How financial coaching helps you to reach your life goals

Recently, we looked at how a financial planner differs from an investment manager. In simple terms, investment management is about how they allocate the money, what risk is being taken, and the returns you can expect to receive. Investment managers want to maximise the returns for investors.

In our experience, what most people need is advice about how their investments fit into their overall financial plan and, more importantly, their life.

For us, financial planning is about how you use your financial resources to live the life that you want. Of course, investment performance plays a part. But, we’re also interested in your life choices. How hard do you want to work? When do you want to retire? What are your life goals?

Increasingly, we are also finding that clients appreciate the value of an additional approach to fulfilling their life aspirations: financial coaching.

Financial coaching empowers you to meet your life goals

We know that financial planning adds more value and helps clients get more from the process than simple, transactional financial advice.

As financial coaches, we also go even further than even some other financial planners. Financial coaches help you to explore your ambitions and goals and show you how you could achieve these aspirations if you managed your money more effectively.

The sort of questions that we’re likely to ask you include:

1. What are the things that matter most to you?

2. What aspects of your life are you most happy with now?

3. What aspects of your life would you change if you could?

4. What are you investing or saving for?

5. What’s on your bucket list?

6. What are you going to regret not doing in your life?

In our experience, financial planning works when our clients take ownership of their plan. For this to happen, the client has to determine the goals and aims of the plan, and the plan needs to be realistic and flexible enough to enable clients to stick to it.

Both initial and ongoing coaching helps to engage clients with their plan, and ultimately leads to long-term success.

What this has to do with personal training

A personal trainer encourages you, motivates you, and coaches you to hit your physical goals. They work closely with you over time to help you to achieve your specific targets.

We do much the same but with your money. So, whether you need help with budgeting, savings, investments, pensions, mortgages or life insurance, we will help and empower you to tackle your finances and to get them in the shape needed to reach your life goals.

A personal trainer can’t do the heavy lifting for you, but they can empower you to make the right choices to help you meet your goals. We’re the same.

Think about your investments. We’ve previously looked about how unconscious biases can affect you when it comes to investing. From overconfidence to loss aversion, our psychology can lead us to make knee-jerk and emotional decisions which can damage our long-term goals.

As a financial coach, we can help you to identify those biases, and to recognise the moments where you may make a choice which isn’t in your best interests. By working with you to improve your relationship with your finances, you’ll enjoy better outcomes.

Financial coaching and planning combined

Some financial coaches simply get paid for their time, and do not provide financial advice. They are there to help you establish your interests and goals and work towards them.

As regulated financial planners, we’re different. Not only can we improve your relationship with money through coaching, but we can also use our wide knowledge and experience to make recommendations.

What this means is that we will:

1. Establish you and your family’s financial goals and objectives, as well as any specific financial planning requirements you may have

2. Complete a comprehensive analysis of your existing finances against your stated goals and objectives

3. Complete research and analysis to identify appropriate financial solutions

4. Create a Lifetime Financial Forecast of your wealth over your lifetime, modelling various ‘what-if’ scenarios to assess the potential impact of key events on your plans

5. Make recommendations and implement solutions

6. Meet with you regularly to ensure your plans remain on track.

Get in touch

To find out more about how financial coaching and REAL financial planning can help you achieve your life goals, please get in touch. Email team@tfp-fp.com or call us on 01621 851563.