What Is Wealth Management?

“Wealth management” is a term that is often thrown around, but if you’re new to investing, it can be a difficult concept to grasp.

Although there are lots of financial planning tips around, unless you can develop a wealth management mindset and know-how to track your wealth management, you’ll struggle to see the desired returns.

So, here we’ll explore this topic in more detail and discover the ways that you can easily track your wealth management.

The Wealth Management Basics

In simple terms, wealth management is the principle of enhancing or solving your financial situation. The term was coined by finance professionals as the ability to choose the best types of investments rather than just investment advice. Wealth management should consider all aspects of a person’s financial life, so there is a holistic approach where all the services needed to manage money and plan for the future are covered.

Many wealth management strategies are based on specialisation in particular areas of focus. So whether you decide to consult a professional or do it yourself, you may have some aspects of your wealth management outsourced to others to develop the most beneficial strategy.

There are four main areas of comprehensive wealth management. These are:

• Financial planning
• Investment management
• Life planning
• Wealth management

Each of these areas requires different planning strategies to ensure that you are completely covered.

The DIY Approach

Although JP Morgan statistics show that individual investors make an average of 2.6% per year, far lower than the 7-10% typically enjoyed with the stock market, it is still possible to take a DIY approach to wealth management. Of course, you’ll need to understand the best types of investments for your specific risk profile.

DIY wealth management requires some basic abilities and resources, including having the proper emotional constitution. This means that while you can go with your gut if you feel strongly, you don’t get caught up in an emotional whirlwind of investing. You also need to feel comfortable with numbers, so you can analyze financial reports without falling for any deceptively positive spin.

You will also need to develop the skills to complete present or future value calculations, but there are tools available to assist you with this. It would help if you also made an honest assessment of your unique limitations. This will enable you to start in areas where you feel confident and see help for all other areas.

For example, while you may feel confident about structuring and managing your individual stocks to create a diversified portfolio, if you’re not sure you could accomplish this with bonds, you could use an outside manager to handle these investments.

As your abilities grow, you’ll start to feel more confident that you can bring some or even all of these outsourced areas back under your direct control.

Tracking Your Wealth Management

One of the most crucial areas of DIY wealth management is a way to reliably and accurately track the performance of your financial products and investments. You need to honestly assess how your investment efforts are matching professional portfolio performances to determine if you need to seek help or can continue going it alone.

Fortunately, there are some great tools and apps that can help you to track your wealth management. These include:

• Yodlee.com: This platform offers a variety of online money management services, allowing you to track all of your investments and accounts. You can not only track investment values but also create budgets, track spending, and even pay bills through this site.
• MoneyStrands.com: This is a money management tool that can gather all your financial information automatically. This allows you to see all of your investments and accounts in one place, and you can even sign up for personalized financial advice.
• Money-rates.com: This website allows you to compare interest rates on credit cards, CDs, savings accounts, and money markets quickly. This allows you to maximize the interest you earn on your investments and savings while minimizing the interest charged on any debt. The site also offers tools and information to help you to make informed choices.

Getting Started

The first step to getting started with your wealth management strategy is to get an understanding of your financial situation. You can only start to address investments and financial planning once you have an accurate and reliable picture of your finances. Unfortunately, according to US Bank, only 41% of Americans follow a basic budget; one of the fundamentals of financial planning.

Fortunately, there are lots of tools that can help you to not only establish a budget but also keep track of your expenses and costs. These tools can also be used to streamline your expenses to create disposable income to start your investment journey. These include:

• Mint.com: This is one of the most popular finance websites to track budgeting and cashflow. It can help you to analyze your financial situation and will even offer some suggestions on where you can save on your expenses. You can also use the site to research bank accounts or credit cards to get the best deal.
• BudgetPulse.com: This website provides a basic budget system to monitor your savings and spendings. You can also track finances in multiple currencies, so it is ideal for those who frequently travel or have overseas investments.

So, Are You Ready to Start Your Wealth Management?

If you want to have a strong financial future, it is crucial to develop a wealth management mindset and take a more proactive approach to your finances.

Fortunately, there are professional experts and some great DIY tools to help you tackle all aspects of wealth management, from managing your budget to making investments, allowing you to establish a solid portfolio to meet your financial goals.

Author Bio:

Lorraine Halton enjoyed a successful career in the finance industry and now uses this expertise as a professional writer. Through her blog posts and articles, she helps people to improve their financial health. Whether you need to organize a budget, save money or plan your financial future, Lorraine can help.