Introduction

We’ve all become used to insuring the material things around us. If we’ve a mortgage we usually have to insure the building itself, but we go on to insure our home’s contents, our cars, our pets, our washing machines, TVs, mobile phones and holidays. Yes, we may all complain about the ever-increasing cost of insurance, but we all breathe a sigh of relief when it covers the cost of a new carpet, damage to the car, an expensive vet’s bill, a lost mobile or a cancelled holiday. Which makes it all the more surprising that so many of us fail to insure the very thing that provides them all: ourselves.

What would happen if we lost our job or couldn’t work because of a serious illness: how would the bills get paid? How would we pay the mortgage, a financial commitment that comes with the warning ‘Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage’? How would we pay for heating, for lighting, clothes and food?

It’s said that the one certainty in life is death. What would happen if we died, maybe naturally, maybe not: perhaps suddenly, in a tragic accident or as result of an unforeseen medical condition. Most of us think it won’t happen to us, it’ll happen to ‘them’ – but we are ‘them’, so it could be us. Do we have a will? Is it up to date and valid? Will our ‘natural’ children benefit or will our estate ‘accidently’ be inherited by someone else? What about Inheritance Tax? If the worst did happen, would the devastating loss of a loved one also bequeath a life of financial hardship on our families and dependants?

It’s the stuff of nightmares but, fortunately, nightmares that are easy to avoid.

If you’re the principal breadwinner and have a family who are dependent on you, then surely you owe it to them to have some form of life assurance: just in case. Critical and serious illness insurance and income protection cover are sensible options for anyone. Even if you don’t have dependants, a serious illness may mean you’re not able to work for an extended period of time in which case the lump sum, or regular income, you could receive may make a huge difference to your financial circumstances. Likewise, redundancy cover could provide an important financial lifeline if you lost your job, allowing you to focus your energy on looking for a new career role rather than just looking for a job to pay the bills.

Life assurance, critical illness and income protection are sometimes provided as popular, and particularly well received, employee benefits. If you’d like to know more about this, please click here for more information.

Wills and trusts, a cornerstone of estate planning, can ensure that what you’ve worked so hard to achieve throughout your life will go to the people you want it to. Having a valid, up-to-date Will, backed up by suitable trusts that have been carefully thought through and professionally prepared, will leave no doubts about who your beneficiaries are and how you want them to benefit. If you’ve bravely accepted that you may be unlucky enough to be one of those 1-in-14 people over the age of 65 who will eventually suffer the indignity of dementia, putting in place Lasting Power of Attorney could make all the difference to your final years.

 
How can One Financial Solutions help you?

‘Hope for the best but plan for the worst’ is a common maxim – but many of us just ‘hope for the best’ and then don’t do any planning at all.

One Financial Solutions is here to help you. As a firm of independent financial advisers we can provide impartial advice to help you identify the potential risks you face and develop a strategy that provides protection from their consequences. We’ll recommend the best products from across the whole of the financial services market and help put in place the safeguards you need to protect both you and your dependants.

We can also provide a comprehensive estate planning service to complement the financial advice we give you. Helping you preserve everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve and ensure that it’s passed on to who you want is a natural extension of what we do.

So, if you’re looking for help with any aspect of protecting either yourself or your estate, please call us on 020 3714 9565 or ask us to call you by sending an email to admin@onefinancialsolutions.co.uk.