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Meet Charmaine, 49

“My business and personal finances had become so entangled that I was risking my income and my future. Veritas introduced me to scenario planning, gently asking those tough ‘what-if’ questions that helped me to move towards making myself more financially secure.”

The Scenario

I am a Business Graduate and run a successful homeware business that I started from scratch. I earn a good salary from the business. I have never been a fan of ‘brokers’ – I always felt they were out to make money from your money. I have a big home loan which funds much of the working capital in my business. Like most entrepreneurs I would imagine, I believed that my business was worth a lot more than what someone was willing to pay for it!

The Challenge

  • I needed to better understand the role of a financial planner so that I could trust them to help me do the right thing for me.
  • Financing your business and your life while waiting for ‘your ship to come in’ is risky and can lead to high levels of personal debt.
  • It’s dangerous to have a plan that relies on one big event (in my case, the sale of my business) for everything else to fall into place.

The Veritas Solution

When I met with the Veritas planners, they really listened! They took the time to understand my unique situation, rather than feeding me a bunch of template solutions.

They challenged my thinking around my business and thanks to them, I now:

  • Value their role in helping me to understand my financial situation and the options available to me (I know that their focus is not the sale of financial products)
  • Understand concentrated risk and the power of diversification
  • Have separated my personal finances from the business’s finance
  • Am transferring assets away from the business as the profits are produced so that I can start saving for my retirement
  • Save in a tax efficient manner (and am no longer paying SARS as much)

Veritas helped me to realise that I need to plan around the worse-case scenario, not the best. They also showed me that I need to put my personal needs before the business – ultimately, it’s about my health and happiness!

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