For most of our clients, the financial planning process involves increasing focus to future goals. We encourage them to reduce current spending so they are able to improve their lives in the future. This usually involves directing some income and assets to achieve goals such as buying a house, paying off a mortgage, funding retirement or a big overseas holiday. Today, I’m going to discuss the other type of client, those clients who are natural savers and are now in a position where they can improve their current lifestyle.

It seems counterintuitive that your financial planner will tell you to increase your spending and enjoy life but, for some clients, that is exactly what we do. We have clients that have had a focus on building wealth for the long-term and have been prepared to make sacrifices to achieve those goals. Some of these clients are now in a position where they have accumulated enough wealth so that those sacrifices are no longer necessary.

Once you have accumulated enough wealth (or are well on track to do so) to fund all future goals, it is no longer necessary to make sacrifices to your current lifestyle.  Surprisingly, it can be hard to convince these clients it is OK to loosen the belt and treat themselves to the things they would like to do or buy, but haven’t previously for financial reasons.

For these clients, we try and identify the things that are important to them that they have forgone previously and put a plan in place to achieve more of these. Again, we focus on meaningful spending, we never advocate for frivolous, wasteful expenditure.

Often, we encourage these clients to think of their perfect holiday, dream car or something they have always wanted to do, and plan for them to achieve that goal. We really focus on them improving their current lifestyle.

The aim of the game isn’t to build as much wealth as possible and die with the most money in the bank. The aim of quality financial planning advice is to allocate your income and assets to ensure that you are able to afford to have a quality standard of life now AND in the future. Most clients need to be reminded to prepare for the future, but for some clients we also need them to focus on the now.