Here’s how you a financial counselor can leverage your long-term financial security
Financial goals vary from individual to individual, and every person has different return expectations based on their risk appetite. Although there is a lot of information available on the internet, there is no one-size-fits-all DIY solution to achieve your financial goals. Patience, sound knowledge, and experience are required to master financial planning. And that's where the role of a financial counselor becomes formidable.
Experts follow a systematic process to understand your goals, objectives, and financial situation before structuring strategies to help you achieve your financial goals. Here is how a transparent and knowledgeable financial counselor can help you, and why guided investment is important.
Understanding the Financial Questionnaire: To gain a thorough understanding of your financial objectives, resources, holdings, and overall financial situation, a financial counselor will work with you to complete a financial questionnaire. This questionnaire will provide a comprehensive picture of your assets, liabilities, income, and expenses. It will also help to identify your immediate financial needs, retirement needs, long-term obligations, and other financial requirements.
With this information, your counselor will be able to make informed decisions regarding asset allocation on your behalf. A wrong assumption or calculation in any one of them may seem marginal initially. However, these seemingly small mistakes, compounded over time, can negatively impact your long-term financial security.
Creating the Financial Plan: A rational and realistic approach is the key to creating a financial plan that will guide you through your financial journey. An expert synthesizes all the information into a comprehensive financial plan that will serve as a roadmap through your financial journey. An Investment Policy Statement summarizes the key findings from the questionnaire and meetings with your counselor. It recaps your goals and objectives as discussed with the counselor. This is a crucial document that needs to be made carefully. In this statement, funds will be researched to fit your objectives while keeping in mind externalities or unforeseen events.
This document drills down various topics related to your financial situation and plans to meet your listed objectives. After your review of the plan with your counselor and adjustments, if any are made, you are ready for the next step, the Action plan.
Executing the Action Plan: Financial counselors can help you with every aspect of your financial life, not just investments. Primarily, counselors help you with your investment decisions by managing your portfolio or recommending investments, but that may not be all. The advisor will simply set up an asset allocation plan for you, considering your risk tolerance and risk capacity, containing all the recommended action plans to reach your financial goal.
They act within the purview of laws and compliances that are required under the buying and selling of such financial assets. A knowledgeable and transparent counselor will help you not only preserve your wealth but also grow it!
Regular Financial Modeling: To navigate through the tides of financial markets, active monitoring is a must! Once you approve the action plan and transactions start taking place in your portfolio, the counselor will send you reports of your accounts, which will include statements from the counselor on updating your portfolio.
Regular meetings and calls are scheduled to update your portfolio according to changes in your goals and objectives and to brief you on your portfolio's growth. Updating your portfolio according to your current situation is very important.
A financial counselor will help you reach your long-term goal in the following ways:
Expertise: Financial experts have more knowledge and experience about investments and financial counseling and are therefore better than most of us. They will assist you in making better financial choices than you might take on your own.
Accountability: Taking financial decisions about your own money can be difficult at times, as it is expected to be swayed by emotional factors. A financial counselor helps you by talking out such emotional factors and keeps your portfolio on the right track by buying a stock that's been skyrocketing or selling all your stock funds when the market plummets.
Advice: It’s in the name! Financial counselors can guide you about the best strategies to implement to improve your finances, from what investments to make to what insurance to buy, and every financial decision.
Evolution: Anything that is constant is change. As your life circumstances change, a financial counselor helps you adjust your financial plan so that it always fits your current situation and addresses your financial future.
Action: Many people don’t take the steps they should manage their finances because they’re too busy or too uncertain about what to do. Working with a financial counselor means an expert will handle what you don’t have time for and make sure your money is being deployed in the best way.