January in Singapore is often a quiet month. With Christmas a distant memory and Chinese New Year still some weeks away, it can be a good opportunity to take stock and complete some of the financial jobs you’ve not found time for previously.
If you’ve been meaning to take a more in-depth look at your finances, investments, and goals, you might find it helpful to book a financial health check with your planner.
A financial health check is an in-depth review of your existing finances and your financial plan. Together with your planner, you can:
- Check that your plan continues to be relevant for your goals and circumstances
- Assess the progress you’ve made towards your goals so far
- Identify the most sensible next steps to take.
A financial health check assesses all aspects of your finances
A financial health check can be tailored so that it’s as helpful as possible for you. It could include the following elements.
Savings and investments
Your savings and investments are one of the ways you’ll grow your wealth and progress towards your financial goals. In your meeting, your planner can help you to ensure your portfolio is appropriately balanced so that you’re taking enough – but not too much – risk for your circumstances. They’ll also ensure that your savings are receiving a competitive rate of interest.
Tax planning
Tax planning as an expat can be especially complex depending on your tax position with your home country. Your planner can help you to understand the allowances available to you and how to manage your tax bill so that you pay the correct amount of tax.
Debt management
Debt can hold you back from achieving your goals, particularly if it is expensive debt such as credit cards. Your planner can help you put a plan together to reduce your debt and make faster progress towards your goals.
Financial protection
An easily overlooked yet vital part of your plan is to protect yourself and your income from the financial impact of illness, injury, or other unforeseeable events.
Your planner can help you to identify the risks you are exposed to and help you to put sufficient protection in place.
Retirement planning
Your retirement is likely to be one of the biggest financial goals you’ll work towards in your life. You might already have an idea of what you want retirement to look like, but are you still on track to achieve this?
Your planner can review your progress so far and offer suggestions to help you keep progressing towards this goal.
Estate planning
If you own assets in multiple countries – as is common for expats in Singapore – your estate plan is an important part of ensuring those assets are distributed according to your wishes after you pass away.
These wishes might change periodically, for example if you welcome a new child or grandchild into the family, or if you purchase a new property. So, reviewing your estate plan regularly ensures you can keep it up to date.
A financial health check can help you to start the year as you mean to go on
Of course, a financial health check can be helpful at any time of year, but completing one sooner rather than later has an important advantage.
Optimising your plan early in the year means you have more time to benefit from the updates you make. For example, if your portfolio requires rebalancing, you’ll avoid it straying too far from the ideal balance for too long.
When the end of the year approaches, you can look back on 12 months’ worth of progress towards your goals.
Get in touch
If you’d like to speak to us about organising a financial health check to keep you on track for meeting your long-term goals, please get in touch today.
Either contact your financial planner directly, email us at hello@ascentawealth.com or fill in our online contact form to organise a meeting and we’ll get in touch.
