Organisation, discipline and house warming parties

I haven’t posted for a while – sorry about that. My lack of discipline, and trying to decide on a topic, got me thinking about what it takes to get ahead. Most people think getting ahead financially comes down to knowledge and the ability to make money but here at iGenWealth we’ve learnt that it  comes down to roughly 90 per cent organisation and discipline, and 10 per cent knowledge. Getting ahead is about setting goals, planning to achieve them then automating those plans where possible. The importance of that organisation and planning was brought home to me recently when I met with a new client who’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness. The client has a wife and young family, and wanted to put his affairs in order. The client had a number of super funds and wasn’t sure of how much super he had, or the arrangements he’d previously put in place regarding binding death nominations.

There were several binding death nominations in place; some to the client’s wife and others to adult children from a prior relationship. There was also one binding death nomination in favour of someone the client hadn’t even heard of! We fixed that straight away – it was a processing error by the super fund! Not good…

On the good news front, the client had moderate super balances, so the team got to work and found that we could probably access the super under the terminal illness provisions. Better still, the client had made some really smart decisions and taken out life cover across several funds which, when combined with the super, amounted to a significant sum. We got there just in time – the premium for the largest life insurance policy was being paid from an account that was about to run out of money! Failure to pay the premium would have voided the policy.

We accessed the life cover early and delivered a significant sum to the client, which they didn’t even know they had. At that point, they didn’t own their own home so with that help, they’ve purchased a lovely new home to settle their family in, and even invited me to their house warming party!

Circumstances for the client are very difficult, and you wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Being able to facilitate cheques from life insurers to the client knowing what a difference they would make was an immense privilege, and it demonstrated the importance of the client’s smart decisions which made a huge difference when it really mattered.

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