The turn of the tax year is a great time to revisit your financial plan.
Often, new tax rules come into effect that will have direct consequences for your wealth and require tailored strategies to help mitigate their effects or leverage their benefits.
We covered these new rule changes in our previous article: The 2026/27 tax year has arrived. Here are the key changes affecting you.
Likewise, your personal circumstances might also be different from 12 months ago. Your income may have increased due to a promotion at work or the receipt of a lump sum from an inheritance, or maybe your family has grown in size, either from marriage or the birth of a child.
Whether you think much or little has changed since your last review, here are four questions you can ask yourself to check whether your financial plan is still on course.
1. Have my priorities changed since my last financial review?
Naturally, it is important to first understand whether your previous objectives still align with your plan.
Over time, priorities shift, and you might find that the goals you established when you first created your plan no longer apply.
For example, you may have initially aimed to retire at age 65. However, since then, you may have married and started a family, and you now want to retire sooner so that you can spend more time with your loved ones.
This might require increasing your contributions to build more retirement wealth faster, allowing you to retire on these new terms.
Understanding how your financial objectives have changed can help you to realign your financial plan to meet these new expectations. Otherwise, you might be building wealth for an outdated vision of the future.
2. Am I still on top of my cash flow?
The longer it’s been since your last review, the easier it is to lose track of your cash flow – the amount of money you receive, spend, and save.
This can be particularly tricky when your cash flow is composed of many variables. For example, income can include:
- Salary
- Bonuses
- Dividends
- Property / rental income
- Interest earnings
- Capital gains
When you lose track of your earnings and expenses, it can affect how efficiently you use your wealth.
For example, if your income increases from a promotion at work, this extra wealth could be put to use within your plan to help you reach your goals faster.
If not, you might instead spend this surplus cash on short-term wants rather than long-term needs, or it could be left idle in a low-interest cash savings account. You might consider investing this amount instead to receive more substantial returns.
3. Would I be okay if I were forced to stop working tomorrow?
It’s important that you protect your wealth from worst-case scenarios like redundancy or illness.
However, the rate at which your wealth grows can outpace the various safety nets you have in place.
For instance, an emergency fund has a key role in your financial plan and usually consists of enough cash to cover three to six months of essential expenses.
However, if the value of your assets increases over time, then your emergency fund might become inadequate to cover higher costs. Likewise, inflation can also reduce the spending power of your fund.
It’s important that the personal protection you have in place hasn’t expired and also accounts for any assets you may have gained in the meantime, like property or more invested wealth. Make sure you check and update any cover you have in place, such as:
- Life insurance
- Income protection
- Critical illness cover.
Updating these policies means that you can receive the right sum to cover your immediate costs rather than a smaller, outdated payout arrangement.
4. Is my current financial plan helping me to live a happy and satisfied life?
It’s also important that you don’t lean too far the other way with financial planning and oversave to the detriment of your current standard of living.
As we discussed in our previous article, “chrematophobia” and how overcoming your fear of spending can boost your psychological wellbeing, an aversion to spending money can be detrimental to your mental health.
Take a step back and determine whether you’re investing too much in your future happiness to the detriment of your emotional wellbeing now.
If you find that your financial plan is too vested in your future rather than your present objectives, then it’s important that you recalibrate it to free up more spending power for today.
Strike a balance so that you can live happily both now and in the future.
If you’re struggling with knowing where to draw the line, you can reach out for professional help.
Set up a new tax year financial review today
A self-audit of your finances can be helpful to know where your wealth stands in the 2026/27 tax year.
If you want a more comprehensive review of your plan, then set up a meeting with your Engage Wealth Management financial planner today.
Email us at [email protected], or call 01273 076 587.
Please note
This article is for general information only and does not constitute advice. The information is aimed at individuals only.
All information is correct at the time of writing and is subject to change in the future.
The Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate cashflow planning.
Note that life insurance and financial protection plans typically have no cash in value at any time and cover will cease at the end of the term. If premiums stop, then cover will lapse.
Cover is subject to terms and conditions and may have exclusions. Definitions of illnesses vary from product provider and will be explained within the policy documentation.
