Life Stages

Creating truly personal life solutions for your unique needs

Footes Financial Planning is driven by an understanding that setting life and financial goals is a tried-and-true way to reaching them. Before you begin to define your own life journey, we’ll help you identify what is important to you.

This will provide the foundation to decide what you want to do with your money, and we can help you to understand your behaviours and emotions around money. It also helps you identify the different savings and investing, retirement, protection, and tax planning strategies that may be appropriate for meeting your goals.

We know the thought of ‘where to start’ can feel overwhelming. But with our highly qualified team of financial life planners and professional independent financial advisers, it doesn’t have to be. Footes Financial Planning provide an extensive range of services, plus the ability to create truly personal solutions based on your unique needs to help you make the right decisions for your life choices.

Looking to the future

With increased life expectancy, the goal posts for what is considered short, medium and long term is shifting, more so for younger individuals. This is because someone in their mid-20s today might spend 40 to 45 years working and then have 20 to 30 years in retirement. So those in their 20s and 30s may want to consider medium-term objectives to be between ten and 30 years, and long term as anything over 30 years.

Recognising when it is appropriate to invest and when it is better to save money in cash to meet your different goals is very important. In general, anything you’ll need money for in five years or less is seen as short term, while goals set five to ten years from now are considered mid term. Long-term goals are usually those for which you’ll need money in ten or more years.

Your short-term life goals

Short-term life goals that you are aiming to achieve over the next one to five years, such as buying a new car or the next holiday, are better suited to cash savings. This is because investing in the stock market over short time frames exposes you to potential volatility, and if the market falls you will have little time to recoup any reductions in your money.

If you’re only saving or investing for a relatively short period of time, you need more certainty about how your savings and investments will perform, and for your money to be easily accessible.

Your mid-term life goals

Medium term refers to investments with a five and ten-year time horizon. So your goal is further away than a short-term investment, but it’s not in the distant future. Medium-term investment goals might include paying for a wedding, starting a business, paying for your children’s education, or something similar.

With medium-term investments, you can afford to ride out some market volatility, which you can’t in a short-term investment. You may also start introducing shares and bonds to your portfolio, as you’ll have more time to grow your investments and longer to recover from any downturns along the way.

Your long-term life goals

Long-term investments sit on the distant horizon, typically ten years away or more. It’s out of sight, but not entirely out of mind. A longer time horizon gives your money time to work, and time to enjoy the benefits of compounding. This is when you reinvest any returns, along with your initial investment, to generate further returns in future.

It also means you’re able to diversify your portfolio, including a mix of assets that offer a healthy blend of risk and return, and with sensible protection and varied exposure. Relatively speaking, time is on your side, so you should be able to ride out the volatility of the market.

Knowing yourself, your needs and life goals

Its well worth taking the time to think about what you really want from your future. Knowing yourself, your needs and goals, and your appetite for risk, is the start point. Your focus should be on ensuring that the inevitable bumps along life’s journey do not force you, of course.

The highly qualified team of financial life planners and professional independent financial advisers at Footes Financial Planning will help you define and develop your goals and understand your approach to planning for the lifestyle you want.

Learn more about our services

Learn More

To find out more about how Footes Financial Planning can help you, please contact us today on 0121 222 5655 or email enquiry@footes-financialplanning.co.uk

Contact Us

Footes Financial Planning
Pure Offices, 1 Devon Way
Longbridge Technology Park, Birmingham, B31 2TS

Tel: 0121 222 5655
Email: enquiry@footes-financialplanning.co.uk