Is it worth it to hire a financial planner?

There is no such specialisation. AFSLs address financial product. Its to financial product what a REA is to selling houses. Property isnt a financial product. There are wealth advisers on property who are very good and others who are sharks. That said I have never once met a property wealth adviser who says you shouldnt buy. Its always the right time to buy. Maxxing borrowing capacity seems the only exception to buying more. And they are often part of agroup they make $$$ from loans and more. Its all conflicted and hardly independent.

 

My suggestion is spend time reading a whole pile of posts on the forum initially for a month or so .

This will give you a better understanding of what’s involved and more importantly what questions to ask if you choose to use an FA .

We’ve talked to two . The first one set us back 2-3 years as his advice was to pay down debt , when borrowing more was the correct move .

The second one was a barrier we had to go through to get a loan to buy IP’s in our super and was inaccurate , and a waste of time .

At some stage , if we decide to diversify into funds I’d talk to someone as it’s not an area I know .

We’ve done the big picture planning our selves though have used mortgage brokers from the forum at each step .

We’ve also had sessions with creative accountant a couple times for suggestions on structuring .

We have used the same suburban accountant for 35 years . We take the creative ideas to our regular guy and make sure he’s ok with them .

we specifically decided not to go with one of the more wealth orientated accountant practices .Some of their clients might push things to the edge a bit and if they get cut up … It was a few years ago , but I heard a story about all of the clients of one practice being audited after some “ irregularities “ were picked . Don’t know if that would still be a risk now days , but why take the chance .

Financially , my involvement in this forum and it’s predecessor for close to 25 years have financial transformed our lives .

Read , ask questions .

You make the serious money in property from capital growth .

Cash flow helps you hold things while they growth and is the exit strategy .

Looking back we’ve had around 10 deals / buying periods which have netted us significant capital growth . The first couple made us 3-400k , then it stepped us as we had more equity . Next one will ( hopefully ) net us probably around 1.5 -2 .

As said before the property orientated advisors are very good or very bad .

One person to check out . We recently used a BA for the first time to buy in Perth . Ray Chua ( momentum wealth ) He did go through the whole process of advising us on the process of property investing but quickly realised that we knew what we were doing , when I talked about when and we where we’d bought. He was knowledgeable and helpful .

Cliff

 

Lots of useful info & I agree that forums & the group information and experience on here is so valuable.

I would agree that a lot of financial planning practice just want to get paid by Super & Insurance as this is commonplace.

some things advisers can/will assist with beyond this is
-Specific goal planning
-Property/business case studies
-Explaining how assets will help reach dream position by X age
-tax & legal conversation (general but eye-opening) - they can comment on the interpretation
-Entity & estate planning conversations

much like any profession, there is good, bad & everything in between.

If you are asking if it's valuable it definitely can be & as in previous posts, it can be costly for bad advice as well.

The biggest thing generally is if you're not paying the client were does their agenda lie.

Disclaimer: generally only does not take any specifics into account.