Qatar Financial Advisor

Preparation is key... it would have been great to know some of these facts before arriving! I could add a few about money...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatlife/10053737/Moving-guide-10-things-to-know-before-relocating-to-Qatar.html

Moving guide: 10 things to know before relocating to Qatar - Telegraph With hundreds of expats flooding into Qatar every day, British journalist Victoria Scott, who has lived there for four years, gives the lowdown on what to expect.

* IFS: International Financial Services www.interfs.com/qa/

* 5th Floor, Qatar Financial Centre Tower, West Bay (opposite City Centre, and there's parking in the building)

* Contact me via a message above, email [email protected] or call on 7055 2022

Since 2002 I have experience helping expats make the most of their financial opportunities offshore, providing comprehensive wealth management solutions for investors in Asia and the Middle East.

As part one of the largest financial advisory groups in the region, I have built a reputation for professional and highly personalised advice in the course of constructing and managing clients' portfolios.

My approach is straightforward, centred on integrity, clear communication and a focus on my clients' long-term financial security, underpinned by my access to the broadest possible range of financial products and services.

With online access to your investments, full transparency in fees and any commissions payable, and a quality range of brand-name investments and insurance tailored to your needs, my clients take comfort that they are receiving the best possible service and are properly advised by a knowledgeable, QFCRA-licensed advisor.

*THE INCREDIBLY SIMPLE MATHS TO EARLY RETIREMENT*

(Or how to retire in 10.5 years by saving 40% of your income)


In the course of doing financial health-checks for my clients, they ask me, “How long do you think it will take me to retire?”

When it boils right down to it, your time to reach retirement depends on only one factor:

Your savings rate, as a percentage of your take-home pay

If you want to break it down a bit further, your savings rate is determined pretty much entirely by these two things:

* How much you take home each year

* How much you can live on

While the numbers themselves are quite intuitive and easy to figure out, the relationship between these two numbers is a bit surprising.

If are spending 100% (or more) of your income, you will never be prepared to retire, unless someone else is doing the saving for you (wealthy parents, social security, your company pension fund, etc.). So your work career will be infinite.

If you are spending 0% of your income (you live for free somehow), and can maintain this after retirement, you can retire right now. So your working career can be zero.

In between, there are some very interesting considerations. As soon as you start saving and investing your money, it starts earning money all by itself. Then the earnings on those earnings start earning their own money. It can quickly become a runaway exponential snowball of income.

As soon as this income is enough to pay for your living expenses, while leaving enough of the gains invested each year to keep up with inflation, you are ready to retire.

Drawing this on a graph, it's not a straight line, it's a nice curved exponential graph, like this one above from the Early Retirement Extreme book (http://amzn.to/TlhT70)

If you save a reasonable percentage of your take-home pay, like 50%, and live on the remaining 50%, you’ll be financially independent in a reasonable number of years – about 17 according to this chart.

So let’s take the graph above and make it even simpler. I’ll make some conservative assumptions for you, and you can just focus on saving the biggest percentage of your take-home pay that you can. The table below will tell you a nice ballpark figure of how many years it will take you to become financially independent.

Assumptions:

- During your working/saving years, you’ll be investing and earning 5% investment returns above inflation

- You’ll live off of the “4% safe withdrawal rate” after retirement, with some flexibility in your spending during recessions.

- You want your stash to last forever, so you’ll only be touching the gains, since this income may be sustaining you until age 100 or more! Just think of these assumptions as a nice generous safety margin.

Here’s how many years you will have to work for a range of possible savings rates, starting from a net worth of zero:

Savings Rate . . . . . . . . . Years Til Retirement
5% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
10% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
15% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
20% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
25% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
30% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
35% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
40% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
45% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
50% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
55% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.5
60% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.5
70% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5
75% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
80% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5
85% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
90% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . under 3

So if you’re only saving 10% of your income, could you cut a few corners here and there, a few less lattes per week and boost your savings by 15% . . . ? If so, you could retire EIGHT years earlier. Are those frivolous little spends worth working an extra eight years for?

The most important thing to note is that cutting your spending rate is much more powerful than increasing your income.

The reason is that every permanent drop in your spending has a double effect:

* it increases the amount of money you have left over to save each month
* and it permanently decreases the amount you’ll need every month for the rest of your life

So your lifetime passive income goes up due to having a larger investment nest egg, AND it more easily meets your needs, because you’ve developed more skill at living efficiently and thus you need less.

