Stage

This stage starts in your early 20s. You just graduated from university and are ready to find the best job in the market, or perhaps start your own business. This stage is the most critical because it’s where you build the foundation of your wealth.

An early start in investing, combined with the right strategies, can have great rewards. Areas where you want to seek financial advice include budgeting, investing, debt management, and the purchase of major assets like a new home or motor vehicle.

Family Stage

At this stage you are probably in your mid-30s, and already have an established career or business. You’re planning to start a family. Maybe you’re already married or engaged, and planning to have kids. Your focus during this life stage should be to maintain and monitor your wealth portfolio.

Aspects of wealth management you should consider during this phase include: superannuation, estate planning, insurances, other investment options, and an education fund for your children. In short, your strategies include your family.

Pre-retirement Stage

By age 50, if you’re like most people, you’re probably still more than a decade away from retiring. During this stage of your life, you should discuss with your financial advisor about maximising your savings and paying any off mortgages, loans and other debts completely. Strategies worth discussing at this stage are estate planning, retirement income stream, superannuation, consolidation of debt, and asset management.

Early Retirement Stage

Congratulations, you just retired and are ready to enjoy all the hard work you put in to get here! During this stage, it’s vitally important to you keep yourself active, not just physically and mentally – but also financially. Continue to implement the wealth management strategies you have started. Important aspect of wealth management to stay on top of include government benefits, aged-care planning, superannuation strategies, and estate planning.

Late Retirement Stage

This stage is normally classified for when you reach 80 years old, and enjoying the benefits of a comfortable retirement. Even if you have planned everything out, it’s important to stay on top of your wealth management, including but not limited to reviewing your estate plan and the transition to an aged care plan.

3. Know the Different Wealth Management Services

There are a wide range of wealth management services, with terminologies that can be a little overwhelming. We break down the most common below.

(A competent financial advisor will ensure your wealth management strategy includes a holistic approach in financial planning, investment strategy, and investment management.)

Investment Administration

This service includes investment analysis and asset allocation. Your financial advisor performs risk profiling and research to come up with appropriate financial advice. Depending on your investment portfolio, the strategies might include dollar-cost averaging for shares investment, rebalancing, or even wholesale investing for real estate.

Personal Insurances

Financial security doesn’t just mean establishing a steady source of wealth. It is also getting insurance for you, your investments, and importantly, your family. You don’t know what lies ahead, so always make sure you discuss personal and business insurances with your wealth manager.

Superannuation Advice

Every worker in Australia should be saving money for their super. A super account is either self-managed or under the account of your employer.

Many Australians resent having to shell out a portion of their wages for their super account – but this account is one of the best assets you have, and properly managed can give you great returns over a long period. Speak to your financial advisor today about the best strategies for self-managed super funds, spouse contributions, extra super contributions, and non-concessional contributions.

Cash Flow Management

If you’re just starting out in business, or struggling to manage your bills from month to month, the most common cause is poor cash flow management – in other words, spending more than you earn.

Proper cash flow management is essential to building your wealth. Having a proper budget, being able to save, paying down debt, and having simple, reliable structures in place to help you meet your financial goals, is a challenge that many Australians struggle to overcome.

Estate Planning

Estate planning is integral to wealth management. You have to prepare your will, create testamentary trusts, or enter into financial agreements. You don’t want to leave your heirs fighting for your assets when you die. If you don’t have any heirs, you still need to assign the right people to inherit your wealth. These are necessary parts of estate planning.

Business Succession Planning

You’re probably too busy running your business to worry about who will take it over after you’re gone. That’s fair enough! Your financial advisor can help you create a business succession plan; the plan includes who will own, manage and make key decisions in your business.

Retirement Planning

The core of wealth management is retirement planning. At the end of the day, you’re partnering with a financial advisor to help you retire in comfort, stress-free, knowing your finances are taken care of.

Tax Planning

As your assets increase and become more complex, your tax liabilities also become heftier and complicated. The types of taxes become complicated, too, and it can be challenging to monitor everything by yourself. The Australian Government has generous tax offsets and tax cuts – however, it also is the strictest when it comes to requirements and compliance. Having an ally on your side who knows the ins and outs and how to best work around the system will pay off for you very quickly.

Risk Management

Wealth management plans and strategies are useless without risk management. You’ll lose invested money if you don’t have strategies to protect your wealth. Risk management can range from asset protection to insurance for your superannuation.

4. Stay Updated on What’s Happening

The Australian Government often makes bold moves in its Federal Budget. Here a few details about the latest Budget from October 2020:

• Asset write-offs for businesses: businesses with a turnover of up to $5 billion will now be able to write off the full value of any eligible asset that is purchased for the business. It is estimated that 99 per cent of Australian businesses will qualify for the initiative.
• Lower deposits for FHBs: first home buyers can now get a mortgage with as little as a 5% deposit.
• Income tax cuts: by lifting the 19 per cent threshold to $45,000 and the 32.5 per cent threshold to $120,000, low- to middle-income earners will be up to $2745 better off.

Staying up to date on news and events which may impact your finances is important for helping you make the best decisions. If you’re struggling to keep up, or aren’t sure what to look for, speak to one of our expect financial advisors and let them do the hard work for you.

 

Key Takeaways

Wealth management is a complex subject with serious long-term implications (both positive and negative, depending on the success of your implementation). There are different strategies you need to be aware of and take action on depending on your life stage.

Consulting with an experienced financial advisor to obtain the correct advice for your circumstances is the best way to secure your financial future and worry-free retirement.

At Raeburn Advisors, we believe that everyone deserves a happy, secure future, and our services are focused around providing easy-to-understand financial advice with clear, actionable insights to help you manage your money better, eliminate debt, and make great investments that will help secure your retirement.

Contact us today for a free consultation and let’s talk about your financial goals.

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Disclaimer:

This information has been provided as general advice. We have not considered your financial circumstances, needs or objectives. You should consider the appropriateness of the advice. You should obtain and consider the relevant Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) and seek the assistance of an authorised financial adviser before making any decision regarding any products or strategies mentioned in this communication.