“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.”  - Mark Twain

Financial Planning…helping you to enhance your life-style, not ‘sell’ products!

When an architect is given the opportunity to build a house for a client he or she firstly provides the client with ‘plans’, which include the design, materials, costs and time-frames of the construction or renovation. However, prior to the architect providing their ‘plan’, the client needs to firstly decide what they want from their home (what are their objectives), which may include number of bedrooms, colours, materials to be used, as well as intangibles, such as prestige/happiness.

For your new home (or life-style) to be a success, there must be firstly a consideration of what you want to achieve, your objectives – what you want from life…dreams and aspirations! Once your objectives have been determined, we can with your help determine ‘what needs to be done’ to achieve your dreams and aspirations, and then develop a ‘plan’ aimed at assisting you to ‘get to where you want to be’…this is called a Financial Plan…not a Statement of Advice!

A Statement of Advice is a document, which articulates advice given in terms of the recommendation of a financial product or insurance product while the majority of Statements of Advice provided by financial planners focus almost solely on investment and risk products, our approach is to expand on that and look at other issues such as your life style goals, budgeting, estate planning etc. We feel that we provide you with a true ‘financial plan’.

FM Financial Solutions believes in providing financial plans to client – not ‘simply selling a product to them’. Our fee model helps us and our clients have a life-style focus, rather than ‘product’ focus as we are remunerated not from a product via way of a commission or percentage based fee - [a commission/percentage fee based model depends on the client having large investment balances or in the case of insurance, high cost premiums, to generate income for the advisor]. Instead we are remunerated for the time taken to provide the advice and the value that we add to your situation – and we are paid agreed flat fees by you, and not a product provider, such as a fund manager or life insurance company.

Your goals and objectives will differ from another person’s, however at the end of the day, in Bob Dylan’s words:  “What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do?

Eating out at a restaurant often, working 4 days a week only, travelling overseas, skiing each winter and visiting your grandchildren often, are some examples of ‘doing what you want to do’. However, many of the things that you want to do may not be possible now, without putting in place a plan and implementing the plan, as well as putting in place strategies aimed at protecting the means of achieving your plan...our aim is to help you be successful:

“There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.” - Christopher Morley