Writing Your Life Story – Carbon’s four step process: Part two – Build

Carbon like to do things differently, our principle is not to endlessly grow your wealth, but instead to use your money to help you live a happy and fulfilling life, spending it on the things that really matter to you.

We do this by first understanding the lifestyle that you want to live; help quantify the cost of this lifestyle; set and maintain the path to achieving this; finally, and most importantly, make sure you spend and enjoy your wealth. To help our clients on this journey we use our four-step process.

Carbon’s four-step process:

Chapter One Visualise - help you to visualise a deeply personal life narrative that excites and inspires you, your life story.

Chapter Two Build - build a plan to show you how to achieve the financial future that you are dreaming of.

Chapter Three Realise - Activate all elements of your plan and give you the freedom to live your life story.

Chapter Four Reflect - Your story will evolve over time, as a partner for life, we regularly review your plan to ensure you remain on track.

This week we will focus on Chapter two: Build

Build brings all your information together into a plan to show you how to achieve the financial future you are dreaming of. We build a deeply personal plan that incorporates your hopes, dreams, and aspirations. It is often the first time a client has seen a visual representation of their finances projected forward.

Initially, we focus on ensuring that you have sufficient assets to support your future plans. Once we have confirmed this, we start to explore how you can spend more on the things that make you happy: from holidays to children or charities. We like to push your plan as far as possible so that we can provide reassurance that what you would like to achieve is possible within your plan.

We can use the plan to explore several complex planning areas such as saving for the future efficiently, building and maintaining a retirement income or considering your succession plans. We can compare a number of different scenarios to show you the effect of certain decisions. A common scenario would be to show a significant gift to children or charity and what effect this has on your ability to meet your future personal spending within the plan.

The aim of building a robust plan for you is peace of mind. We stress test our plans to ensure that it can handle many different situations, whether investment related or the impact high inflation or changing tax rates.

This is a collaborative project, one which we work closely with our client to build. We produce regular updates and issue a final financial plan incorporating all the work we have undertaken. At this stage, we will offer a suggested proposal that Carbon could implement in the “Realise” chapter but we make sure to take a pause at this point to reflect on the work we have done to date.

In part three of our series, we will explore how we implement your plan and begin to write your life story. If you wish to build your deeply personal plan and start your own journey with Carbon, please contact one of our financial planners.

The value of investments and the income derived from them can fall as well as rise. You may not get back what you invest. This communication is for general information only and is not intended to be individual advice. It represents our understanding of law and HM Revenue & Customs practice. You are recommended to seek competent professional advice before taking any action. Tax and Estate Planning Services are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.