Personal financial planning for you and your family
Personal finance involves a lot of interconnected decisions. Buzz helps business owners, individuals and families access support for pensions, investment planning, mortgages, protection, retirement and estate planning.
Call or WhatsApp 07476 989568
Twelve areas of personal financial support
Planning, saving and borrowing
Financial planning
Joined-up planning across your wider financial position.
Pensions
Understanding your current position and what needs attention.
Investments
Risk appetite reviewed and aligned to the longer term.
Mortgages
Buying, refinancing, investing, or reviewing your current deal.
Protection for you and your family
Protection
Cover for your income, your family and the assets you value.
Life cover
Financial protection for the people who depend on you.
Critical illness cover
Reducing financial pressure if you’re seriously ill.
Income protection
Cover if you’re unable to work.
Retirement and what you leave
Retirement planning
Clarity on income, timing and your future needs.
Later life planning
Retirement lifestyle and future care needs.
Estate planning
Structuring your assets and affairs properly.
Inheritance planning
Wealth transfer and generational planning.
What a review involves
A first conversation
What’s prompted this: a birthday with a zero in it, a mortgage coming off a fixed rate, a business sale, a new baby, or old pensions sitting somewhere unattended.
Gathering the facts
Pension statements, a State Pension forecast, existing protection policies, mortgage details, savings and investments, and your income from the business.
Analysis and a written recommendation
Where you are against where you want to be, and what a regulated adviser recommends doing about it, in writing, with the costs and the risks stated alongside the upside.
Your decision, then implementation
Nothing happens until you say so. If you’d rather do nothing for now, that is a legitimate answer and you should not be pushed off it.
A review, usually annually
Circumstances change, markets change, and tax rules change.
How pension tax relief works
Illustrative figures showing the mechanics of relief. Whether a contribution is right for you is a regulated advice question.
Personal pension contributions are paid from taxed income, and basic rate relief is added by the provider. A higher-rate taxpayer claims the rest through Self Assessment.
There are limits on how much can be paid in with relief, and they depend on your earnings and any pension income you have already taken, so the current allowances need checking against your own position rather than assumed. Note too that a company director may be better off with an employer contribution from the company than a personal one — that comparison sits across the tax and advice line, which is why the two get discussed together. Money in a pension is normally locked away until at least age 55, rising to 57 from 2028, and the value can fall as well as rise.
Common questions about personal planning
What does an initial conversation cost?
Nothing, and there is no obligation to proceed. If regulated advice follows, the fee is set out in writing before any work starts, in pounds rather than as a percentage. Ask for it that way. Where advice is commission-paid by a provider, particularly on protection and mortgages, that is disclosed too. The initial conversation is there to work out what actually needs doing and in what order, and quite often the answer includes things that cost nothing at all.
I have four old workplace pensions. Should I combine them?
Sometimes. Older schemes can carry guaranteed annuity rates, protected tax-free cash above 25%, a protected retirement age or valuable life cover, and those are frequently worth more than the convenience of a single statement. Exit penalties still exist on some contracts. Equally, four dormant pots with high charges and no investment review since 2011 need attention. It has to be checked scheme by scheme before anything is moved.
What happens to my pension money when I die?
Usually it passes outside your estate, which makes it one of the more useful things to leave, but only if the paperwork is current. Most defined contribution schemes pay at the trustees’ discretion, guided by your expression of wish form, and that form is frequently decades out of date and still naming a former partner. It takes ten minutes to update. The tax treatment on death has been subject to repeated policy change, so this is an area to review periodically, and it should be looked at alongside your will.
Will I be sold something I do not need?
The safeguards are these: fees and commission disclosed in writing before you decide, a recommendation you can take away and think about, and a clear reason for each product tied to a specific gap. If a recommendation arrives without a written reason you can restate in your own words, push back. Plenty of health checks end with two or three actions that cost nothing: updating an expression of wish, cancelling duplicated cover, moving an emergency fund somewhere earning interest.
Can I get a mortgage if I am self-employed or a company director?
Yes, though lenders assess you differently and the variation between them is substantial. Some use salary plus dividends, others will consider your share of retained profit, and the number of years of accounts required ranges from one to three. What matters most is consistency: your tax return, your accounts and your application telling the same story. The trap for company directors is a tax-efficient profit extraction strategy that minimises declared income for years and then meets a lender who only counts declared income. Raise the mortgage plan before you set the extraction strategy.
How much life cover or income protection do I need?
Start with the liability rather than a round number: what would need clearing, what income would need replacing, for whom and for how long. Then subtract what already exists: an old policy, death in service through an employer, cover attached to a business loan, and any shareholder protection already in place. The gap that remains is the number. Two things owners consistently overlook: income protection usually matters more than life cover because being unable to work is more likely than dying, and cover written in trust generally pays out faster and outside the estate.
Do I need a will if my estate is simple?
If you have children, a business, property or anything you want to go to a particular person, yes. Without one the intestacy rules decide, and they rarely match what people assume: an unmarried partner inherits nothing under them, however long you have been together, and a surviving spouse does not automatically receive everything where there are children and a larger estate. Business owners have an extra layer: what happens to your shares, whether the articles or a shareholders’ agreement override your will, and whether Business Property Relief applies. Will writing and some estate planning are not regulated by the FCA. See legal services.
Who gives the advice
Buzz Accounting is an accountancy practice and is not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. Nothing on this page is a personal recommendation, and no product is sold from it.
Regulated advice is provided by Equity & General Financial Services Limited, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (No. 474163). Buzz is not authorised to give regulated financial advice and introduces clients to Equity & General Financial Services Limited, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, FCA No. 474163. The Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate tax advice, trusts, will writing or some forms of estate planning. Fees and any commission are disclosed in writing before you decide whether to proceed.
Financial advice for you personally
Buzz Financial Services advises on pensions, investments, mortgages, life cover and estate planning.
Buzz Financial Services is a trading style of Equity & General Financial Services Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (No. 474163).
Need support with personal financial planning?
Call or WhatsApp 07476 989568 or email hello@buzzaccounting.co.uk
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