Clarity. Confidence.
A Life on Your Terms.

My concerns regarding retirement are no doubt common to most people. After working hard over a lifetime I want to be able to enjoy my "post work" years without financial concerns, freeing me up to engage in those pursuits I find pleasurable and rewarding. As a medical professional I have neither the time, knowledge nor frankly energy, to competently arrange my affairs to meet this goal without professional help.

I have been most satisfied with the results to date and this, in conjunction with the advice I've received, has allayed some of the anxieties it is natural to experience for those "post work" years.

Our concerns all started with having a fair amount of disposable income and paying way to much tax. So it was all about finding a more efficient means of reducing our tax I was paying and how to offset the tax against an alternate asset. For Emma and me I guess to start off with we were comfortable with our financial position. So to borrow more funding for building wealth via shares or an investment property, to increase our portfolio wasn’t really a hard decision to make. But in saying that, everyone has their own level of comfort, for us we just needed to know we could still survive on one wage through our current debt predicament and wear any extra debt we would hve from investment purchases would look on the overall picture.

Obviously it is always a hard step to move yourself into an alternate investment/debt strategy unless you have built a relationship with an financial planner first or there has been a high recommendation from a good friend. The fortunate thing in our case when the financial planning came out to help with a new strategy, this was already something I had looked into so the timing worked out well. I had always had an interest in trying to make my financial predicament more sustainable and prosperous from an early age. So a little bit of research in tax savings and investment strategies always stated it is a better decision to invest in a good financial planning service for the reassurance. But also along with my own thoughts towards investing and tax saving strategies, comes the value of a financial planners experience, honesty and ideas around a more beneficial financial structure. So for my relationship with Kane from True North Lifestyle, this evolved due to Kane’s knowledge, sincerity and honesty that he possesses around his chosen profession as a financial planner. Now I don't profess to be the best judge of characters out there for everything but Kane is a great communicator and that in turn has him provide the correct feedback and advice that continues to make the planner client relationship work for Emma and I.

What I really enjoy about having a financial plan that has specific goals to work towards, is knowing that as my future financial plan unfolds I will be able to retire when I choose and help out with my kids if they need financial help, it enables control of your own finances so the decisions become yours not the banks or the governments. Now I don’t have anything against banks or the government, but setting yourself up now with 25 odd years of work to go is leaving the destiny of my retirement days in my hands not someone else’s. True North Lifestyle gives me this confidence to continue working with Kane and his support team and prospering on his advice towards my financial goals in the years ahead.

The financial plan that I have now with True North Lifestyle is already showing me the benefits of having the financial strategy in place with a clear financial plan, this is in only the first 2 years. So given my long term financial plan and ongoing support from a great team of financial planners the decision to continue with my current strategy is very easy. I have already invested further into the current strategy we have with True North Lifestyle, simply due to the markets position and positive planning knowledge. The ongoing support, direction and financial advice Kane has provided for me is definitely the key for Emma and I which allows us our own peace of mind for the future.

I never really considered a need for financial planning until making use of the service offered through AMP. I considered myself reasonably financially savvy. In saying that the difference in my interest and the performance of my Super has been interesting to watch.

I chose to accept the services as I could see the value for money that the advise gave, it was explained in a logical way that gave me clarity on what was being offered and the benefits to me. There was never any push for me to accept the advice offered.
Recent services and advise have taken a more wholistic approach to all of my financial needs, taking into consideration not only my Superannuation, but also my investments and the varying insurances offered in superannuation as well as the insurances I need outside of my Superannuation.

The results achieved so far have seen my superannuation balance increase, recent products offered in the refinancing space will allow us to pay off an additional $1000.00 per month off our home loan without feeling any financial impact. So far the process has been straight forward. All options offered have been simple to understand an no pressure to accept any specific advice or option.

After working and building a very large and successful company throughout my working career with my wife Robyn we didn’t have much time to plan ahead and think about retirement until a few years before to selling the business.

The though of retirement felt like forever away in the future but as I realised it came around and the time came to start to put some serious thought and consideration to what the next steps would be, I wasn’t sure where to start and how this milestone in life worked as like in business you learn as you go and figure things out along the way. The thing was with retirement you can’t afford to guess things and just work them out as there isn’t much room for error and time to be able to recover from the learning experience. So this was a big focus and concerns to Robyn and myself to ensure that the wealth and asset we had built up were able to be maintained into retirement.

We were put forth to a financial adviser when considering selling the business and looking towards a strategy to make this happen in a way where we could come up with the best options for our circumstances and ensure we have better opportunities for retirement and when we met with the planner the experience was much different to what we imagined. The planner actually advised and discussed in detail a few different strategies and options that we could do, we thought it would be one clear path but there were a few to thing over and consider, which the planner assisted us through that initial thought process which made it a lot easier to break it all down and then know what was the best path forward.

The way that Kane from True North Lifestyle always is open and clear on our options, the explanation and conversations make sense and for people that are not involved in the markets every day this makes it much easier to have confidence in where our finances are headed in the future. The ongoing reviews each year become easier and easier as the knowledge base for Robyn and myself has grown and we seem to be developing a better understanding of a previously complicated aspect of our future.

So far we have been able to sell our business, structure a retirement lifestyle and a place of desired living location for retirement that suited exactly what we wanted for out goals, the strategies we setup are very income focused for providing a secure and safe income stream that allows for holidays, living costs and also helping the grandkids, when they behave that is. The value we have received is more than we could have asked for from Kane and his team at True North Lifestyle over the years, this has made the future a lot less of a worry. We have been able to spend more time doing all the things we dreamed of doing together in retirement without taking massive risk. This has helped the mentality of our thoughts around initially being fearful of retirement and selling the business but now with hindsight we are very grateful for Kane and the way things have worked out.