Here’s something you can do from home – make financial plans
Here’s something you can do from home – make financial plans
These weeks of enforced staying at home are spurring many people on to tackle tasks that often get relegated. Good examples are organising paperwork and making financial plans. If you’ve got time on your hands right now and are motivated to conquer your pensions, investments or other financial goals, here are some suggestions.
Review your pensions and retirement plans
For many people, their pension will become their biggest asset – even more valuable than their home – but it’s common to know little about what pensions are invested in or how well they are actually performing.
One of the big issues is that people often have multiple pensions – both workplace pensions and personal pensions – and this makes reviewing pensions challenging and time consuming.
There’s also the issue of impenetrable paperwork; while great strides have been made in recent years to make pension providers produce clear material showing performance and charges, it’s often still not an easy read.
How Tilney can help you with your pensions
At Tilney, we have a team of financial planners that are focused on helping clients make the most of their pensions and wider finances. They are supported by a team of technical pension specialists whose role it is to understand every last detail of pensions and the notoriously complex and ever-changing legislation around them.
In the last few weeks, our teams have been supporting lots of clients who are using this time of lockdown to review and organise their pensions. Some are also approaching or in retirement and have significant concerns over the impact of markets on their pensions.
Our financial planners are all available by phone right now and are happy to carry out a free pension check-up for you if you’d like to talk through your pensions and retirement plans – or perhaps just get a second opinion that everything is on track.
There is no obligation to take up any of our services: it’s just a great opportunity to talk to a pension expert and find out if you could benefit from Tilney’s personalised pension advice.
Structure your finances in the most tax-efficient way
The UK tax system is particularly complex but we do get given a number of very generous tax allowances and reliefs. Structuring your finances to make the most of these is an important part of financial planning.
We have a comprehensive guide to Tax-efficient investing to help you plan. If you’d like to speak to one of our advisers about your specific circumstances, it’s easy to book a no-obligation consultation.
Estate planning, Inheritance Tax and giving money away
When thinking about estate planning, people often focus on a very narrow Inheritance Tax definition, but there is a lot more to estate planning than Inheritance Tax and considering what will happen to your assets after you die.
Estate planning is also about making sure you’ve got enough money to live on now and, increasingly, giving away – or gifting – money to family or charity while you are still very much alive and can see others enjoy it.
How Tilney can help with estate planning
We are prolific writers on estate planning at Tilney and have lots of useful information for you, whether you want an overview of estate planning, a crash course in Inheritance Tax, are interested in the rules around giving financial gifts or are keen to set up a trust.
You can find all this information plus a range of articles, estate planning podcasts and videos by visiting our estate planning hub.
If you’d like to speak to us about your estate planning needs, you can of course book an appointment for a free initial consultation with one of our experts.
Would you benefit from professional help with your investments?
When stock markets go haywire, people react in different ways. Some close their eyes and hope for the best, others panic and sell everything.
Then there are those that take stock and consider whether there are different or better ways of managing their investments. A lot of people in this latter group are approaching Tilney at the moment, keen to get an expert opinion on their investments and find out how we, as professional investors, are managing client portfolios at the moment.
Investment support from Tilney
Our Central Investment Team is recording regular podcasts which you can listen to from our website or directly from podcast providers such as iTunes and Spotify. They are also writing a wide range of updates to share our thinking. You can read all of these via our Insights.
If you’d like to find out more about how Tilney manages money, we have a useful guide How we Manage Money, which gives a broad overview of our investment philosophy and process together with information on our range of investment services.
For those considering having money managed or are looking beyond existing providers, our investments professionals would be happy to have a chat with you over the phone. We provide free initial consultations and there is no pressure to sign up for any of our services.
More financial paperwork to get ticked off
Is your Will up to date?
We don’t provide Wills at Tilney but they are a cornerstone of financial planning so we would encourage you to make sure yours is up to date and still reflects your wishes.
Have you completed an Expression of Wish for your pension?
An Expression of Wish allows you to state who you want your pension to go to should you die.
While an Expression of Wish is not a legally binding document, it will be used alongside your Will to decide who your pension should go to. We often find that people are unaware of this document, haven’t completed it or that it is out of date.
Do you have a Lasting Power of Attorney in place for you or a loved one?
A Lasting Power of Attorney or Continuing Power of Attorney in Scotland is a legal document that gives someone permission to manage your money if you no longer can or don’t want to. The process is managed by the Government’s Office of the Public Guardian, which is still operating during times of coronavirus but, understandably, with increased demand and more challenging working conditions.
Do you have a log for your important documents?
Missing or hard-to-locate paperwork is always a source of frustration for our clients. To help keep tabs on it all, we have created an important documents log that you can either print off or keep as a PDF and fill in.
We’re here to help so give us a call
All of advisers at Tilney are safely working from home and are available to speak to you over the phone. So, if you’re using some of your time to organise your finances and conquer your paperwork, we’re here to help you. Call us on 020 7189 2400.
Disclaimer
This article was previously published on Tilney prior to the launch of Evelyn Partners.