Smith Rogers

There isn’t a magic number in your bank account that suddenly means you need a financial advisor.

For many people, the better question is: How complicated has your financial life become?

Maybe you own a business and your corporate and personal finances are starting to overlap. You’re five years from retirement and aren’t sure whether leaving work a year earlier changes the picture. You’re thinking about selling your home, helping an adult child or eventually transferring wealth to your family.

Or maybe you already have an advisor, an accountant and a lawyer—but you’re not entirely sure how the decisions they are making about what you need affect your overall financial objectives & they are not talking to each other.

That’s usually where the need for more comprehensive financial advice starts to become clearer.

You’re Making Financial Decisions That Affect More Than One Thing

Some financial decisions are relatively contained.

Others have a domino effect.

Retiring early can change your income, taxes and how you draw from your investments. Selling a business can affect your personal wealth, retirement plans and estate. Helping an adult child buy a home may affect what you have available later.

This is where looking at one account or one decision at a time becomes limiting.

Comprehensive financial advice from a single point of view will show you things like your net worth, cash flow, projected retirement income, taxes and how your assets may be drawn down over time—not simply whether your investments performed well last quarter.

You’re Asking Questions and Not Getting Clear Answers

This one is fairly simple.

If you’re asking financial questions and can’t get answers you understand, you may not be talking to the right people.

Suppose you ask:

Can I retire a year earlier?
What happens if we move to another province?
Can we afford to help our kids now without compromising our own retirement?
How much of our retirement income is actually going to tax?
What does our estate look like at 75? At 85?

You should be able to get more than “you’re probably fine.”

Good advice should help you see the numbers, understand the trade-offs and know why a recommendation makes sense for you.

Your Financial Advice Is Coming From Several Different Places

Having an accountant, lawyer, insurance professional and investment advisor can give you access to plenty of expertise.

The question is whether anyone is looking at all of it together.

Your accountant may identify a tax issue. Your lawyer may be updating your estate documents. Your advisor may be managing your investments.

But what happens when a decision in one area changes another?

At Smith Rogers Financial, that’s one of the reasons we take a team approach. Our clients have access to investment experience alongside tax and estate expertise, with people who can talk to one another about the same financial picture.

Sometimes the value isn’t another idea. It’s connecting the ideas you already have.

You Have Money Invested, But You Don’t Know What the Plan Is

Having an investment portfolio and having a financial plan are not the same thing.

If you’re paying fees, we believe that you should include advice.

How long is your money projected to last? How will you draw income in retirement? What happens if you retire earlier than expected? How are taxes being considered? What risks have you planned for? Do you know what will happen to your wealth when you die?

These are exactly the questions we believe should be part of the conversation.

So, Do You Need a Financial Advisor?

You may not.

If your financial situation is relatively straightforward and you’re comfortable managing it, there may be no reason to make it more complicated.

But if your wealth, business or family circumstances have grown more complex, you’re approaching a major decision or you keep asking questions without getting useful answers, it may be time to find someone who can look at more than one piece at a time.

And if you already work with an advisor but still don’t understand the plan, you’re allowed to ask more questions.

Wondering whether more comprehensive financial advice would make sense for you? Send us a message to start the conversation or visit our website to learn how we work with individuals, families and business owners.

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When wildfire smoke settles over your community for days at a time, it has a way of making emergency preparedness feel a lot less theoretical.

But wildfires are only one example.

A major ice storm can knock out power for days. Spring flooding can force people out of their homes. A severe storm can damage property overnight.

And sometimes the emergency is more personal—a sudden illness, an accident or something else that changes your plans very quickly.

Those moments usually get us thinking about the practical things first.
Where are the passports? Do we have medication packed? What would we take with us? Where would we go?

All important questions. But there’s another one that tends to come a little later:

What happens financially after you leave the house?

Packing an emergency bag helps you get out the door. It doesn’t tell you how you’ll pay for ten nights in a hotel, what happens if you’re out of your home for six months, whether your insurance will cover temporary living expenses or where you’ll access money while everything is being sorted out. These are exactly the kinds of practical financial questions Smith Rogers considers part of preparing for risk.

Financial Emergency Planning Starts Before the Emergency

You can’t wait until something happens to pack the emergency bag.

Financial planning works much the same way.

You don’t need to spend every Tuesday evening preparing for the next natural disaster. You do need to know what you would do if life suddenly stopped operating normally.

Start with some very practical questions.

Do you have money you can access quickly without having to sell an investment at an inconvenient time?
Could you comfortably cover a hotel, meals, transportation and other unexpected expenses for several days or weeks?
Do you know what your home insurance covers for temporary living expenses?
Who is your insurance contact?
Could you find your policy information quickly?
If an illness or injury affected your ability to work, what income protection do you have in place?

These aren’t particularly exciting financial conversations. They become considerably more interesting when you suddenly need the answers.

Know Where Your Important Financial Information Is

Know where your insurance policies, identification, account information and other important financial documents are kept. Make sure the appropriate people in your family know too. Make sure there are copies in your emergency bag, make sure you have designated a trusted contact person and you have shared your digital access with someone you trust in case they need to access accounts on your behalf.

To do this, you need an organized system, secure copies where appropriate and a clear understanding of who needs access to what.

We regularly hear from people after something happens close to home — a relative dies, someone becomes ill or another family experiences an emergency—and suddenly the insurance policy they haven’t looked at in years moves to the top of the list.

It’s human nature.

Things tend to feel more urgent when they happen close to us.

You don’t have to wait for that reminder.

Who Would You Call During a Financial Emergency?

If you had to leave your home tomorrow, there are probably a few calls you’d make quickly: your family, your property insurance provider and, ideally, your financial advisor.

That last call is where having an advisor who already knows you can make a meaningful difference.

They should understand your financial situation, what can be accessed quickly and how one decision could affect another.

You’re not calling a 1-800 number and explaining your financial life from the beginning while sitting in a hotel lobby.

You’re calling someone who already knows your situation and can help answer the question you actually care about:

Are we going to be okay?

That personal access is something Smith Rogers sees as part of the value of advice, not simply having a financial plan on paper, but having a real person available when you need an answer.

A Financial Plan Should Help When Life Doesn’t Go to Plan

We spend a lot of time planning for the things we want to happen: retirement, travel, helping our children, selling a business or leaving an estate.

A good financial plan also needs to account for the possibility that life may have other ideas.

We can’t rebuild your house. We can’t prevent an illness or make an emergency disappear.

But we can help you understand the financial decisions that come next.

When life becomes more complicated, that’s when having comprehensive advice, and someone who already understands the bigger picture, can become particularly valuable.

And ideally, we’ve had those conversations long before you need to make the call.

Not sure how financially prepared you would be if something unexpected happened? Get in touch with us or visit our website to learn more about our team and how we can help.