Introduction
Making confident decisions
Confident decisions about the future start with clarity today. By joining the dots with sensible assumptions, Cash Flow Planning gives you the insight and reassurance you need to make choices that truly fit your life.
Even simple financial decisions like how much to save, or spend, can quickly become complicated. Taxation, investment returns, conflicting goals and the general uncertainty of life make sure of it.
So how can we hope to answer the bigger questions and explore possibilities which could lead to a life lived even better? Cash Flow Modelling can’t provide the answer, but it can handle the complexity leaving you to make more confident decisions.
How we help
Cash Flow Plannng
What is Cash Flow Planning?
Cash flow planning is a tool to help us explore our complex financial lives. It starts with having a clear picture of your current finances – what you own, owe, earn and spend. These are the resources you can deploy to fund your life’s plans.
We build a picture of when your money will need to come into play to support your plans. This might include when you plan to retire and what that lifestyle might look like.
Cash flow planning applies sensible, well thought out, assumptions to project your finances across the rest of your life. This enables a safe exploration of potential financial and lifestyle, choices enabling more confident decision making.
Why does Cash Flow Planning matter?
We believe that money is simply a tool to achieve life’s goals. However, the complexity of finances often gets in the way. It sometimes stops us from making decisions.
Making decisions about our life’s goals is hard enough without worrying about whether we’ve made a good financial decision. Cash flow planning gives confidence that the complexity of the money decisions is accounted for. As a result it can become a tool to experiment with your bigger life decisions with confidence.
Who is it for?
Cash flow planning is a crucial part of the financial planning process. It provides clear feedback about the impact of decisions made today. Visual reinforcement is helpful for most people.
However, where it is most powerful is when the nature of the decision is permanent and hard to reverse. You might be preparing to retire, sell a business, or make a gift. Cash flow planning can help give you clarity over whether you have ‘enough’ and enable confident decision making.
Sometimes the complexity that cash flow planning alleviates is the interplay between several goals. Our financial lives can be complex and fear of making a ‘wrong move’ can stop us from making decisions.
*Investing places your capital at risk and the values of investments can go down as well as up. Cash flow and Tax Planning are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
We can help with:
Still have questions or want to know more?
Ready to talk about the future?
Plan today, so you can live confidently and spend intentionally tomorrow.
Values
Why choose Paradigm Norton?
We believe true financial planning isn’t just about numbers; it’s about lives. That’s why we always put you, your values and your future at the heart of every conversation. Our approach ensures that every strategy we craft is deeply aligned with what matters most to you, securing not just your wealth, but your well-being.
We start the financial planning process with the most important part – You. We’re not here to show you the way: we’re here to guide and navigate you through a path of your own choosing.
As one of the largest independent financial planning companies in England, serving more than 1,000 clients, we’re not just Chartered Financial Planners… we’re tried and tested financial partners.
Money matters, but life matters more. Our motto flows through everything that we do, from connecting you to responsible investment strategies to enabling you to build a brighter future, with a lighter footprint.
As a Certified B Corporation®, we balance profit with purpose, people, and the environment.
Team
Our Team
Tom Desborough
Client Manager
Simon Livings
Client Manager
Farida Hassanali
Client Manager
Mia Smith
Senior Financial Planner
Tommy Watson
Regional Director
Katie Wright
Senior Financial Planner
Richard Gray
Client Director
David Burridge
Regional Director
Paul Cardinal
Client Manager
Lee Dunn
Client Director/Head of Investments
Matt Goddard
Client Manager
Paul Hardinges
Client Manager
Caroline Leech
Client Manager
Daniel Limb
Client Manager
Sally Matthews
Client Manager
Rohan Patel
Client Manager
William Pratt
Client Director
Tracey Reed
Regional Director
Martin Ruskin
Client Director
Read
Free Financial Planning Guide
It’s easy to overlook crucial aspects of your financial wellbeing and there’s no one-size-fits all solution when it comes to financial planning.
This guide is designed to prompt thoughtful reflection on important questions that often get lost in the shuffle. From understanding your spending habits to contemplating your life goals and values, this guide aims to uncover the key elements that shape your financial decisions.
Free financial planning resources
Helpful tools and guides to start planning your financial future with confidence.
Questions
Cash Flow Planning FAQs
Here are some of the most common questions we’re asked about cash flow planning and how we help guide you every step of the way.
How do you take into account the uncertainty of the future?
You are quite right that we can’t know what the future will hold with absolute certainty. There’s a famous saying the “All models are wrong, but some are useful” (George Box, British statistician).
The further out we look, even the wisest assumptions are likely to be wrong. However, that doesn’t mean that it is not a worthwhile exercise. A sailor still plots a course knowing that the winds and waves will take the ship along a different path.
There are two ways we take uncertainty into account. Firstly, we spend time researching our assumptions for things like investment returns, inflation, spending and taxes. We set them to be cautious, but reasonable.
Secondly, much like the sailor, we regularly review progress and the prevailing conditions. It provides an opportunity to adjust your plan or change direction/destination
What information do you need to build my cashflow?
- What you own. This might include things like property, pensions, investments, and businesses.
- What you earn. This includes any earned income (and/or dividends), income from other sources (e.g. maintenance, loan repayments, trusts, deferred consideration from a business sale), and money you receive from pensions or investments.
- What you spend. A reasonable level of detail is generally helpful and breaking it down into categories is helpful. If you have regular commitments like mortgage repayments, maintenance, or bills it helps to split these out – and be clear on when they are likely to stop.
- What you owe. Outstanding mortgages and loans. Knowing what the amount outstanding is, interest rates, and repayment terms is important.
- Potential plans for the future that might impact any of these. For example retirement, selling a business, paying for a wedding, or potential long term care. If you have a rough idea of the amounts of money involved (and when) we can build that into your cashflow plan.
The software we use is extremely flexible and can help us explore different options, strategies, and ideas. It will take all of these into account together with our carefully researched assumptions about investment returns, inflation, and taxation.
How does this help me know that I have ‘enough’?
Cash flow planning can help you to understand if you are likely have enough money (either now, or from your financial planning strategies) to fund your commitments and aspirations. Whilst our assumptions are designed to be reasonable, life sadly isn’t always as fair.
As we build and examine your cash flow planning, we’ll stress test it thoroughly. As well as the impact of investment markets we’ll consider other events. What happens if you are unable to work? Or your priorities had to change as a result of a diagnosis or even death? For many people a combination of insurance (such as life insurance or income protection) and diversified portfolios helps to ensure that there is enough flexibility in your finances to weather these storms.
By considering both of these types of scenario you can be clear as to whether you are on track to have ‘enough’. But perhaps the real question is are your plans ‘enough’ – are there dreams, aspirations, or goals that you’ve left on the table? Cash flow planning is a safe place to experiment with stretching the possibilities.
Is cash flow planning a ‘once and done’ exercise?
Our circumstances, dreams, and aspirations sometimes change. Our money rarely operates in a straight line or perfectly in line with our plan.
Cash flow planning is very helpful for making big strategic decisions, but it is equally useful for keeping on track. Adjustments and course corrections can be made where necessary – when done early they can be more of a gentle nudge than a major change.
Revisiting the plan regularly helps us check that we are still aiming at the right destination. Steven Covey wrote that “if the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”