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The Financial Benefits Of Marriage
Getting married is a big step in a relationship. It often means changes to personal finances. Some of these changes can be quite positive. These changes can actually make it much, much easier to achieve financial goals.
In this post we’ll explore the financial benefits of marriage (or entering a common-law relationship).
There are obviously a lot of considerations when combining finances, but there are certain financial advantages that couples have versus individuals. These advantages can make it easier to achieve financial goals. There are tax advantages, saving advantages, spending advantages, debt advantages, and risk reduction advantages.
If you’ve recently entered into a common-law relationship, or if you’ve recently gotten married, then you might be interested to know the financial benefits of marriage.
What Is Advice-Only Financial Planning?
What is advice-only financial planning exactly? What does advice-only financial planning entail?
Also known as fee-for-service financial planning, advice-only financial planning involves no products, no commissions, just advice.
With traditional forms of financial advice, there is always the nagging doubt about whether the advice is truly unbiased or if is it just to sell a product and receive a commission? There is always that lingering question, is this advice really in your best interest or is it in the best interest of the advisor?
Advice-only financial planning eliminates this conflict of interest. An advice-only financial planner is compensated directly by the client and only the client. There are no products, no commissions, just pure advice.
An advice-only financial planner works for the client to provide the best advice possible and good financial advice can be extremely helpful. It can reduce stress, provide peace of mind, capture unseen opportunities, avoid unnecessary risks etc. etc.
There are many different ways to receive financial advice, but one of the most unbiased and trustworthy is advice-only financial planning.
Let’s go deeper into exactly what advice-only financial planning is and why, in today’s world of low-cost self-directed investing, it makes more sense than ever to get an advice-only financial plan…
Setting The Right Asset Allocation For RESP Investments
One of the hardest things about RESPs is choosing the right investment and managing the allocation between stocks and bonds. There are so many RESP investment options and it becomes especially challenging when families have more than one child. When families have a few children, who are perhaps a few years apart in age, it becomes very challenging to set the right asset allocation for the investments inside the family RESP.
Why is it important to set the right asset allocation?
Asset allocation is a large driver of risk. The more equity assets in a portfolio, and the less fixed income assets, the more risk. There is always risk when investing, whether that be in stocks or bonds, but stocks have always had a “risk premium”. That means they have a higher risk but also a higher return.
When managing asset allocation in an RESP we need to be very careful because were typically investing over a few different time horizons.
A 16-year old high school student is going to have a very different asset allocation in their RESP than a 4-year old pre-schooler. We want to make sure the 16-year old has money for post-secondary in two years and isn’t going to lose half of their education fund during a downturn. On the other hand, our pre-schooler has loads of time, so we can take on a bit more risk and hopefully grow their education savings over the next 14+ years.
It’s these different investment horizons that make investing inside an RESP especially challenging (even more so for self-directed RESPs where the individual investor is making all the decisions).
Typical investment horizons for RESPs include…