Our philosophy
How we treat you
- As financial planners we know that money is simply a tool to help you improve your life.
- We help you identify your lifestyle goals and guide you towards them, avoiding any potential hazards along the way – to put the right money in the right place at the right time.
- We know we deal with matters that are personal to you, which you want to keep confidential.
- We do all we can to earn your trust through transparency both in the solutions we recommend and the way we charge for our services.
- We have the expertise. All our financial planners have advanced professional qualifications and are committed to ongoing professional development.
- We are a family business and expect to be around for a long time to ensure we deliver on our promises.
Solutions we recommend
Most financial products are designed to do one thing well. They are not good at handling change. If your circumstances change and you need to use your money differently you can find your money locked away or worth less than you expected. Therefore, where possible, we recommend solutions that are:
Transparent
Our recommended solutions should “do what they say on the tin” and have no hidden surprises or charges.
Flexible
We can’t guarantee what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone in the next year or so. Our solutions need to be flexible enough to adapt to change.
Understandable
To take control of your financial planning you need to make informed decisions. Our solutions must be clear and understandable.
Good value
Investment costs harm investment growth and make it harder for you to achieve your financial goals. Our solutions should provide good value over the long-term.
Deliverable
Most solutions we recommend will be in place over the long-term. We must ensure we can continue to deliver our recommended solutions over this time frame.
Your financial plan
Life is for living
A good financial plan helps you create the right balance between work and life, saving and spending. At PageRussell we see your money as part of four interlocking spheres:
- Work and business: In this sphere the income and wealth generated depends on your technical or entrpreneurial skills. Your business or a final salary pension scheme would fall into this sphere.
- Used: This sphere contains assets which do not provide an income and you do not want to sell to fund your lifestyle. Your home would normally sit in this sphere.
- Investment and savings. In our world view a true investment is one where there is a direct link between the volatility risk taken and the long-term return you receive. This linkage is important as it is a crucial lever in your financial planning.
- Speculation. This is an investment where there is no link between risk and reward. Some people call this a “fun fund” or “racing money”. We believe it is OK to speculate, provided you know you are doing so and have the resources to bear a 100% loss. Many unwitting speculators think they are investing.
Our job as financial planners is to create or preserve enough wealth in your investments to replace any shortfalls when your work or business life stops, without drawing down on used assets or drifting into speculation.
The three “Ts” – target, time, tolerance
We create your financial plan by quantifying your lifestyle goals into a target amount of cash over a time scale. We then work out how much money you have now. Then, based on how much money you plan to save and your tolerance to investment risk, we determine whether or not you are on track to meet your goals.
We make recommendations to minimise your investment costs and tax.
This means the main levers you can use to achieve your lifestyle targets are:
- Change how much you save – which means changing your earnings or spending or both
- Change the mix (or asset allocation) of your investments
- Change your target amount
- Change your time scale
- Protect yourself.
These are all levers that you control, not us, which is why financial planning has to be a collaborative process.
Talk to Stephen or Tim about how our financial planning and investment services can help you.
Your investments
The key to a good investment experience is getting the most important decisions right.
Primarily this means getting the right mix for you between equities (company shares), property, government bonds and cash.
The right investment mix for you will depend on the balance between the amount of money you have to invest, the rate of return you need and your emotional tolerance to investment risk. The best way to resolve this three-way trade-off is to have a financial plan.
The reason this trade-off works is that there is a direct link between risk and reward. This link works over the long-term for investments properly spread (or diversified) across different investment types and geographic regions.
An effective investment experience
The most efficient way to harvest investment returns is to use low-cost index tracking (or asset class) funds and keep trading costs to a minimum.
It is not possible to consistently time investment markets successfully. This skill is not necessary if a robust rebalancing policy is employed.
Whilst important, tax should not be the main reason for choosing an investment. Investment mix and cost are much more important factors.
There is no such thing as a free lunch – if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
Talk to Stephen or Tim about how our financial planning and investment services can help you.
Your business
Your business is more than just a balance sheet and P&L account.
- Your business might be purely a vehicle to tax-efficiently harvest the earnings from your technical know-how
- You may be looking to build capital value in your business for an eventual sale
- You may be the steward of your business and aim to pass it on to your children and grandchildren
- You may be in business because you find it more fun than working for someone else.
The degree of financial separation
Your motivation for being in business will determine the degree of financial separation of your business from you and your family.
For example, a family steward may be more interested in increasing the capital (or wealth) available to the family as a whole rather than just the business. The entrepreneur building up a business for eventual sale, may be less interested in tax-efficient income now than the lifestyle business owner.
Understanding your motivation
We believe it is crucial that any professional adviser understands which motivation applies to you, because the appropriate solutions in each situation will be very different.
Talk to Richard about how our expertise can help your business and about self-invested pensions.
