The value of advice

AMP has shared with us this video that will talk you through the value of advice. You can watch the video here or read the transcription below.

Briony: Hi I’m Briony, I work at AMP and I want to talk about the value of financial advice.

Mark: Hi I’m Mark. I don’t work for AMP but I can tell you about my experience of getting financial advice.

Briony:I know a bit about financial advice because my brother, my sister and my husband are all financialplanners. My father was a financial planner with AMP for forty years.

Mark: That is a lot of financial planners. I only know one and I met him the other day.

Briony: What prompted you to meet?

Mark: It was a sudden realization at 2 o’clock in the morning that if anything should happen to me and my wife. I didn’t know how my two little boys would get looked after, which is quite a scary thought.

Briony: So you went to talk about insurance.

Mark: Yes, but I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know what the right sort was and I just wanted to get it sorted out as quickly as possible. Also I had multiple super accounts floating all over the place asdid my wife as well.

Briony: That’s good, so you knew exactly what you needed solved so the financial planner could work out a plan just for you. Is that what happened?

Mark: Yep, and we discovered we were massively under-insured, which we’ve fixed.

Briony: So you learned something new and that’s what financial planners do, educate you so you can make decisions. You glad you went?

Mark: Yeah, I am very glad. I was on a flight into Johannesburg in South Africa which was an absolutely shocking flight, this tiny little airplane. It’s quite possibly the bumpiest flight I have ever been on and I was actually terrified. But I knew if anything happened, I didn’t need to worry, like if I couldn’t care for my wife if I did die in a plane crash tomorrow. I’m sure it would be very upsetting but at least financiallythings have been taken care of so that’s a good feeling.

Briony: What about your super?

Mark: Yep, he helped us consolidate our super as well. One of the things that came out that was interesting was that I thought I would be incredibly underfunded when I hit sixty-five but based on current projections I’m going to be okay.

Briony: That’s great. You know there’s a report from KPMG from January 2011 that someone who starts saving with the help of a financial planner at age thirty could be more than $91,000 better off at retirement?

Mark: Yeah, I can believe that. What about you, do you take financial advice?

Briony: I do. I listen to all four of them. We’ve talked about it for years but last April we decided to listen to some good advice and get some trauma insurance. Everyone should consider their own circumstances before deciding what products are right for them and financial planners can definitely help with that. And I’m glad I got that advice.

Mark: Why’s that?

Briony: Because my heart failed the following October.

Mark: You’re kidding.

Briony: No I’m not. That’s what happened and I know if it had been worse, trauma cover would have given us the security we needed. So you could say the financial advice I got, and you got, was really solid.

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