Sarah’s ‘Fresh Start’ Story
THE SITUATION
While in a previous life, Sarah had been a successful marketer for a big financial firm, she had always had a nagging feeling that she didn’t quite get finance and money.
In fact, working in finance made her realise just how much there was to know. While it wasn’t all necessarily complicated, it was difficult to know where to start.
While she had been earning well, she hadn’t been planning for the future or focusing on building longer-term wealth.
A departure from the corporate world led to the launch of Sarah’s coaching business Living A Braver Life and, following a move to Byron Bay, Sarah decided that it was time to rewrite her story around money and start to take control of her financial situation.
“It’s easy to feel overwhelmed.. To feel swallowed up.. There are so many products, it’s difficult to know where to start.. That’s where I was”
HOW WE WORKED TOGETHER
Sarah had two key objectives:
Short term: get better at budgeting and planning her spending
Longer term: increase the value of her portfolio
We began with a review of her current situation – reviewing her incomings, her average spending habits and building a really clear picture of where her money way going.
“One of the best things about Rachel is that she is non-judgemental. Coming into this, I felt guilty about my spending habits.
Throughout the budgeting process, Rachel never judged me, so I felt safe to talk about my spending which meant I could then take the steps I needed to change.”
Following the review process, we worked together to build a realistic plan that Sarah would be comfortable sticking to.
No-one enjoys tracking their budget, so I set her up with MyProsperity, a phone app that pulls in bank accounts, investments, super and more into one place, so we can track and manage Sarah’s entire financial world together. The idea here is ‘cashflow management’ – we ensure that the money that is coming in is going where it needs to, with enough left over to save towards the future too.
With the cashflow management plan in place, we then turned our attention to longer-term wealth building through investments.
Following a ‘risk/reward questionnaire’, to more clearly understand Sarah’s appetite for risk in trying to achieve her growth targets, we structured her portfolio with a mix of equity growth assets, income-producing dividend-focused stocks and more defensive fixed income assets to counter market volatility.
As with all of my clients, for this process, Sarah could be as involved or as uninvolved as she wanted. We discussed each of the potential options, I made my recommendations and Sarah weighed the pros and cons before we came to a decision together.
We now have regular monthly check-ins to discuss Sarah’s portfolio to ensure we’re both comfortable with its performance. In times of particular volatility, I proactively get in touch with Sarah to make recommendations to ensure that her portfolio is as secure as possible in the circumstances.
THE RESULT
Starting from a place of fear and uncertainty, Sarah now feels confident that she is in control of her money and is doing what she needs to do to build for her future.
“Before working with Rachel, the one word I would use to describe my finances was ‘scary’…
Now, that word would be ‘bright’.”
-Sarah, Flourix Wealth Client
Get in touch
If you’re in a similar stage of life to Sarah and would like to ensure you’re doing what you need to do to set up the systems and processes to manage spending and start to build long-term wealth, then I’d love to help. Just drop me a line using the form below and let’s catch up.