Having enough money to one person may mean being able to afford three holidays a year, and to another it may mean affording one. But although ‘having enough’ may mean different things to different people, we all share one common desire to have enough income to live our chosen lifestyle as we wish. To do so, we need a certain level of ‘lifestyle income,’ (apart from what we spend to build our future security, such as pension contributions or mortgages, or savings). Lifestyle income is the amount of money that we require to spend on ourselves at present, such as light, heat, clothing, holidays or our car.

Financial Engineering provides expertise in many spheres, including Personal Financial Planning, Legal and Tax Planning, Investment Services and Private Retirement Trusts, all of which can contribute to the achievement of Financial Freedom. 

However, our relationship with our clients does not stop once Financial Freedom is attained. In fact, the next phase of the relationship is really only beginning. We ensure that, once you attain Financial Freedom, our expertise in these areas of service allows you to exploit the potential of your hard-won independence and reap the maximum rewards. Furthermore, we look to the financial security of your successors by planning the transfer of your legacy in a cost-efficient manner and in such a way that your wishes are fulfilled.

Attaining Financial  Freedom

Financial Freedom is firstly about reaching the point where your assets provide your desired lifestyle without the necessity for you to continue working, and secondly meeting your objectives for your estate.

While attaining Financial Freedom is an aspiration for most people, it is an aspiration that is rarely achieved. Financial Freedom conjures up different images and feelings for everyone, which often makes it difficult to pin down and do something about. In fact, many of us get frustrated that we may not be doing all we should be doing to manage our wealth and sometimes we may lure ourselves into taking dangerous financial decisions without understanding the consequences or risks involved.

In our experience there are a few simple reasons for this. Either we think we don’t have the money to become Financially Free or when we think we do have enough money, we assume that if we just work hard at building our wealth in any way we can, we’ll eventually get there. Also, in the recent decade or so, many people have benefited from the extraordinary rise in property prices and as a result have become wealthy, and possibly Financially Free. This is not likely to be the simple formula for building wealth in the future. Those who really want to create significant wealth in the next decade and become Financially Free would not be advised to rely solely on excessive property inflation to create the necessary wealth. So what will the route map be? The answer is to set out a personal financial plan that will guide you towards Financial Freedom. That plan is known as Pathway™ to Financial Freedom.

And when you become Financially Free, we can help you to manage your Wealth in the most efficient way possible.

Managing your wealth

Making the most of your wealth

Fortunately there are a growing number of people who are already Financially Free. If you are one of these people, you likely have the assets to create enough lifestyle income for yourself.

The financial issues in this situation tend to concentrate on the management of your wealth or Wealth Management as it is becoming known. Wealth Management should be concerned with identifying how much of your accumulated assets need to be ring-fenced so as to underwrite your Financial Freedom into the future, while also establishing a plan so that the effects of Inheritance/Gift Tax are minimised when assets eventually pass to the next generation. Sounds like a simple concept but this type of financial planning requires expertise and very careful attention.

Our experience tells us that people have often made serious mistakes in structuring their wealth to this point. Whilst these mistakes have been made unwittingly, if there is enough time, engaging an appropriate plan of action executed by an expert Wealth Management advisor can negate much of their negative effect. Financial Engineering provides a service called Pathway™ to Wealth Management provides such a plan.

Transferring your wealth onto the next generation

While it is true to say that Wealth Management involves a wide range of legal and tax structures and techniques to accelerate the accumulation of assets and enhance wealth, it is also involved in creating structures that manage and control the transfer of Wealth onto the next generation. The techniques and structures used here can have a short or long-term focus and can be used to manage wealth across many generations.

It is vital to plan for the transfer of wealth onto the next generation as problems can easily arise, because the assets are not owned by the right owner and in the most appropriate structures. This tends to give rise to serious tax and legal problems, which often means the intentions of the person who created the wealth cannot be fulfilled and/or the beneficiary is left in debt. Financial Engineering can provide a full Wealth Management Report that can outline, for example, likely exposures to Capital Acquisitions Tax (CAT), simple and sophisticated measures of reducing the CAT bill, a range of possible tax-efficient asset-holding structures and tax-efficient ways of passing on the family business.

See Legal & Tax Planning for further information.