I’d like to think there is almost always, a way to enhance something. Whether that’s cleaning your house, team working, diary organisation, password management or your personal finances.

How do you know if you could improve? One way is to talk about it.

Who do you talk to? Friends, colleagues, a professional?

You may have to pay for a service. Do you see it as cost or an investment?

Despite being a young business, we have worked with a non-exec from the start. He joins our board meetings and hold ad-hoc sessions during the month. He provides 3rd party, independent feedback on our corporate approach and thoughts on improving various aspects of our operation. This is an investment to help us build, manage and grow our business.

We recently met with a Xero (cloud-based accounting software) expert and talked about additional functionality that it offers. Now, we have our business plan & forecast loaded online and new reports created, meaning reduced number crunching for us and more time to focus on our clients.

I have many clients who have held significant amounts of cash – often they’ll own a house, have some sort of pension but hold a lot of cash. Why? Prudence? Not knowing what else to do? Asking questions about their aspirations can quickly turn the conversation towards making their money work harder for them. Cash is important, but there is quite possibly a better way of utilising it.

ISAs provide a great tax-efficient wrapper. Are you using them? Have you thought about them potentially providing you with a completely tax free income? It’s not just about accumulating capital – think about supplementing your income, tax free.

Have you got Premium Bonds? There’s a good chance you do, as they’re the number 1 savings product in the UK, with 21m people having some. How much have you won recently? Why are you holding them? Have you thought about keeping some, but putting some ‘work’? It’s quite possible you are not winning much at all. I’d suggest that could be better utilised.

Pensions – I have seen numerous examples (it’s very, very common) where one spouse has a large pension and the other is modest at best. Why? What’s the excuse? Everyone can put up to £2,880 before tax relief, per tax year, into a pension. Do that for 5 years and you’ll have £18,000, before investment growth, that has cost you £14,400 (£3,600 free ?). You can take 25% of that tax free at some point if you’d like, or leave it invested for the future. 

Unfortunately the world of personal finance is full of jargon and the press frequently report issues about fraud and people losing money. There are not many success stories brought to the attention of the masses. I dare say this Blog won’t reach the masses, but if someone reads it & thinks about their approach, then great. ?

If you’d like a chat to see if there are better option to help you achieve your ambitions with an Independent Financial Advisor, get in touch.

Thanks for reading.