Know your Options for Personal Investment Planning

Building a successful investment plan requires a thorough understanding of your current circumstances, your needs, long-term goals and your investment time horizon—how long you might need your money to last. However, understanding your investment options and knowing how to successfully allocate the funds in your investment portfolio can be challenging. In this article, we will cover some important steps to get started with your investment plan as well as some investment-related considerations.

Understanding Your Investment Goals

Investors are different and may have unique approaches to retirement planning based on their individual circumstances. However, if you are like many investors, your overarching investment plan objective may fall within one of the following categories:

• Increase purchasing power: You may wish to increase the purchasing power of your assets over time and grow the overall value of your investments as much as reasonably possible.
• Maintain portfolio value: You may wish to maintain your current purchasing power or simply maintain the numeric value of your investments. This goal may require portfolio growth to make up for withdrawals and inflation, but not as much growth as would be needed to increase your purchasing power.
• Target a specific end value: You may have a specific figure in mind when devising your investment plan, whether it is saving or investing to pass funds onto children or to create a charitable legacy. This goal may require a certain amount of portfolio growth, but your strategy will likely be dependent on the target value you choose along with other factors.
• Deplete all assets: Although it may seem unnecessary to have a financial plan in place to fulfil this investment objective, it can require extremely careful management and planning to avoid running out of funds too soon, especially if you live longer than expected or fail to account for effects of inflation or unexpected costs, such as medical bills.

When evaluating your investment goals, carefully assess the risks in each option. Most people associate investment ‘risk’ with market volatility. Market volatility can have a significant impact on the sustainability of your portfolio, but there are other risks to consider as well. If you need portfolio growth to achieve your long-term goals but invest your savings in low-yielding securities, you may introduce the risk of not meeting your long-term needs, which may mean you need to re-evaluate your long-term goals. Alternatively, aiming solely to maintain your account balance may run the risk of losing purchasing power due to the ongoing cost of inflation.

When you make the decision to invest your funds in assets—such as fixed interest securities, equities or other options—you may benefit from working with a trusted adviser. By getting an outside perspective on your investment objectives, risk tolerance and financial goals, you may get the advice necessary to optimise your personal investment plan to fit to your personal situation and goals. 

Meeting Your Goals

How much money will you need to achieve your investment goals? When evaluating your future cash flow needs, a good place to start is to calculate how much you spend now. Then estimate how much that may change in retirement, which may be easier said than done. Will your current investments fund your essential spending, such as daily living expenses and tax bills, and also discretionary spending, such as travel and hobbies? If not, could you afford to save more? What about being able to fund unexpected needs? Due to the effects of inflation and unexpected costs, you may need to reconsider how much money you need in order to reach your long-term goals.

Then you will need to assess what investment options or investment products best suit your long-term financial needs. To do so, it is a good idea to develop an investment strategy.

Investment Strategy

One of the most important aspects of investment planning is asset allocation—your portfolio’s mix of equities, fixed interest and other securities. You may hold these assets directly, or collectively, within funds.  We believe a majority of portfolio returns over time can be attributed to achieving the right balance of assets for your personal situation and goals. After all, if you need long-term portfolio growth to fund your investment objectives, an all-cash portfolio may not the best investment choice for you. A financial adviser may be able to help you explore your investment options both for long-term financial planning and tactical investment choices. Fisher Investments UK may be able to evaluate your situation and recommend an investment asset allocation we think is right for your situation and goals.

Fisher Investments UK Can Help

Avoiding emotional or shortsighted investing decisions is often a difficult task for an investor—luckily this is not something that you have to do on your own. Fisher Investments UK can help qualified investors—those with £250,000 or more of investable assets—by recommending an asset allocation fit for their financial goals and situation. Contact us today to speak with one of our qualified financial professionals or download some of our educational content as the first of our ongoing insights to learn more.