by Kris Amliwala
Soon after I proposed, my fiancé and I began to plan our dream wedding. This entailed a registry ceremony, and Indian wedding and a reception party, together with all of the pre-wedding events and a 3 week trip to India. I was also planning a surprise honeymoon.
We discussed the opportunities and possibilities from a wide range of different styles of wedding venues, decided on who to invite, and our outfits. The cooperation of our many different suppliers and having confidence in our research helped ensure we'd enjoy the big day and not spend it worrying about things going wrong.
With all of the work involved, I'm not surprised weddings and other large events can take many months to plan. For me, I see many similarities between wedding planning and retirement planning. Wedding planning involves the joining of two people and two families together to create happy memories over future decades. Retirement planning is the joining of one family's money closer to their life goals to create true wealth over future decades.
Planning the dream retirement involves discovering a family's ambitions, what brings true meaning to their lives and their plans to leave a meaningful legacy. Retirement planning also involves different financial components coming to together seamlessly. And much like wedding planning, confidence in the planning is essential to make sure actual retirement is filled with enjoyment and not fretting about things going wrong.
Two days before the UK went into full lockdown, we were fortunate enough to have our civil ceremony, albeit with limited guests. However, the postponement of my Indian wedding and reception party reinforces that even with months of planning, life isn't a straight line.
Luckily, I purchased wedding and travel insurance. Even if we can never find a suitable wedding date, everything will still be okay and life can happily move forward.
For retirement planning, using Voyant for cashflow planning and stress testing against a range of potential financial life hurdles helps me provide peace of mind for my client families. Along with sufficient insurances in place, this planning should help clients overcome life hurdles.
The monetary cost of an adviser building, implementing and regularly reviewing a financial plan for clients is far likely to cost significantly less than my Indian wedding and reception. Yet both have the opportunity to create happy memories and fulfill wishes of couples and their close families.
Kris Amliwala is a Chartered Financial Planner and Registered Life Planner for Designer Wealth Management, based in Leicestershire. Specialising in helping create and protect multi-generational wealth for families.
