When you are thinking about basic financial planning there are three things that you should be aware of. Firstly your cash reserve. Do you have enough money that if you lost your stream of income tomorrow or next week then you have enough to survive and pay your expenses for three, six, twelve months? This money should be in an easily accessible bank account. Don't invest it, don't put it in a term deposit for twelve months, make sure that it can be easily turned to cash.
The second thing you should be aware of is income protection. What happens to you and your family if tomorrow you have some kind of accident and you can't work? If you have some kind of income protection insurance and you have a cash reserve then you shouldn't have any problems. Your cash reserve looks after you for the waiting period in your income protection policy and then the income protection policy looks after both you and your family while you can't work.
The final basic financial planning step is to have some kind of pension. Money from your disposable income that you are putting away for when you want to slow down and stop work. A good rule of thumb is never invest more than 50% of your disposable income as you might run into a problem at some stage and if all of your disposable income is going into some sort of pension then you might run into more problems.
If you meet with a financial planner then at the very least he or she should go through these areas with you.
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