Welcome back to 2019 and as the title suggests it is shaping up to be a very noisy year what with a looming Federal election and a host of international events including Britain’s deadline to exit the EU. This provides an important opportunity for all of us to revert back to “first principles” and specifically reflect on what’s important to us. I am not writing about resolutions or the like, but rather the deeply embedded value set that resides in many of us.
In 2019 during our conversations with you, we will be setting aside important time to reflect on “what’s important” to you both now and going forward. This conversation will also provide a point of reflection to review whether the important work we are doing is absolutely in sync with what you are trying to achieve. If it’s not, or if your situation has changed, then we will review what we are doing and reset the sails accordingly. We believe the work we do with our clients is best represented by the Greek House model below.
The housing of the roof as you can see is the identification of what is important to you and the distilling of those outcomes into achievable and measurable goals. Those goals and their achievability are confirmed via the financial modelling we conduct on behalf of every client. This financial modelling provides us with the benchmarks to measure progress against.
That progress is reflected by the columns as displayed below. Many clients will have some or all of these columns. These columns represent the important areas of managing cashflow, debt, tax, investments, superannuation and business interests. The degree of complexity will vary from client to client.
If 2019 is indeed the year of “increasing noise” we must remain vigilant on focusing on what’s important to each of us, critically reassess progress and remain focused on what we have control over. If we can do that, then the rest will look after itself. We look forward to meeting with you in 2019.