SINCE WHEN IS PLANNING TO REDUCE DEBT, CREATE WEALTH & IMPROVE LIFESTYLE NOT FINANCIAL PLANNING?

From the “About” page you would know that I spent 12 years as a self-employed financial planner in Perth, Western Australia during which time I always felt my role was to help folk make the most of what was available to them, to think outside the square at times and to generally make informed and better choices about how money shapes their lives but not to simply flog financial products to earn commission. I’m certain that I significantly helped hundreds of people and I doubt there’d be more than one or two who didn’t appreciate the way I went about it (you can never please everyone all of the time).

The funny thing is that in recent months I’ve felt the inclination to get back into that industry so as to provide advice on the usual products and services that financial planners are known for (e.g. superannuation, managed investments and personal insurances etc) however, also to promote the home based business ideals that are the subject of this website. To practice as a financial planner though, I need to either obtain my own Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) or become an Authorised Representative of an AFSL holder. For a number of good reasons, I have little interest in obtaining my own license and therein lays the problem as I’m struggling to find an AFSL that will take me on board given I’m passionate about promoting the unique range of home business strategies I’ve developed (even if they make money from it).

Alas, even the Financial Planning Association of Australia which self-proclaims as the industry’s peak representative body and which publishes the following two definitions of financial planning, is steadfast in its refusal to be related to me so as to assist in getting the message across to its members that this is good for clients and therefore good for business and the industry at large:

(1) http://www.fpa.asn.au/media/FPA/Website%20files/Pub_/Glossary.pdf

“Financial planning: The process a financial planner follows to understand each client’s different needs and financial objectives and to recommend an appropriate strategy. There is an established six step financial planning process which all professional advisers follow with every new client:

1. Gather financial information about the client

2. Identify financial and lifestyle goals

3. Identify any financial issues

4. Prepare a financial plan

5. Implement the plan

6. Review and revise the plan at regular intervals, or when circumstances change”

And then as found at the Definitions of the FPA Code of Professional Practice …

(2) http://fpa.asn.au/media/FPA/FPA%20Standards/CodeofPractice_July%202011.pdf

“Financial planning the process of developing strategies to assist clients in managing their financial affairs to meet life goals. It involves reviewing all relevant aspects of a client’s situation across a large breadth of financial planning activities, including inter-relationships among often conflicting objectives”.

I fail to understand what this industry’s problem is in that Deduct Your Home provides a service that is part and parcel to each of the definitions above.

Furthermore, the fact that ASIC have advised that the services Deduct Your Home provides do not need to be delivered by an AFSL seems not to at all sit with an industry that bows to the regulator … http://www.deductyourhome.com.au/asic-our-financial-services-regulator-is-satisfied-with-us/

In all, the lack of will to take the time to properly understand so as to embrace this aspect of financial planning, heaps much deserved shame upon the financial planning industry and it self-perpetrates its own nightmare in NOT being recognised as a profession (and rightly so in my opinion). The truth is that people who wish to learn of and benefit from these processes through their financial planner are being severely hampered by a very large and powerful industry (principally controlled by a relatively small number of major corporations that are intent on buying up the competition) and where industry is clearly disinterested in helping clients go down this path primarily I believe, for fear of losing business (i.e. financial product sales) because it thinks that once educated on the benefits, clients might prefer to put their money into their homes. Even if that were true and if on an individual basis it turned out to be someone’s best option, then so be it as financial planners should be doing what’s best for clients shouldn’t they?

This leads me to mention something you may have heard of called The Future Of Financial Advice Reforms (FOFA), a Federal Government reform for the financial planning industry to finally act professionally in terms of putting client’s interests ahead of their own and yet despite much posturing by industry in publicly embracing these positives, in my opinion, these gutless, visionless hypocrites are nowhere close to doing the right thing by the public.

So how do you feel (happy, impartial, pissed-off or livid), in knowing that your financial planner likely isn’t allowed or willing to discuss and assist you with potentially saving tens of thousands of dollars every year in tax (and maybe for decades to come), just by implementing a home-based business strategy?

On the other hand, if you were ethically convinced by your financial planner to take that path, would you really begrudge him or her when they offered to assist you in putting together an investment program or to boost your super or to beef up your personal protection, using the money they’d just created for you out of thin air?

This industry just doesn’t get it !!! 

So I guess you can go and see any financial planner to be repeatedly sold financial products under the guise of “providing financial advice” (nothing new there and this is exactly what the government is trying to stamp out but it will never happen) and or; you can talk to Deduct Your Home to be carefully profiled to determine your suitability to being sold a “strategy” that far more effectively utilses your current ot future home to greatly assist in meeting your financial needs and desires.

Call me crazy – but to me that’s financial planning BIG TIME and it’s as worthwhile and as relevant as anything else that exists in the realm of people trying to get ahead!

Please post a reply, telling me and everyone else exactly what you think. 

Make it Good Debt!