You can be financially independent

I can pretty much guarantee that I can ensure that anyone can achieve financial independence. This is what the financial services industry, the Government and media all suggest is the main objective of financial planning. What they don’t tell you is how easy it is obtain this. If you live in Britain, I can pretty much guarantee your financial “freedom”.

Achieving financial independence is easy

Here is how. Sell everything you have and move to a warmer climate, in a country with a similar population size to the UK – The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the poorest country in the world based on per capita GDP. There you can buy a house, (or probably an entire town). You will almost certainly have enough money to live there, not that life is easy for the majority of the people there, but coming from Britain, you will achieve financial security. I cannot guarantee your personal security or indeed an anxiety free life, but that merely underlines my point.

 The financial services industry talking about the wrong stuff

Of course, I’m being somewhat silly, but you appreciate the idea that financial independence is not really what great financial planning is about. I would argue that great financial planning is all about your lifestyle. How you want to live your life and the choices that you make is really what financial planning is about. The only person to set the objective for your lifestyle is you. As a financial planner my job is to help you to verbalise and clarify what lifestyle you want. It is not to judge your choices, after all these will be born from your values. My job is to assess if can afford to maintain your lifestyle for as long as you want it or if you are going to be forced to alter your lifestyle.  Most financial advisers act as though what you really need is the best pension or the most fantastic investment. Sorry, but this is completely missing the point, financial products and investment strategies are nothing more than instruments to get you where you need to go, but unless you have been properly asked “to where ?” how can you have confidence in YOUR financial PLAN? So isn’t it about time that you were asked the right questions? Great financial planning is about YOU.