Taking the initiative to work with a qualified financial advisor is an important step in achieving and securing financial freedom. However, the process doesn’t stop there. In order for your advisor to best guide you, it’s important to maintain regular contact and communication. Here, we discuss why it’s important to meet with your advisor on a frequent basis.
Life Changes
We all experience changes throughout life that should be taken into consideration in conjunction with your finances. You could be contemplating a job change with new benefits, starting or adding to your family, pursuing retirement, or seeking to purchase a second home. With any potential change, you should evaluate how it might impact your financial wellbeing both in the short-term and long-term. It’s also important to remember that what might have been a goal five or ten years ago may no longer apply for planning purposes.
Revisiting Your Financial Plan
Financial plans are only as good as the information they contain. As such, your financial plans should be regularly updated with current data to evaluate if you are on track relative to your goals. It’s always best to be apprised of recommendations on a timely basis.
At SageVest, we recommend reviewing and updating your comprehensive financial planning at least annually. More frequent updates are recommended any time a life event happens or might happen. Subtle adjustments could have significant financial impacts. Even if you believe a financial change isn’t critical, we advise you to inform and meet with your financial advisor to truly quantify how life changes affect your financial big picture. Furthermore, even if you are already retired and believe you are in a stable position, it’s important to stress test your planning to know how different decisions or events may impact your planning.
Proactive Planning
Another strong benefit of frequently revisiting your planning is to identify potential opportunities. There are many examples such as:
- Capturing tax saving strategies
- Adjusting savings
- Maximizing employee benefits
- Evaluating college funding and/or family gifting
- Identifying the most tax-advantaged charitable giving strategies
- Ensuring adequate asset protection
- Updating planning documents
SageVest prides itself on proactive planning such as annual tax planning before yearend to identify decisions and actions to expand your wealth potential.
Developing a Strong Relationship
Developing a strong, trusting relationship with your financial advisor helps to alleviate anxiety that sometimes comes with financial matters. This is an important consideration for many individuals given that finances are the number one stress factor for Americans. [1]
A knowledgeable, empathetic, fiduciary advisor can best support you by having a true understanding of you as a person and your relationship with money. They can provide you with avenues to achieve financial freedom and your goals. Since a fiduciary advisor is legally bound to always work in your best interest, their advice will be objective and unbiased.
Investment Reviews
While we don’t believe in trying to time the market or engaging in excessive trading that can often be detrimental, we do recommend and conduct frequent investment reviews with clients. Doing so helps to assure your portfolio aligns with your needs, your planning, and your risk tolerance.
SageVest Wealth Management is a comprehensive wealth management firm. We believe that regular meetings with your financial advisor are a critical part of the planning process. Proactive planning allows you to look forward, feeling confident that you have a wise financial strategy in place. We invite you to contact us to learn more.
