For families with established wealth, financial planning is no longer just about accumulation. It is about stewardship.
It is about preserving capital, enabling choice, managing complexity and ensuring continuity across generations.
At Foundation Family Wealth, we believe financial planning is not about predicting markets or chasing performance. It is about helping families make sound decisions, structure their wealth intentionally, and remain focused on what truly matters across decades, not quarters.
While many people can manage their own finances, there are times when professional, objective planning can add meaningful value. Here are seven signs it may be time to consider working with a financial planner in 2026 or to review your planning relationship so that you get the best value from it.
1. Your wealth lacks a unifying framework
Affluent families accumulate assets over time in businesses, property, investments, trusts and offshore structures. This often happens without a single, integrated framework guiding decisions.
Without clarity around purpose, wealth can become reactive and inefficient.
Our planning process begins with intent:
- What is this wealth meant to achieve?
- Over how many generations?
- What trade-offs are acceptable, and which are not?
A clearly articulated, written plan provides a decision-making compass, ensuring consistency across time, market cycles and generational change.
2. Your investments are substantial, but not strategically aligned
High-net-worth portfolios often grow organically, shaped by opportunity rather than design. The result can be unnecessary complexity, duplicated risks or misalignment with long-term objectives.
Our investment philosophy is goal-based, evidence-led and globally diversified. Portfolios are constructed to:
- Support specific family objectives and time horizons
- Balance growth, capital preservation and liquidity needs
- Reduce reliance on any single asset class, manager or jurisdiction
The aim isn’t just to chase after maximum returns on investments; it’s about boosting the likelihood of securing lasting success for your family’s future and aligning the portfolio with your goals.
3. Retirement and succession planning are treated as separate conversations
For affluent families, retirement planning cannot be separated from succession planning. Decisions around income, capital access and asset structuring often affect multiple generations.
In the South African context, this includes:
- Structuring retirement assets alongside discretionary wealth
- Managing longevity, healthcare and inflation risk
- Ensuring liquidity without compromising long-term growth
- Aligning beneficiary designations with estate intentions
A financial planner helps integrate these elements into a cohesive strategy, thereby reducing the risk of unintended consequences.
Key questions many pre-retirees face include:
- How much income can I sustainably draw without running out of money?
- Should I preserve, access or restructure retirement benefits when changing jobs?
- How do living annuities, guaranteed annuities and discretionary investments work together?
- How will inflation, longevity and healthcare costs affect my plan?
Rather than focusing on arbitrary retirement “numbers,” we help clients understand what their capital can realistically support, and how to structure income in a way that balances flexibility, security and longevity
4. You are facing generational or structural transitions
Certain decisions warrant careful analysis and independent advice, because moments of transition carry both opportunity and risk:
- Sale or succession of a family business
- Children becoming financially independent
- Wealth moving into trusts or offshore structures
- Emigration or cross-border considerations
At these moments, the value of advice lies not in certainty, but in perspective. This means understanding trade-offs, testing assumptions and avoiding decisions driven by urgency or emotion.
Many of these decisions are irreversible. Independent, experienced advice provides perspective, discipline and clarity, and particularly when emotions or family dynamics are involved.
5. Emotional or behavioural risks are underestimated
Even sophisticated investors are not immune to behavioural pitfalls, particularly during periods of volatility, uncertainty or major change.
Our focus is as much on decision-making behaviour as on asset allocation. A disciplined advisory relationship helps families:
- Avoid reactive decisions during market stress
- Maintain long-term positioning through cycles
- Separate financial logic from emotional impulse
This behavioural discipline is often one of the most valuable, but least visible, benefits of advice.
6. You value simplicity, but your financial life feels complex
As wealth grows, so does complexity across tax, legal structures, investments and family involvement. Without coordination, this complexity can quietly erode value and create unnecessary risk.
Our role is to act as a central point of financial coordination, ensuring:
- Planning, investment strategy and estate considerations are aligned
- Coordinating with tax and estate professionals where appropriate
- External professionals are engaged where required
All parts of your financial life must work together. True sophistication lies in simplicity and not in the number of structures or products involved.
7. You want continuity beyond any one individual
For multigenerational families, continuity is critical. Without a long-term advisory relationship, knowledge is lost, intentions become unclear, and families are left making difficult decisions in moments of stress.
A trusted financial planner provides:
- Alignment between estate planning and long-term intentions
- Liquidity and risk planning to protect dependants
- A neutral, professional reference point for family decision-making across generations
This continuity helps protect not only financial capital but also family cohesion.
Choosing the right financial planner for family wealth
Not all advice is created equal.
For families with meaningful wealth, the right financial planner is not a product specialist, but a long-term steward and strategic partner.
At Foundation Family Wealth, our advice is:
- Independent and fiduciary, always client-aligned
- Advice-led, not commission-driven
- Long-term in orientation, focused on outcomes over decades
- Holistic, combining all aspects of financial planning into a single comprehensive long-term strategy.
- Family-centric, recognising that wealth serves people, not the other way around
This approach was recognised in 2025, when Foundation Family Wealth was named Citywire’s Top Adviser in South Africa. We take great pride in this independent acknowledgement of the consistent, high-quality advice that we deliver in clients’ best interests.
Trust, however, is built over time, and only through alignment, discipline and consistency.
For high-net-worth families, financial advice is about clarity, governance and thoughtful decision-making across generations.
When advice is deliberate, evidence-based and aligned with family values, it becomes a powerful foundation for enduring wealth and lasting peace of mind.
Our mantra, “Wealth for life,” reflects our core belief that financial strategies should align with your goals and values, helping you live with purpose, not just plan with numbers.
If you are ready to take the next step, we invite you to start a conversation about what matters most and how to plan for it with clarity and confidence.
<Foundation Family Wealth is an Authorised Financial Services provider>