Are there alternatives to a financial advisor.

[Imtoooldforallthis]

I feel that myself and DH need some financial advice, but not sure where to go. We don't want to invest but need help with where to put our money, I.e which banks, saving accounts etc. We have seen a FA before but only really looked at how much we had and asked hiwuch we needed etc and tried to sell us investments.

Moneysaving Expert website.

Start with the Money Makeover to set a budget and get signposted to benefit entitlements, getting better prices for broadband, mobiles, TV etc and help if you have debts. Also look for the best interest rates if you have money to save and what type of accounts you need. Then sign up to the weekly email for regular hints and tips as you go along.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/money-help/

The financial flowchart is a good indicator of where you are now, where you could go and what you need to think about along the way.

ukpersonal.finance/flowchart/

If you do decide you could start to invest, Meaningful Money is very good.

meaningfulmoney.tv/

One thing he will teach you is that most people don't actually need a financial advisor, probably not until you have a very substantial sum to invest, ie six figures. Below that you can just do it all yourself with a bit of reading and common sense.

So we are looking at early retirement in the next 12 months (we are late 50s),hence not really wanting to invest as we don't know when we will need access to our Money. We have no pensions but substainal savings and property. Have maximum premium bonds. I think I'm worried that in an ideal world would like our finances consolidated into one savings account, but aware that that is not really a safe way of doing things. Also this may seem stupid as I am happy to do online banking but wary of transferring large sums to lots oc different accounts.

Be aware of the £85k limit in case a particular bank goes bust - seems unlikely but some have in the past. You could put all your money in one pot, but that's almost certainly not a good idea from a returns point of view. Even if you remain in cash, you can get quite a bit more interest by putting your money in a 2 year fix compared to an instant access account.

On investing, you say you don't know when you will need to spend your money, but you're very unlikely to spend all, or even most of it, in the next 12 months or even 5 years. All being well you have at least a couple of decades to enjoy it, so it can be worth investing some of it, that you won't be touching for 5-10 years as a minimum.

The sort of thing you could aim for was covered in last week's Meaningful Money podcast.

meaningfulmoney.tv/2022/11/02/strategies-for-managing-a-drawdown-fund/

Make sure you use your ISA allowance.

Martin Lewis is wise.

Not sure why you would go to a financial adviser if you don’t want to invest. Google is your friend. Rates are moving constantly so you will have to decide how long you want to tie each junk of your money up for and then find the best rates for that and then keep a schedule and keep shopping around.
There are cash management systems which help you move your money around the banks with the best rates and with the rising rates more financial advisers also offer them. Not for free though.

Well I want someone to advise me on my finances, like a cash management advisor. My own personal Martin Lewis.

You need a pensions advisor, ask around friends maybe few years older in similar financial position to see who they would recommend .

To be fair, if you have substantial savings incl max premium bonds, then you should invest, because otherwise, you're at risk of losing a significant portion of your cash wealth due to high inflation. So an IFA would not be doing their job very well if they didn't recommend investing.

Of course, if you have sufficient assets to outlast you, you might not be bothered about them not growing/keeping up with inflation, but otherwise investing is something you should really consider. You're also missing out on significant tax relief by having cash savings, instead of pensions.

It's probably the case that something like Vanguard SIPPs and ISAs are sufficient for most people, but you've eluded to having significant assets, so you could be part of the minority who would benefit from consulting an IFA, even if this is only a one off, rather than ongoing relationship.

You can now work on a fixed fee basis, so they aren't necessarily chasing commissions (not sure if they can even work on commission these days). So it could be that you pay an IFA a few £k, they tell you to maximise your pension contributions, use your ISA allowance, keep enough in cash to last a year or two plus any imminent big purchases and then invest the rest, after having a conversation about your attitude to risk. Then strategically convert the investments to cash to keep an income to live on coming, while reducing the risk of having to draw on it at a bad time. But there's probably other 'advanced' stuff because of your large assets that I don't really know about which is where your IFA will give you the value that you are paying for.

If either of you are in a union, they often offer a free 'preparing your finances for retirement' session that could be a good no obligation introduction/overview.

You mention property - do you mean the house you live in or do you rent out a second home or have buy to lets? If the latter, I would recommend going to a Chartered Accountant to get decent advice for your retirement and Inheritance tax planning etc. They are not commission based and much better qualified to give you proper advice.

Thank you for all the advice. I have a DH who is the 'stick it under the mattress' type, not literally of course and a distrust of anyone trying to sell him anything. We also had a family member loose a lot of money In investments. So really looking for a simple way to maximise our savings, although not sure that's possible.

Make sure you put money into SIPPs and the government will give you an automatic 25% tax relief boost - you put in £800, they put in £200 giving you a total of £1000.

If you are working this year make sure you put £40k (if you earn £40k or more) each into SIPPs, government will give you £10k each into the SIPPs.

If either of you are higher rate tax payers then you can also claim the other 20% tax back (that’s possibly another £10k each if you are both higher rate tax payers).

As you are late 50s you can take it out with 25% being tax free and the remainder being taxable - but if you retire early with no other income streams then you can each withdraw upto around £16k a year tax free (I forget the actual figure but it’s the £12k income tax free band plus the 25% Tax Free element).

To be honest if you have substantial savings you should have put some of it in SIPPS already in previous years if you like free money, but at least you can do this year!

Oh, and if you want you don’t have to “invest” the money in a SIPP, it can be in cash in a SIPP - but cash will erode with inflation.

If you have lots of savings maybe you can then also put the rest into good savings acocunts - see the Money Saving Expert site for the best deals.

Perhaps a Money Coach. They can talk about money management in general but they cannot recommend any products or even suggest that you put money in to an ISA.
You either need to learn yourself, @BarbaraofSeville has given you some great sources of information, or you need to go to an financial adviser who would do a lot of investigation into your needs, produce some cash flow models, and they may take on the ongoing management of investments. However that latter part is not something you have to do... you can find advisers who charge a fee (several thousand) to do the initial planning work and then let you implement it. If you then decide not implement some parts, then that is your issue and they are not liable for that.

Maximise cash savings - I don't think that is possible. The cash products vary all the time, especially at the moment when something may be available but is withdrawn within a couple of weeks of being advertised. There are places like Rasin and HL Active Savings who take your cash savings and spread them around different savings providers, aiming to get the best return for you. Maybe a service like that could be useful for some of the money which you did not need to access within the next couple of years.

@messybutfun do you mean like Raisin? Or another "cash management" system?

Others are available (I am not recommending a particular one)
, I would compare fees, if they offer mainstream banks and online reviews

An entire retirement pot in cash is v worrying to me. Have you projected when this cash might run out? You need a good spreadsheet with estimated inflation modelled in

If you're insisting on cash then go to the money-saving expert website and have a look at the top savings accounts. Make sure you don't have more than £85K with one bank. A financial adviser will recommend investments as its how to make your money grow. As you have zero appetite for risk though its not a good idea.

Thank you all, I'm going to have a serious look at our finances, currently half cash have property but definately need to do something with it.

Watching this with interest. Dh and I need to make some adjustments.