As some readers of this blog may already know, I in September last year, became a proud mum for the very first time.

As most mums and mum’s to be will have done, I had a Birth Plan which outlined what I wanted to happen at the time.

It was while I was putting this together that my antenatal instructor talked about having a Birth Preference rather than a Plan.

Her reason for saying this was that would allow for a more flexible mindset, so that if things did not go to plan it would be easier to emotionally adapt and deal with the situation being presented.

So when the mild contractions started one Friday evening, I was pretty relaxed and continued with my usual weekend routine over the next day sprinkled with a bit of moaning to husband as to how much more intense the ‘pain’ was compared to the false contractions the previous weekend.

I we Fast forward to Sunday afternoon and I was finally in hospital…

Whoop whoop, the contractions were the real deal and baba was going to pop out in a few hours.  I reckoned I’d be home sometime on Monday merrily going about motherhood.

Boy was I wrong!  Things started off great and then basically nothing much happened for absolutely ages.

Baba was having far too much of a good time to want to come out anytime soon but by the following afternoon he was finally brought into this world.

Throughout that time, I genuinely wasn’t too concerned that my birth preference had not come about.

These things happen and I put my faith in the maternity experts to advise me on what was best to do at that time although looking back my intention to just ‘breathe through it all’ was somewhat optimistic!

At some point whilst merrily going about motherhood…erm…more like during one of my sleep deprived states or in other, I begun thinking about Financial Plans (it’s strange how the mind plays strange tricks on you when you least expect it)

My role is to help my clients plan for now and their future. 

To do this we need to have a plan in place – the Financial Plan.

However many people make an assumption…

A Financial plan is set in stone….when actually the opposite is true.

Any plan must have flexibility built in.

How much will depend on your personal circumstances but the reason that there needs to be some flexibility is simply that life is full of unknowns.

Even with all best laid plans, things happen which throw a spanner in the works and if your Financial Plan is far too rigid then it’s not going to do the job for you.

Take our client ‘Fiona’ as an example, after several years in the same job she came to the conclusion that she needed a career change.

In fact she had been thinking about this for a while but had always felt that, financially, she could not afford to ‘start again’.

When we reviewed her Financial Plan, it was evident that we could look at topping up some of her investments while she was still working and that she would have built up enough to provide her with an income for a year while she re-trained in her chosen field.

We also changed where the money was being invested so that it could be more easily accessible in the short-term.

In a nutshell, we made sure that when we set-up Fiona’s plan it was flexible enough to be adapted as and when things in her life changed.

The result was that Fiona felt much happier as she could ahead with what she really wanted to do with the peace of mind that her finances would be in order and stay on track.

So, the question is…

Have you got a financial plan?

Is it flexible enough to make any changes if needed?

and

How often do you review what’s changed to ensure that you’re still ‘on track’?