CAPITALISM and economic growth across the world have led to increased job opportunities that help to improve the quality of human life. Every human has the right to trade his strength, time, knowledge, intelligence and experience in exchange for agreeable wages.
Ultimately, you have the absolute right to spend every single penny you earned. However, not all of us are financially literate to manage our incomes and expenses efficiently and practically.
Many people don’t really achieve financial freedom to enjoy a carefree retirement life. In fact, a lot of people may have suffered a deficit, living in debts or having insufficient medical coverage and education fund for themselves as well as their dependents.
Why did this happen? Reasons: Lacking financial plan and goals, skills and knowledge in managing your expenses in addition to self-discipline.
In today’s world, you are generating income not only to cover the basic needs of your family but to allow your household members to live a better quality life or to achieve a specific financial goal.
Role of financial planners
A licensed and professional financial planner must be competent to assist you in achieving your life goals through a comprehensive financial planning rather than focusing on short term financial achievements through investments.
Below are the benefits of engaging a licensed and professional financial planner:
- Understand your financial status
You may have a particular living lifestyle, consumption and saving behaviours. A licensed financial planner is usually equipped with extensive financial knowledge, experience and skills. Upon receiving sufficient financial information from clients, they will perform various calculations and assessments. Financial advice will then be provided based on the outcome of your financial situation.
- Determine your financial goal
You might have an ideal lifestyle and specific goals to achieve which are beyond your current capability. Engage a professional financial planner to provide financial advice, relevant analysis and forecast for you. Let the professionals perform the calculations needed to eliminate the unnecessary expenses to help achieve your goals.
- Unbiased recommendation
There are a plethora of financial products in the market. Which of these products will be suitable to help achieve your financial goal or worth stepping in based on their reputation, term and outperformance in the market? Let the fee-based, unbiased advisers help you to make necessary comparisons among the products available in the market by formulating an ideal plan which is suitable for your financial goals.
An experienced financial planner possesses strong problem solving and mathematical skills to help his/her clients to make prudent financial decisions. However, please note that a licensed financial planner should not be attached to any single product or service provider. They should provide the best solutions to your financial strategy while remaining unbiased in recommending a particular product/brand.
- Avoid financial mistakes
Basically everyone has the absolute right to manage his/her personal income and expenditure, but lack of financial knowledge and experience may lead to large amounts of debt or poor financial decisions.
An experienced financial planner is equipped with financial knowledge to help you review your financial goals by searching for the most cost-efficient way to solve your current problems (if any) instead of pushing a particular product.
There are various ways to keep track of your expenses to avoid over-spending. For example, how to strategise your tax planning by leveraging the tax-relief benefits, how to manage your risk, and how to prevent over-risky investments, non-competitive investment products and under-performed portfolios.
- A CFO for you and your family
You need a person who can take care of your family’s wealth like a physician who can take care of your health. In our daily life, we are flooded with numerous advertisements on social media or our very own personal networks of various products/services which range from sales representatives in the banks to shopping malls seeking attention.
For every single decision that you need to make in relation to your financial strategy and management, there is a qualified CFO (chief financial officer) who is available to respond to your inquiries. Most importantly, he/she is putting the client’s interest first to safeguard your plan towards your life goals. – Nov 21, 2021
Julian Seng Liang An, CFP is a compliance director and licensed financial planner at Alpine Advisory Sdn Bhd and a Certified Member of the Financial Planning Association of Malaysia (FPAM).
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
Pic credit: Manulife Singapore
