Writing Your Life Story – Carbon’s four step process: Part One – Visualise

Carbon like to do things differently, our principle is not to endlessly grow your wealth, but instead to use your money to help you live a happy and fulfilling life, spending it on the things that really matter to you.

We do this by first understanding the lifestyle that you want to live; help quantify the cost of this lifestyle; set and maintain the path to achieving this; finally, and most importantly, make sure you spend and enjoy your wealth. To help our clients on this journey we use our four-step process.

Carbon’s four-step process:

Chapter One Visualise - help you to visualise a deeply personal life narrative that excites and inspires you, your life story.

Chapter Two Build - build a plan to show you how to achieve the financial future that you are dreaming of.

Chapter Three Realise - Activate all elements of your plan and give you the freedom to live your life story.

Chapter Four Reflect - Your story will evolve over time, as a partner for life, we regularly review your plan to ensure you remain on track.

This week we will focus on Chapter One: Visualise

“Visualise” is about getting to know you. This isn’t just the binary facts of what you do or how much money you have, they are still important, but we also create a narrative that is personal to you and map out everything from what gets you up in the morning, to the relationships you hold dear and those goals and aspirations you hope to achieve.

The depth of this can often be surprising at first, but fundamentally by taking the time to explore what is important to you, it helps us make sure the advice we give you is deeply personal. If you value long-term security for your family, then our advice will reflect this. If you would love to gift to causes that are personal to you, then we can facilitate this. If you are worried about running out of money in retirement, we can help map out a safe way of spending so that you have enough to last throughout retirement.

Another important part of the visualise stage is connecting with your wider professional network, such as accountants and solicitors. From outset we collaborate with your existing advisers to make sure that we are using a joined-up-thinking approach. If an existing professional isn’t already in place, then our extensive community of experts allows us to provide a recommendation.

By taking the time to gather both the practical information alongside the more personal hopes and fears, we then create a visual mind map that encompasses all this information and makes sure that you remain central throughout the whole process.

In part two of our series, we will explore how we build your plan to achieve the financial future you are dreaming of.

If you wish to visualise your life story with us and start your own journey with Carbon, please contact one of our financial planners.

The value of investments and the income derived from them can fall as well as rise. You may not get back what you invest. This communication is for general information only and is not intended to be individual advice. It represents our understanding of law and HM Revenue & Customs practice. You are recommended to seek competent professional advice before taking any action. Tax and Estate Planning Services are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.