Stephen approached me as a relatively new business owner of his own Accountancy firm. Stephen admitted that his focus to start with was on the business itself, but now he had made a success of it he needed to concentrate a little on himself.
I conducted a full financial review of Stephen and his business and found many areas of financial needs. Stephen has two main priorities at this stage, and they were to:
- Ensure he has the right protection in place for himself and business
- To start making pension contributions direct from his business to help fund retirement and help with tax efficiency.
The first advice area we concentrated on was to protect his young family should he no longer be here and to protect his income should he no longer be able to work because of a serious illness.
We did this by putting in place a relevant life plan, in trust, to ensure a lump sum would be paid out in the event of Stephen’s death. We then put some critical illness cover in place to pay out a lump sum in the event of Stephen suffering from a specified serious illness, enough cover to ensure Stephen could cover his outgoings until well enough to return back to work.
Stephen’s second priority was to start saving towards his retirement.
We established the best way to do this was direct from his limited company for tax efficiency reasons. I was able to map out a retirement journey for him over the next 30 years to try and provide Stephen the retirement he wants, rather than the retirement he wishes for.
We agreed to review his pension at least once a year to ensure he remains on track and to make changes to his pension if and when needed.
The value of an investment with St. James’s Place will be directly linked to the performance of the funds selected and may fall as well as rise. You may get back less than the amount invested.
The levels and bases of taxation and reliefs from taxation can change at any time. The value of any tax relief depends on individual circumstances.
*Trusts are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
