Is it time to freshen up your finances? From old bank accounts to forgotten pensions, Jaskarn Pawar discusses the benefits of reviewing your finances with a financial planner
I come across a lot of people with very stale finances. I have recently moved my own current account after spending 15 years with the same bank. It feels good to breathe some fresh air to my day-to-day finances. My new account looks better, feels better, will be simpler for me to manage and offers extras that just didn’t exist when I took out my existing accounts all those years ago.
Banking aside, there are so many people out there with old policies that could benefit from a similar freshen-up. A good quality financial planner could take a detailed look at each of the policies you have and advise whether they are worth keeping, selling or moving to a better plan. Almost everyone has an old pension, endowment, savings plan or investment fund that may have been a good idea at the time, but have since been left to wither.
The beauty of true financial planning advice is that it is pure advice. That is, there are no sales of new products involved. The objective of the process is purely to provide advice and to ensure you have your finances and plans organised in the most suitable and efficient way possible.
In fact, I had a client recently for whom I recommended that we simply sell two of his investments because they were no longer right for him. He had taken them out in 1979 and just kept them without thinking too much about them. Not realising what his options were, he was delighted to find that he could open up the possibilities by simply cashing in. We created a plan together where he could pay off some of his mortgage, keep some cash aside for reserves and spend the rest!
