Financial Management: Investment Strategies and Wealth Management

Once you have gained investment knowledge, and understand how to employ that knowledge to your own investment strategy, you will be ready to create investment success.

Piecing together a personal financial management plan is the first step.

This is much the same as a business financial management plan, in that you must plan, monitor and control your monetary resources:

• Record your income
• Record your outgoings and tax position
• Set out your financial needs
• Note where additional income could be achieved
• Note where financial savings could be made
• Record what you need to save for
• Keep aside money for a rainy day
• Develop a short-, medium- and long-term financial plan that keeps within your budget and supports future financial needs.

The information you gain about any excess capital available, after you have set out your personal financial management plan, can be utilized in your wealth creation, wealth management, and retirement plans.

Wealth management assumes that there is wealth there in the first place. But wealth management planning is also about creating that wealth in the first place. 

From your financial plan you record the amount that you can safely utilise for investment. This initial pot of money is what you can use without placing a financial burden on yourself and / or your family. Any amount is a starting amount. From little acorns.......

You know your start point. Wealth management planning is all about planning to get to a point in the future where you are better off than you are now. Life can throw curve-balls at you at any time. Wealth management is about dodging these by planning in incremental stages, with short-term goals, followed by medium- and then long-term requirements.

A plan could be, from a starting point of $100/month, to build a return on investment of $50/month, within 3 months. That is a short-term goal. From this a medium-term goal could be to achieve an additional investment income of $1,000 per annum by the end of the first year. With compounding and leverage you might be aiming for $10,000 extra a year, within 5 years.

By breaking the task into achievable short-term goals, the longer-term wealth management requirements become less daunting. Planning for wealth and retirement are essential for achieving security and a financially secure retirement.

Retirement planning is necessary in order to ensure a happy retirement without financial worries. Although it could be included in a wealth management plan it is best to look at this aspect of financial planning as a long-term investment planning exercise.

Retirement planning should be undertaken as soon as possible, no matter what age you are. The sooner your plan is set out, the greater the potential pension pot you will have when you eventually decide to retire.

Pension planning is probably the longest long-term plan you will put in place and undertake. Plan it properly and the rewards could be huge.

Retirement planning, wealth management, tax and investment strategies, property investment, banking relationships, insurance and life assurance products, and even "alternative" investments such as art, antiques, commodities, options, futures and precious metals, all have a place in a well-organised and well-researched investment strategy.

Your financial management and wealth management plans are fulfilled by you undertaking the correct investment strategies. Invariably, this comes by mastering the stock markets and applying your new found skills and knowledge to deploy your assets and income.

Each individual has a unique personal profile that only they know. This profile is not static, but changes daily, due to both personal and external factors. Any investment strategy you put together must reflect this, and be flexible enough to be able to be changed, and to take advantage of, those changes.

It is my objective to give you the information to sort out the confusion, by assisting you to define and then act upon it, for your highly personal plan for financial success. You must learn how to exploit your own personal strengths and knowledge, and to set a timetable for success based only on what is right for you and you alone (read family here for those not having a "single" focus).

The only way to communicate the information you need to achieve these goals is to start with the basics and progress from there to more sophisticated strategies. By pulling together your income and outgoings into your personal financial plan you will see the overall picture of your financial well-being (or not).

You must now learn how to protect your:

• income
• assets
• wealth
• profits

to minimise the risks, downside and losses.

You must learn how to:

• pyramid profits (do not confuse this statement with "pyramid schemes" - which are most definitely not to be employed in your wealth creation scheme).
• build wealth faster 

Underpinning all successful investing, however, are certain basic principles - the ground rules that apply to both the simple and the complex strategies you decide to employ.

This is the subject of the next article.