Part two: Everyone has some sort of business plan, but what about a personal financial plan?

If you run your own business you’ll know that it brings its own rewards, along with a sizeable helping of headaches. Running a business isn’t for the faint-hearted, there’s no getting away from the fact that it takes hard work, dedication and a whole lot of time and money. While the client sees a swan serenely gliding across the lake, the reality for any business owner is that your legs need to paddle furiously to keep the thing afloat and stay on course.

While you’re concentrating on building that business, it’s really important not to leave your life behind. Even the greatest entrepreneurs retire and some day you’ll go back to being you again. It’s important to keep a close eye on your personal finances, your ambitions and your own quality of life, so we’re looking at our 10 top tips for balancing you and your business.

Seeing the big picture

“Most people don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan” – John L. Beckley

As a business owner, it’s a fair bet you’re already more than familiar with the concept of planning. Right from the off, you need to plan your cash flow, you need to be aware of how future economic conditions will affect your business and you need to work out how you’ll make the most of your existing financial resources.

You need to be sure you won’t get on the wrong side of the tax office, that you’re up to speed with regulations in your industry and you need to know how you’ll go about expanding your operation in future. Seeing the big picture, building contingency and visualising the next few weeks, months and years – these things aren’t new to you.

But what about the other picture?

All that big picture appreciation is very useful, but there’s another picture you need to be looking at – your own. It’s like the apocryphal psychotherapist who can sort out everyone’s problems but his own, you can be so busy with your head in the finances and future of the business that you neglect to attend to your own.

You’ve worked hard to get where you are, so you now have the opportunity to set out your own future in a way that many people will never have. With the right investments, your financial future and your retirement could be exceptional, but you need to engage properly with your own finances and map out your plan for the years or decades ahead.

That means asking some searching questions of yourself, starting with what kind of life do you want when you retire and did you do everything you could to secure it? Where do you want to take things next – not the business, you – and once the dust finally settles, who do you really want to be?

Where Citywide can help

At Citywide, we’ve learned that really smart financial planning begins with asking the right questions and listening carefully to the answers. The very first thing we’ll ask is what you want out of life. Yes, we’ll give you tailored wealth planning, professional, dependable advice you can count on, and be there when you need us, for as long as you need us, but it all starts with figuring out who you are and what motivates you. Once we know that, we’ll help you to make sure both your business and your life are on a smooth financial footing, now and for the years ahead.

Want more tips?

If you’ve enjoyed reading this part of our guide to keeping your personal and business finances in shape, you can download our full guide, ‘10 actions successful business owners take to grow their personal wealth’ today.

Download our full guide here

If you’d rather read them one at a time, we’ll be posting all our tips for running a tight ship at home and at work in the coming weeks, or you can opt in to email updates.