Finance is not rocket science. Like everything it can be made complex, indeed it often seems that one of the purposes of the financial industry is to deliberately do this. In fact it is all about (fairly) straightforward mathematics and balancing risk and reward.

There are two financial phases in a person's life. The first phase is the accumulation period. The second phase comes at retirement. This is the distribution phase..
People who are accumulating assets are also broken down into other stages of their life. That is, are you single, married, divorced, have children, etc.? What is your career? When one chooses a career path, to some extent your earning potential is somewhat determined. Do you live for today or plan for tomorrow? What do you spend your money on? These are all factors which play a role in your lifestyle.
Lifestyle decisions are personal decisions. They are yours alone. They involve confidence, or lack of confidence in the future. How you spend your money is your business. The main thing is to know yourself and not try to fit into another persons idea of how you should live your life. What is important, however, is not how you spend your money, but rather, how you allocate your money.

Step 1 What is your present financial state?

Step 2 What are the resources required to maintain your current lifestyle?

Step 3 What are your financial goals?

Step 4 How do you achieve those goals?

It is also important to plan for the downside of life.
To some degree, Stage 3 does this by considering the insurances that may be useful to maintain a standard of living for yourself or dependants should death, illness or redundancy occur. However, death also requires Inheritance Tax and Wills planning.

Also, individuals can suffer marriage breakdowns. These are both emotionally and financially traumatic. However, with some planning, that can be less than might otherwise be the case.

• Divorce
• Wills and Inheritance Tax