How will you Benefit from our Lifestyle Financial Planning Service?

We will help you add to the quality of your life through better planning of your investments and of your financial and tax arrangements. Our advice is proactive, independent and objective.

We will help you organise your arrangements and develop a comprehensive Financial Plan aimed at achieving your objectives. Often, the greatest challenge is to increase cash flow.

Your Plan will incorporate clear statements to show your current and anticipated future cash flow and will assemble in one folder all your key financial data.

Our Process

We will invite you to an exploratory meeting at which the features and benefits of our service will be explained and demonstrated. The aim of this meeting will be to decide whether we would be the right people to advise you and whether our service would deliver to you significant value for money.

This meeting will be at our expense and not involve you in any charge or obligation.

After assembling relevant data, a second meeting will be arranged at which the first draft of your Financial Plan will be prepared, with a schedule of recommended actions. We have found that developing Financial Plans with clients to be far more effective than producing ‘reports’ to clients.

We will help you manage the changes you judge to be necessary and once a plan of action has been agreed we will help you to implement it and to keep it up to date in line with changing circumstances.

At every meeting with your Financial Planner a date will be agreed for your next review meeting, thereby maximising the likelihood of ‘staying on track’ to achieve your objectives.

The process is logical and effective.

We can arrange as many review meetings as you wish but one a year is usually sufficient. We will contact you well before the meeting to request details of any changes in your circumstances. This will give us time to prepare recommendations to be discussed at your meeting. Following each meeting our aim will be to send you Minutes and an updated Financial Plan.

You will be welcome to contact us for assistance at any time.

Common Problems

There are ten problems which clients commonly bring to us for advice and assistance:

• How to be financially well organised
• How to plan for retirement
• How, when and where to invest
• How to balance a budget
• How to reduce tax liabilities
• How to increase business profits
• How to avoid running out of money in old age
• How to provide for the financial consequences of death
• How to provide for the financial consequences of illness
• How to provide for the cost of long term care

How We Can Help

People want to get a grip of their financial affairs and to implement plans which will achieve their objectives.

We will:

• help you assemble the data needed for the planning process
• provide clear statements of your financial position
  • your capital assets & liabilities
  • your cash inflows and outflows
  • your general tax position
• create a computer model of your financial situation so that ‘what if’ scenarios can be considered
• help you to decide on and prioritise your objectives
• AND help you identify the cost of your desired future lifestyle. This is an essential step towards developing a plan to achieve it.

How to Plan for Retirement

Many people need assistance to plan their future retirement income, we can help by providing cash flow projections for various strategies, such as using pension plans, property portfolios or preparing businesses for sale. We can then agree the most appropriate strategies for your individual circumstances.

How, When and Where to Invest

• Where do you invest:
• Building Society or Bank Deposits?
• Individual Savings Accounts?
• Unit Trusts or Insurance Bonds?
• Stocks & Shares or Property?
• Occupational or Personal Pension Plans?

We will work with you to build a portfolio that suits your personal lifestyle.

How to Balance a Budget

If your outgoings exceed your incomings, or you ‘don’t know where all your money goes’, a fundamental review is necessary. By using detailed cash flow analysis, together we can get your budgeting under control.

We can also help you consider the merits of giving up some taxable income in favour of non taxable capital gains and assist you to compare the alternatives of increasing cash inflows or reducing cash outflows.

How to Reduce Tax Liabilities

Avoiding tax is legal but expert guidance is advisable.

We can provide support to help you:

• take advantage of those tax breaks which still exist. There aren’t many of them so don’t waste them!
• ensure that some of your future cash inflows will be completely free of tax in your hands
• set up trust funds for your children or grandchildren which will be exempt from Inheritance Tax

The FSA do not regulate some forms of Inheritance Tax planning.

How to Increase Profits and the Value of your Business

Many of our clients run their own business and the service we provide for them is perhaps unique.

How we can Help

Increasing Business Profits
Many business people need to make more money but some don’t realise how much more they need to make and may be aiming at the wrong objective.

Planning for Profit
We will not presume to tell you how to run your business; however, we can offer some helpful pointers via business analysis and a business coach (if required). We can also analyse your company’s accounts, identify trends, calculate key ratios, compare these ratios with industry norms and help you decide what must happen to improve profits.

Developing a Business Plan
We have advised many business owners over the years and can help you develop and implement your Business Plans.

Selling a Business
Preparing a business for sale or planning your exit from a business may involve many aspects of financial planning and is essential for those who plan to use their business as their ‘pension’.

Worry About Living too Long

Without proper planning there is a danger of running out of money.

We will work with you to provide lifelong cash flow projections to show where you will end up on agreed assumptions and will help you make adjustments if they don’t look good.

Worry About Dying too Soon

Provision needs to be made for the financial consequences of premature death.

We can analyse the potential financial consequences of you or your spouse dying prematurely and will help you decide how to avoid problems.

Worry About Illness Reducing Income

Provision needs to be made for replacement income in the event of accident or illness. To be disabled and short of money could be the ultimate disaster.

We can help you arrange a sensible portfolio of contingency plans.

• Death
• Disability
• Critical illness
• Unemployment

Worry About the Cost of Long Term Care

Working with other professional advisers, such as your solicitor, we can assist in developing strategies to protect your assets and/or pay for care homes.

For Long Term Care we usually act as introducers only.

Other Problems

In addition to the ten major problems just outlined, clients use The Lamb and Associates’ service to obtain help with many other matters. If we can’t help you ourselves we’ll try to find someone who can.

Review Meetings

The principal purpose of financial planning meetings is to make progress towards the achievement of clients’ objectives.

We can regularly review progress towards the achievement of your objectives and can update your Financial Plan as circumstances change.

During this meeting:

• Your objectives will be updated
• Your investments will be reviewed
• Your tax planning will be discussed
• Your cash flow will be recalculated
• Your pension provision will be checked
• Your catastrophe cover will be reviewed
• Necessary action will be agreed and your Financial Plan will be reissued