The first meeting will be at our cost, so you won't receive any request for payment, irrespective of how long we take to work through your situation.

During this appointment, we will firstly seek to understand your situation and what you are looking to achieve in your financial life. Making sure that we fully understand you and your wants and needs, is the most important aspect of this time we spend together.

You will receive an overview of Personal Financial Designs; its history, its philosophy, the personnel, their roles and how and when we charge for our services.

By this time we all will be in a position to decide whether there would be a benefit for you and us to work together, on your plans for your financial future.

Assuming that we do decide there would be a mutual benefit in us working together, we will than prepare a written report on what work we have agreed needs to be done and how much you will need, both in time and money, to invest in this process.

At any stage, the meeting can be terminated if either party realises that this relationship is not going to work for them.

However, if we all agree that there is merit in us proceeding, then we'll all sign off on the Letter of Engagement and set the date and time for the full Planning Meeting.

Prior to the Planning Meeting, you will receive a list of all the information and documents you will need to bring. The source documents will be scanned into our system and the originals returned to you.

At this appointment, we go over the information that you gave us last time, but also perhaps digging a little deeper, so that we can flesh out some of the more sketchy goals, as well as checking as to any changes that may have occurred in your thinking since our last meeting.

Using all of the information we've collected, we commence building a financial model of your current situation, with all your financial goals factored in. Using this model as our base, we start applying different strategies and comparing them against your current model, looking to achieve the optimum outcome, given your current level of resources.

Once we reach this best case scenario, we then prepare your comprehensive Financial Plan. This plan includes a detailed analysis of your current position, your objectives and our recommended strategies. Your plan also covers things like estate planning, risk planning, cash flow projections, possible taxation implications and any other issue that is pertinent to your situation.

As soon as your Financial Plan is complete, you are invited back, so that we can present it to you. As well as presenting you with the plan, you will be taken though its contents, with special attention being paid to each recommendation, its reason for being made and the possible outcomes.

You then have one or two weeks to read the plan and prepare all of the questions that you will undoubtedly have. We want you to carefully record those questions in the plan, next to the item it relates to.

At this final step in the initial process, we agree on a timetable of when and by whom, each recommendation will be implemented. We will also discuss the type and frequency of our ongoing support and determine what the fee will be for our continuing involvement in achieving your financial goals