Stats show that a majority of Australian’s are being held back when it comes to wealth building, and they may not know why.

An Advocate works with you to help build your Net Wealth over time and live your best life. Here are seven key benefits to having a Financial Advocate on your team.

(and we found a whiteboard marker to help illustrate)

1. Know what you’re doing and why

An Advocate, through tools and insights, gives you the ability to check what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. This is the paradigm shift that many miss out on. Once you have the ability to see what your money is actually doing, you can make decisions to change the way you use your money.

Example: We hear people say all the time that they want to pay off their home and build wealth, but they need more money to do this. But what happens is this: when more money comes in, it goes to lifestyle and not building wealth. The missing link is a system that enables them to choose.

2. Have a team you can trust

Research shows that trust is one of the main factors why Australians won’t attain financial advice or help. Without financial advice, we rely on marketing and past-experience to make all our decisions. An Advocate helps you get clarity around your goals and what you want to achieve, which leads to building trust. Working on your finances with others brings clarity and understanding and trust.

Example: If we purchase a financial product (eg. insurance), often it’s a one-off transaction and we then rely on the companies marketing to continue using the product. With building wealth, we don’t always have a product and it relies on how we operate our personal finances. We need trust with our team to continually allocate money where we want it to go.

3. Invest with confidence

When we lack confidence we tend to live for the moment and will use debt to do the things we think will benefit us and our family.

Example: We buy a new car thinking we’re saving money as it wont break down. Which leads to a new loan and more financial commitments. We have shown that saving for a car through investments can lead to having a new car every 10 years and also having $1 million in the bank after 40 years. The difference is confidence. To do the investment plan takes confidence - and also being able to wait to buy your first new car.

How much wealth we have in the future totally depends on investing. So if we invest now, we will have wealth to cover our future needs and can leave behind the debt trap.

4. Break out of complacency

There is a reason why our finances and life is like it is. For some of us we have broken out of old habits and old ways of living. You may be working in a higher paying job than your parents or running a business, something your family has never done. Well we need to do the same with finances.

The complacency we face today with money has a lot to do with debt. Using credit cards to make all our purchases, borrowing for cars or holidays, refinancing the home loan regularly to pay of small debts and get some cash flow back. The trouble here is that we don’t know what our financial wealth is really like and until we take a good look at the health of our wealth we don’t have a reason to break out. We will keep doing what has seemed to work before.

Example: It is very common for Australians to refinance debt and consolidate, so as to get some income back. The result is that Australians are living on the equity in the home and/or more debt. So where we thought we were progressing financially, we find out that we’ve actually been going backwards and have less Net Wealth now than last year or even 5 years ago.

5. Remove fear of money

When you don’t trust, money disappears. Why? Because you’ll spend it before you can lose it. An Advocate helps you overcome fears with investing, banks, insurances, so that you can make sound decisions that will move you forward. Loss creates a big reaction in us, so we try to avoid loss even at the detriment of our financial wellbeing.

Example: Recent downturn in global markets saw investment and super companies inundated with people trying to take their money out. This action locked in the investment losses for these people.

6. Be tax savvy

An Advocate helps you pay tax when you need to, and to save on tax when you can. If we have a focus on not paying tax, it removes our ability to see the opportunities to build wealth. Your Advocate advantage is to get the best of both worlds: using strategies to build wealth in a tax-effective way.

Example: Business owners don’t use super because they think they can get a better return somewhere else. Yet super is a tax effective environment for building wealth, with much less risk.

7. Experience more joy

When we remove the debt cycle, have cash to pay for all our purchases and have agreement on what our money is used for, the result is more joy.

When money isn’t working, people aren’t happy. So when we get clarity around our money and what it’s meant to be doing and use a system to ensure the money is doing what it is supposed to be doing, we receive great joy.

Worry and stress will be removed as you can see clearly what you are achieving. Worry and Stress will only stick around when we don’t know what is happening.

Example: We help Australians to pay off their home loan in under 10 years and build wealth that will pay for cars, kids education, and life that happens along the way. The joy we see on these Australians is priceless, as the years tick by and they see that they are achieving their goals and overcoming the obstacles that pop up on the way.