If want to retire 10.5 years, the formula is right there in front of you – simply live on 40% of your take-home pay.

** The Cost of Delay **

Do you spend time worrying about how you can become a millionaire, and end up simply falling farther behind in reaching your financial goals? It’s an irony that is very real and leads to a lot of people either doing nothing . . . or trying to do too much (maybe getting sucked into get-rich-quick schemes, day trading away their savings or starting businesses they aren’t ready for).

Sometimes you can try too hard to get ahead when in fact, just some time and discipline will be enough to lead you to financial freedom. There are ways to get rich without too much hassle, and I like to advocate this road to wealth.

The key is to start investing as early as you can.

Take a look at this chart.

It shows the impact of starting to save early, and the real cost of delaying by even one year.

I’ve assumed a pretty conservative rate of return of 7% p.a..

I love that for every $1,000 you invest from age 30 returns $7,650 of income from age 60.

If you wait just 3 years to start investing, your retirement income is slashed by $1,620 per month!

Your money is bored in the bank. Start investing safely, wisely and with a good financial advisor on your side.

**The Top 6 Financial Blunders Young People Make**

[Disclosure: I've made all the mistakes below! But in the course of my job and talking to hundreds of clients over the years, I've learned strategies to not make them again...]

Today I was speaking to a friend of mine who really underestimated the total cost of buying his first property in the UK. While he allowed for the taxes, duties, and getting the place ready for a tenant, he (perhaps most importantly) just can't get it rented! So suddenly his investment return numbers just don't look as great as they did on paper last year.

It got me thinking, while this is not a thunderous blunder on its own, it's an example of a common mistake for young people:

- #6 - Underestimating the total cost of big-ticket items. Just like a car: so many peoples' calculations are based on assumptions and not on reality, especially here in Qatar where repairs, spare parts and bingles can be troublesome. Build in a bigger buffer with these purchases and then analyse if it makes sense for you.

- #5 - Not having a budget

If you don’t sit down to look at what’s left after your salary and fixed expenses, it’s hard to determine how much you can afford to spend on things like food, nights out, or an upgrade to your mobile phone plan. Not knowing how much you have can easily lead to spending more than you can afford. A budget can help you determine what you need to do to pay for your next vacation or make you realise you need to start packing lunch more than once a week.

- #4 - Living salary-deposit to salary-deposit

You're still living from paycheck to paycheck? Are you constantly hitting the ATM to check your debit card balance so you know how much you have to spend or are you juggling credit cards that are maxed out? What’s the solution? Set up an automatic savings plan of some sort, which scrapes a small amount of money out of that current account each week and puts it somewhere safe. The point is to build up that 'rainy day fund' AND slowly wean yourself from spending everything that you bring in.

- #3 - You don't talk about your shared goals with your partner

I see a lot of clients who have vague plans about having children and owning a home, but anything beyond that varies greatly. Sit down with your partner and talk about where you want to be in five years. In ten years. In twenty five years (aarggh!). Figure out what each of you wants individually, then look at the areas where they overlap. Compromise a little bit and come up with detailed plans for things that you both want and you’re both willing to work towards.

- #2 - "You only live once” applies to EVERYTHING

Ok look I'm your financial advisor ok so I gotta tell you the hard truth. If you're getting TOO caught up in consumerism and believing the least expensive option is foolish, you might have a problem with your finances later on in life. I used to do the same, gotta have all the toys, living cheap is for losers, etc etc. But I was a fool. What's the solution? If you’re constantly bombarded with the sense that you need to spend money to fit in with a social group, find another social group. Engage in activities that are personally appealing to you that don’t revolve around spending money and seek others who are interested in those things.

And the Number 1 Financial Blunder Young People Make:

- #1 - Believing that saving gets easier with time.

Although it is true that a young person can count on and increasing salary, some young people don't adequately prepare for the increased costs that will come along with it. Marriage, children, new cars, furnishing a house, providing support for a dependent parent: all of these are costs that will only increase over time. Young adults who don't start the savings habits early face a difficult road in convincing themselves to start saving just a year or two later. By that point, the sense of entitlement and the sense of the type of lifestyle that is normal have already been formed. The habits will prove hard to break.