We regularly record the financial planning meetings we have with our clients to ensure that we have fully understood and noted everything that has been said, as well as to allow other members of the Riverfall team working with them to have access to the contents of the meeting. My colleague, not present in the meeting, said to me after listening to one such recording,“I actually “saw” the moment when they realised that their plan was going to work”.
The moment he was referring to was when our clients saw for the first time the cash flow plan we had prepared that showed, amongst other things, their projected earnings, retirement dates, pension income, expenses and taxation over their lifetime. For the first time, they had confirmation that they could contribute to their children’s education, retire when they had planned and enjoy the lifestyle they wished for before and after retirement. The clients’ silent reaction in the meeting had been so strong that my colleague had picked it up just from the audio.
In such a volatile world, can we be certain that the plan will correctly predict the future? There are obvious risks to their financial plan such as ill health or loss of income that we have helped our clients insure against. Investment markets will react to good and bad news events, but history tells us that a well-diversified portfolio should perform within a predictable range over the long-term. Their financial plan will inevitably need adjusting as unforeseen events occur and their objectives evolve but its fundamental structure should remain intact.
The Power of the Plan has enabled our clients to take a giant leap from a vague notion of what they hoped might be possible, to a clear path that shows them precisely how to achieve all of their remaining lifetime objectives. We think that was the “certainty” they were looking for.
