When you think about all the things that you want to do in your life, what springs to mind?

Maybe it’s buying your first home. Or being able to pay for your children’s education all the way through to university. Or going on that once in a lifetime holiday (Lord of the Rings Tour anyone?). Do you want to take an extended break from work and eat your way around Italy for a month (or a year!)? Or maybe take an early retirement so you can focus on the hobbies you’re most passionate about and spend more time with your friends and family. 

However big or small you think your goals or objectives are, in truth your dreams are limitless. 

But we know how closely our personal finances are linked to being able to do the things that we want to in life. Because whenever we make a decision with our finances, it has implications. They can be positive or negative, and there’s always a bit of an opportunity cost because we can’t do everything. If we have £500 to do something with, we could spend it, put it into cash savings, invest it, or put it into our pension.

So the first step towards any goal we have is to make sure we’re on top of our finances. 

This is where Octopus Money can help. 

How do we do that?

1. Get a full picture of your finances

This is where we look at all of the different aspects of your financial life together with all of the things that you want to do in life. When we make a plan, we take everything into account (your savings, pensions and investments) and give personalised recommendations so that you know exactly what to do to get to where you need to go. It’s like the roadmap to the life you want to live, with all the directions and rest stops mapped out along the way. So when you make a financial decision, you can feel that you’re making a good decision that makes sense for you. 

2. Prioritise your goals

We always want to do ALL of the things. But realistically, we only have a certain number of hours in a day. On top of this, we might not want to take action on some of the financial admin we need to do because it seems dull or boring, while we’re excited about doing other things that might not give us the most impactful results. 

This is where prioritisation comes in. We help you organise your financial life so that you’re checking off the most impactful tasks first. 

3. Review your savings

Savings might seem unrelated to investing but hear us out. Because investing is never without risk, one of the most important pillars of investing is having a rainy day fund. This is the buffer that you can tap into for emergencies instead of having to sell your investments at a loss or when you weren’t planning to. 

Another bonus to managing your savings is that it ensures you have enough money for ‘current you’ (so you can enjoy wonderful experiences that are important to you) and ‘future you’ (so you can continue to have a great quality of life in retirement – whether you retire early or keep working part-time). Putting your entire life on hold just to save and invest isn’t realistic, and we don’t want you to miss out on the things that bring you joy. 

4. Your personalised investment strategy

This is where the real opportunity to grow wealth happens. Everyone’s personal situation and appetite for risk is different, so we take everything into account before making any recommendations. 

We work with your financial plan and risk profile to match you to one of our ten portfolios. By doing this we can be sure that your investments are in alignment with your investing strategy and how you feel about risk. 

We are really passionate about people being reassured and having the confidence that they’re invested in the right way for them. Investing in the way that works for you is when you’ll have the best chance of success. Because it won’t always be easy. Everyone’s an expert and happy when the markets are good, but knowing your investment strategy is the right one for you will help see you through when the markets are down. 

5. Your ideal retirement plan

This is something we look at for ‘future you’. If you have a workplace pension, you’re already an investor. This is because your workplace pensions are invested in funds in the stock market to give your money a chance to grow over time. This is where we can also help with recommendations on how your investment portfolio should look to get you to your desired retirement. 

There are a lot of different things you can do to maximise your pension pot, especially as you get closer to retirement age. Once you do decide to retire, there are some decisions you’ll need to make, and our experts are on hand to support you with this as well. 

A note on pensions: Your workplace pension is separate from your State Pension, which you’ll receive from the government once you reach State Pension age. Read more here. 

6. Dream it and then DO IT

Once your financial plan is ready, we help you keep track of the actions you need to take to get you to where you want to be. 

How we do that:

• We introduce you to sister companies from across the Octopus Group that can help in your specific situation.
• We break it all down into a simple, bite-size action list, prioritised for you.
• We answer all your questions. 
• We support you and keep you motivated about your goals along the way – like your own personal accountability buddy. 

If your circumstances change, your plan can change. We help you organise all of the pieces of your financial life, and track them in one place. You’ll have a clear view of what your future could look like, and have a step-by-step action plan to help you get there.