Financial Planning for the person who has it all

Could this be you?

To sit amongst the few who don’t have a financial care in the world?

You’ve already secured your version of financial independence. You have the house. The cars. Holidays. Living a good life; a very well-earned one.

You’re not worried about money; certainly not about running out of it.

So why on earth do you need financial planning? You’ve already got it all under control, and you didn’t use a financial planner to get here.

It’s a great question. And it’s absolutely the right one to be asking. So, let’s challenge it by the medium of two case studies.

Longhurst Silverstone

Case Study #1

You wake up. The sun is shining through your bedroom window. Life is good. And it is the same as it was yesterday.

You’re in control. Your work-life is good. Relationships strong. Lots of hobbies. But, and it’s a big but, you have no possessions at all. None.

Pause for a moment. How does that make you feel?

What would you do next? And where would you start?

Does that concept fill you with fear? Or do you feel no change at all in your mood?

Perhaps you feel freedom? A life of more happiness?

Good questions? Odd ones? But maybe the right ones to ask you?

Let us make an assumption.  You’re wealthy. But presumably wealth isn’t the source of your happiness. It’s just a tool to enable and empower you to secure peace of mind.

However, how can you be sure that you’re really pointing your capital resources in the direction of the values, endeavours, people, and causes, you hold closest to your heart?

Case Study #2

You wake up. The sun is shining through your bedroom window. Life is good. And it is the same as it was yesterday.

This time two things are different. You have no possessions but the clothes on your back and you have a bag of money, the contents of which are identical to your net worth today.

Now dear reader – how do you feel?

What would you do? And where would you start?

Would you buy the exact same house and car? In the same neighborhood or even country?

Would you reinvest all of your financial resources identically to your other life?

Would you give to the same charitable and community causes?

Would you change your family’s mindset into how you all spent your hard-earned human capital?

And the biggest question of them all – Would you change?

And the answer is …..

Unless the answer is nothing at all (which let’s be honest, it’s not), you can clearly see that even a person who has everything has much to gain from examining their deepest-held (and perhaps hidden) motivations and the degree to which they’re acting in accordance with them.

This is known as lifestyle financial planning, or sometimes called financial life planning.

And this is what we do here at Longhurst.

In our experience, those with the most financial resources also have the most to gain from regularly and conscientiously exploring the distance between where they are now and where they could be.

Without engaging in the process of exploring and talking through your evolving heart’s core and beliefs, life naturally will devolve into a pattern dictated by external circumstances and online influences, where the dreams of others rather than our own controls our path.

But let us be clear. The questions raised above are just as valuable to those who have not secured their version of financial independence. The challenge for all of us, regardless of our net worth, is to ensure that our possessions do not possess us.

Indeed, the ultimate end of lifestyle financial planning – wealth management – is to help ensure the possessions that might unconsciously bind us, instead are unleashed as a source of freedom for those we love and care to love.