What is good financial advice?

Financial planning has to start with a thorough understanding of your needs and priorities and a discussion about your personal goals, the way you see your life developing or changing in the future and your family commitments. It also requires a blunt assessment of your financial strengths and weaknesses and your tax exposure.

Successful financial planning is always personal and individual. If we could achieve it just by applying certain proven principles, we could fire all our advisers and do it all on a computer?- Frank Paul, CEO Moneytree.

A good advisor will have an in-depth knowledge of your goals, needs, ambitions and current financial situation, and after a thorough analysis has been made on your current investment portfolio, it might be advisable that you retain it unchanged and build on it with our guidance, or sell it off entirely and reinvest the capital more productively, or retain a part of it and sell off the balance to finance new investment. Each recommendation would be justified purely from your own point of view, discussed thoroughly with you, and only acted upon with your permission.

Good plans shape good decisions. That's why good planning helps to make elusive dreams come true. Lester R. Bittel

All of the above are simply common sense principles professionally applied. What sets a good advisor apart is their ability to take the trouble to understand you as an investor, help you decide on the achievable financial goals you really need and want, and work out a plan to help you try to achieve them while providing discipline, encouragement and support along the way.

With a life expectancy of 80+ you are going to need good and active financial advice well beyond retirement.