Preparing for Your Financial Planner

The Initial Consultation

The personal financial planning process is one that begins with defining your needs, objectives and your current situation. Once these are established, we are able to devise a plan to meet your financial goals.

We will typically tell you what you need to bring with you to your first meeting. We may even ask you to fill in a fact-finding questionnaire about your current situation before this meeting takes place.

Pre-meeting Preparation

To assist you in preparing for your first visit to us, a checklist of the likely information that will be required has been prepared. Of course, this list will vary according to your circumstances and the type of advice you require.

• Income and Expenditure Checklist
• Assets and Liabilities Checklist
• Income and Expenditure
• current and projected income;
• latest payslip (for employees);
• profit and loss statements (for business income);
• superannuation/ pension entitlements;
• statement of other non investment income;
• family trust distribution documents;
• maintenance payment agreement;
• most recent taxation returns;
• annuity income statements; and
• current DSS benefit statements.

We will not require copies of documentation that details the following information. However, we will require you to provide an indication of these costs and a value of all your assets.

Expenses:

• housing (rent statements, mortgage payments, rates, water, electricity, gas, telephone, house contents insurance, repairs/ maintenance, furnishings/ appliances);
• transport (petrol, registration, insurance, maintenance, loan/ lease payments, parking, public transport);
• food;
• health (health insurance, chemist, medical fees);
• education (school fees, child care);
• personal (clothing, footwear, entertainment, sports/ hobbies, subscription/ fees, life insurance, disability insurance, superannuation contributions); and
• other expenses (child maintenance/ support, vet fees, etc).

Assets and Liabilities:

Assets:
Things you own that have a monetary value

• principal residence;
• holiday house;
• investment properties;
• farm;
• vacant land;
• collectibles;
• house contents;
• personal property (jewellery);
• motor vehicles;
• caravan/ boat;
• mortgages/ loans receivables;
• company of trust loan accounts;
• life insurance cash surrender value; and
• other assets/ valuables.

Liabilities:
Money that you owe in the form of loans, credit cards etc

• principal residence mortgage;
• other property mortgages;
• motor vehicle debt;
• investment loans;
• total credit card debt; and
• other liabilities.

Existing investments:
Things you have put money into in the hope of getting a return.

• bank accounts;
• fixed term investments;
• current employee superannuation;
• other superannuation (excluding rollovers);
• personal superannuation;
• rollovers;
• shares and existing managed fund investments;
• life insurance; and
• other insurances (total and permanent disablement, income protection, trauma, general insurance, health insurance, business insurance).