We Firmly Believe That Simplifying Your Finances and Staying Organised Can Greatly Improve Your Financial Future as Well as Giving a Boost to Your Feeling of Wellbeing.
Here are five ideas for you to consider.
1. PUT AS MANY ASPECTS OF YOUR FINANCES AS POSSIBLE ON AUTOPILOT
Your time is valuable. It is therefore in your best interest to find ways to reduce the amount of time and stress that you unnecessarily spend managing your finances.
One idea is to set your ISA contribution up as a monthly direct debit. That way you won’t forget to do it or need to worry about the market timing aspects of investing a lump sum in one go.
Another is to use multi-asset funds that automatically keep your portfolio close to your pre-agreed risk level rather than you needing to keep track of everything.
If you are not a confident investor, you could appoint a financial planner and pass a large part of the burden onto them.
2. DIARISE THE RENEWAL DATES OF ANY ANNUAL POLICIES OR SUBSCRIPTIONS
You could easily miss important insurance correspondence and find that your policy wasn’t on auto-renewal and had lapsed, leaving you uninsured. Or, that it had automatically renewed, but with a 50% price hike.
Make a schedule of all your renewals and subscriptions.
Examples might be car insurance & MOT, gym membership, TV packages, buildings & contents insurance, internet, phone contracts and utilities like gas and electricity.
Diarise reminders about these renewal dates, giving yourself time to research the best alternative or to decide to cancel.
Keeping a consolidated list in a safe place would help your loved ones should anything happen to you.
3. GET SHREDDING
Not only can decluttering save you time and stress, but it can also save your loved ones the pain of having to trawl through your paperwork if you weren’t around to guide them.
Having seven bank accounts, six ISAs and five pensions is unlikely to be helpful.
Start closing small bank accounts and consider consolidating investments and pensions. But, make sure you wouldn’t suffer penalties or forego any valuable guarantees.
Shred unnecessary paperwork. You don’t need a lifetime of records.
Make sure that your digital records are just as organised as your hard copy records.
4. SIMPLIFY YOUR FUND CHOICES TO SAVE YOURSELF TIME AND BOOST YOUR UNDERSTANDING
You don’t need to own dozens of different funds to have a well-diversified portfolio. Reducing the number of holdings decreases the time spent on your finances, creating space for more enjoyable pursuits.
Check if your ISA or pension provider gives you access to very low-cost, multi-asset funds that spread your money globally across thousands of individual stocks and bonds whilst automatically maintaining your agreed risk level, so that you don’t have to think about it.
Simple solutions are inherently easier to understand. Better understanding leads to improved happiness and well-being.
5. CREATE AN ACTION PLAN FOR YOUR BIGGEST FINANCIAL CONCERNS
Even if you’re typically an optimistic and relaxed person, money decisions can still lead to stress and anxiety and detract from your overall feeling of well-being and happiness. This can be improved.
Write down the most painful thoughts you have about money and create a plan for each of them.
For example, dreading completing your tax return will create negative thoughts all year. Proactively noting down relevant tax information as you go along and filing it well in advance of the 31st January deadline would reduce these negative thoughts.
The best-selling book, “Eat that frog!”, by Brian Tracy provides a great example of how this helps.
GET IN TOUCH TODAY
We try to help make life happier and simpler for as many people as we can. If you would like a better structure for your finances, please give us a call on 020 3488 9505.
The value of your investments can go down as well as up, so you could get back less
than you invested.
Tax and Estate planning is not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Comments