What is the Role of a Financial Planner?
A financial planner is part educator, accountant, and financial analyst. Financial planners are trained to help people understand their current financial status and secure their goals.
The role of a financial planner is often misunderstood, and sometimes it’s just not explained adequately. The confusion can leave many people feeling like they are being sold insurance or unnecessary products. Often, a financial planner is also referred to as an “investment advisor,” which opens up the doors to more confusion because the term “advisor” can mean so many different things.
Read on from this post to learn the role of a financial planner.
1. Create Goals
Many people do not have goals for their money, and they allow themselves to spend without setting limits. When you create your goals, you will think about what you want from your money and how much risk you are willing to take. Financial planners help clients develop goals and determine risk levels.
2. Organize Your Financial Life
Money is usually not a favourite topic of conversation for most people, so they let their financial lives get quite disorganized. A good financial planner can help you clean up your finances and see how to prioritize spending. For example, a home is usually a person’s most significant asset, and a financial planner can help you decide if you should be paying down a mortgage or saving for college.
3. Help with Career and Business Strategies
If you are looking to start a business, financial planners can help. A planner can tell you what you need to do before starting your own company and how much money you should save if you plan on going into business for yourself. Financial planning can help you make the most of your earnings and ensure that your money is working for you if you already have a career.
4. Organise Life After Retirement
Many retirees do not know how to spend their money once they retire and exhaust their savings. With proper financial planning, retirees can keep more of what they earn. For example, if a person has to pay for private nursing care at home, sound financial planning will ensure enough money to cover such expenses.
5. Develop Effective Insurance Strategies
People buy insurance because they think it is the right thing to do. However, many individuals do not understand their policies, and they waste money on unnecessary premiums.
Financial planners can help individuals determine what insurance coverage is right for them and how much money should be spent on ensuring assets against risks such as theft. For example, a commercial trucking company may not get appropriate coverage from simple vehicle insurance. They need to understand the trucking liabilities and select the insurance for cargo coverage, physical damage, general liability, and more. For more information, you can visit the URL here.
6. Create Tax-Efficient Strategies
When people spend their money, they do not always consider the impact of taxes on their expenditures. For example, suppose an individual earns income from selling his car and spends the money buying another car for his child’s birthday. In that case, sound financial planning will ensure that the individual does not pay income tax.
Conclusion
It is easy to think that financial planners are in the business of selling securities and other financial products. But the truth is that they help clients with virtually every aspect of their economic life, from making sure that they have enough money to retire to finding ways to reduce their tax bills.