Financial Goals for Your 30s and 40s

Introduction

As your career and earning potential grows, your financial aspirations may evolve too and may include, saving for a home or renovation, looking to start a family or making future provisions for your children. Balancing these commitments and investing early, can help you achieve your financial goals over the long-term.

You may have already started to regularly save and invest as discussed in our ‘financial goals for under 30s’ page. If so, you might be looking to scale up the amount of focus you put into building your lifetime savings and if you haven’t, you might be considering taking some professional financial advice.

Either way, we believe that everyone deserves to have a secure and comfortable financial future. So, although not exhaustive guidance, this page contains some basic suggestions and prompts you might wish to consider as part of your own financial planning and savings journey.

Revisit your income, expenditure and financial commitments

As your income, disposable income or financial commitments grow, it's important to revisit your budgets periodically. Your rainy-day savings may now need to increase in line with your expenses, if you’ve taken on bigger rents, mortgages or childcare commitments.

A Wealth Planner (or Financial Planner) can carry out cashflow forecasting, to help you take stock of your current earnings and outgoings, and also project how this might look over the longer term too.

“Life is a succession of lesson which must be lived to be understood.”

Helen Keller

Property ownership

If you haven’t already, you may be hoping to buy your first property or be looking to take the next step and move to a larger one. Either way, it will be important to consider how much you will need to save.

If you already own your own home, it will be important to know how much equity you own and if you plan to take on a larger mortgage; you will also need to get your finances organised to be able to so. When making these decisions, it is important to take into consideration the affordability of your mortgage if rates increase.

For some, you may prefer to start clearing more of your mortgage through regular overpayments where possible; and balance this against the opportunity to invest in other assets.

Growing your pensions contributions

Although a long way off, you’re probably thinking more about your pension. And although your contributions are likely to grow naturally as a percentage of your income, it can be a good idea to also increase the percentage contribution you make in line with salary rises, if you can afford to.

You might be in a position to speak to your employer about salary sacrifice (an agreement to reduce an employee’s entitlement to cash pay, usually in return for a non-cash benefit), as an additional way to increase your pension contributions.

If you have more than one pension, perhaps from previous employers, you may want to ask a Wealth Planner to review the investments and benefits of these plans and consider consolidating them into SIPP. See the section on ‘Pensions and SIPPs – Accumulating for your retirement’ for more on this.

Growing your general savings investments

As your income grows, you may have savings beyond your rainy-day savings and money put aside for foreseeable expenses, that you want to invest for long-term growth. If so, utilising your ISA allowance, can be a great way of building up a tax-efficient investment pot for your future.

As your investments grow, it can also be a good time to consider whether you have the time or expertise to properly manage your investment strategy and maintain a diversified portfolio, tailored to your risk appetite and objectives. Please see “Growing your lifetime savings” for more information on this.

For illustration purposes only

The animation above illustrates the potential for income growth through efficient financial structuring and a balanced or growth-focused approach to investing. The actual figures achieved will depend on individual circumstances

Investing for children

If you have children, you are probably already thinking about how to give them the best start possible. Given that they have the benefit of a long-term investment horizon, setting up Stocks & Shares Junior ISAs and potentially even Junior SIPPs, can be a great way to give them a financial head start. Please see ‘Investing for children’ for more tips on this.

If your children are older, it is worth thinking about how you prepare them for the responsibility of taking ownership of any savings and investments that you have set-up for them. If your child has a Junior ISA, when they turn 18, it will be converted to an adult ISA in their name and they will have full access to this account. It will therefore be important to discuss with your child, how they are going to handle the ongoing management of the ISA. It can be worth planning for these moments and our Advisers are happy to help with these conversations.

Capital at Risk and Tax Treatment

Your capital is it risk and may not receive back the same amount you put in when you choose to cash out your savings. The tax treatment depends on the individual circumstances of each client and may be subject to change in the future.

Protect your assets and your dependents

It is important to consider your protection needs, to safeguard against financial distress in the event of undesirable scenarios, such as ill health or premature death. This is particularly important when you have financial responsibilities such as a mortgage or financial dependents.

There are a range of insurance options available from Life Insurance, Income Protection and Critical Illness cover to help cover a shortfall of earnings, in the event you are unable to work or to pay off a mortgage if you were to pass away. A Wealth Planner will be able to offer you tailored advice on these, as part of a well-constructed personal financial plan.

Conclusion

If you have been reading these suggestions and feeling like you are well on track, try reviewing ‘Financial goals for your 50s and 60s’ or Life Moments content on specific planning and investing goals.

Alternatively, explore our investing app or get in touch to arrange a consultation with one of our Advisers, to see how we could partner with you to help you achieve your investing goals.

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