Investment planning
Building an investment strategy involves making your savings work effectively so you can reach your future goals. We help you organise your capital and surplus income to ensure your finances are structured as efficiently as possible. Whether you’re building wealth for the long term or planning for a specific milestone, we provide the clear direction needed to move forward.
Understanding investment planning
Investment planning is the process of aligning your financial resources with your future objectives. This involves looking at your current savings, understanding your approach to risk, and selecting the right tax-efficient accounts to hold your money.
For many people, the aim is to grow their wealth over time to support their family or provide a more comfortable lifestyle in later years. It’s an ongoing process where we monitor the progress of your funds against the goals you’ve set.
By having a structured plan, you can make informed decisions about how much to set aside and where to place it. Our role is to ensure your investments are managed with care, providing a clear path from where you are now to where you want to be.
Managing your wealth effectively
We help you decide exactly what you want your money to achieve and then put a strategy in place to reach those goals. This ensures that every contribution you make is working towards a specific outcome for you or your family.
Your investment plan might be built around a specific event, such as funding a child's university education or bridging a gap in your future retirement income. We help you work towards those targets, whether that involves committing to regular monthly payments or investing a larger lump sum. We also focus on using tax-efficient ways to save, primarily through investment ISAs and unit trusts, to help you keep more of your returns.
The value of an investment with St. James’s Place will be directly linked to the performance of the funds you select, and the value can therefore go down as well as up. You may get back less than you invested.
Investing for your future wealth
Leaving large sums of money in a standard bank account can be a disadvantage over the long term. While cash provides immediate security, its purchasing power is often eroded by inflation, meaning your savings may not buy as much in the future as they do today. Investing offers the potential for your money to outpace inflation, helping to preserve the real value of your wealth.
Additionally, investment funds are less accessible than a daily bank account, making the money less likely to be spent on a whim. This helps you keep your savings tucked away for their intended purpose, making it easier to stick to your plans for the future.
Investment planning as a couple
For couples, we look at your finances together to ensure you’re making the most of your available tax reliefs. This includes guidance on utilising both of your individual ISA allowances, which increases the amount of money you can save each year without paying tax on the growth or income.
The levels and bases of taxation, and reliefs from taxation, can change at any time and are generally dependent on individual circumstances.
What to expect
Our process starts with us gaining a thorough understanding of your current situation. We will ask you to complete an expenditure form and talk through your finances in depth to determine your true disposable income. This is the money remaining after all your essential and non-essential bills are met. Reviewing your income and spending helps you to be realistic and identifies exactly what you can afford to invest without stretching your daily budget. Before we begin any investment planning, we also ensure you have at least £5,000 in an emergency fund to cover unexpected costs.
Once we’ve established what you can afford to set aside, we help you select the most appropriate accounts for your money and handle the practicalities of setting up your investments. We then provide ongoing monitoring to ensure your contributions remain on track to achieve your financial goals. This support allows us to suggest adjustments whenever your circumstances or the wider markets change.
Contact us today to discuss how we can help you build an investment strategy.
The value of an investment with St. James’s Place will be directly linked to the performance of the funds you select, and the value can therefore go down as well as up. You may get back less than you invested.
