Testimonial - Building for Retirement

THE BRIEF

The clients, a professional and his wife aged in their mid thirties with 2 children. He was working hard and still very energetic and knew that he needed to start preparing early for the future with private education and the desire of early retirement, the path was challenging. However his income was very strong and he had a large free cash flow.

He felt that protecting his assets was equally important as accumulating them as personal litigation was a concern in his profession. The conflict was to have accessibility to assets and not lock them away for the next 20 years so a balance had to be meet.

THE STRATEGY

The clients wished to retire between 50 and 55 and he knew that they had to establish enough capital to provide an income until he was old enough to access his superannuation.

He wished to have confidence in his progress with his financial strategy, to establish financial goals to-day that he could enjoy in the future and the ability to measure the progress to his ultimate goal of early retirement.

A model showing how his net worth would grow annually and benchmark this against the original financial model needed to be put in place to measure whether he was on track to success.

Asset protection strategies also needed to be implemented along side and in harmony with investment and accessibility goals.

THE SOLUTION

A corporate re-structure increased his personal asset protection and flexibility. A discretionary trust was established to hold investments for pre-retirement and flexibility.

A review of cash flow as a result of the corporate re-structure added to his free cash flow and a commitment to regular contributions to superannuation and his new investment trust was commenced.

A plan was put in place for 6 monthly reviews. A model was created to compare his actual change in net worth versus the original financial model, at each review.

THE ACHIEVEMENT

After four years of regular investment and commitment to following the strategy my client now has an extensive investment portfolio including real property, direct equities and some alternative investments. The good news is that due to the robust returns from the past years he is actually well ahead of the original financial model.

Focusing on creating a capital base to build an ever increasing future cash flow has been the key.


Now he has choices he did not think realistic four years ago. He can bring forward his plans to retire early or take a surfing holiday with his mates earlier than he had initially planned or take his young family on a surprise trip to Disneyland.