The route to your financial goals

There are people who are good at finding places and there are those who aren't. It's very noticeable. You tell someone to reach a certain place and give detailed instructions. Most people can follow the directions and reach the destination. Sometimes, the exact route that you have described may not be feasible. Some roads are blocked or something like that. When that happens, a sharp difference emerges. Some people can easily find an alternate route; others get lost. Why does this happen?

Based on my observations, I think the difference lies in the way different people process the original directions. Some memorise them and follow them by rote; others figure out the general direction of the destination. The second group is able to figure out an alternative route, while the first group fails if the original route is not available.

I'm sure you can see why I'm talking about route-finding in what should be an article on investing and how this has a strong parallel to what different people need as guidance from an investment-advice service or website. There are people who need precise instructions and there are those who just need some general idea of what to do.

However, it's not quite that simple. To illustrate what I mean, let me add some more factors that are important.
1. People can graduate from one category to the other. Some people may not be familiar with the city and the terrain. They might need precise instructions in the beginning but will eventually become confident enough to find their own route.
2. During the intermediate stage, they will figure out their own route but will call back and check if it's correct.

However, this is the most important thing: People will need to decide where they want to go. They will realise that there are different routes to the same destination, depending on your starting point and how you want to travel.

Obviously, I'm actually talking about our Value Research Premium service. Premium does not start with the route, nor does it straight away give you the exact directions. There are no readymade sets of investments that you can just click and invest without understanding. Instead, it starts with your life, your starting point and what kind of journey you need. How old are you? What are your needs? How much do you save? What are you going to do with your savings? What are your financial goals in life? And so on.

Then, based on all that, our algorithms figure out what you need. Depending on the answers to the above questions, the same funds could be great for you, or absolutely useless. We have a shortlist of hand-picked funds that we will recommend, but different subsets are meant for different people. Not just that, the set can change over time. It can change for one person, but not for the other. It can change in response to your circumstances, something about the fund, or something about the general business and economic circumstances. The Premium service is a guidance, but it's flexible and tailored.

That sounds like a complex story but actually simplifies investors' tasks. It does make Value Research Premium something whose different parts have to be evaluated. What our team has done is to package a range of features and services that together do the job - there is no single headline-grabber here. It's only when we look at the whole package and see how they fit together does the real value appear.

Portfolio Planner: These are custom portfolios that are suggested to you as part of your Premium membership. The algorithm that we have evolved takes into account your goals, your income, your saving capacity and a number of other factors.

Analyst's Choice: Often, investors want to choose their own funds for some particular investment purpose. There are over 1,400 available to you and even with the help of our rating system, it's a lot of work to zoom in to the right set. However, that won't be a problem for you because as a Premium member, you will have access to Analyst's Choice. Instead of the 37 official types of funds, we have created eight investor-oriented categories which match precisely with actual financial goals that you have. In each of these, my team of analysts and I have carefully selected a handful of funds that will serve you with the best outcomes.

Portfolio Analysis: Only a few members are starting their investing from scratch. For most of you, a big question is whether your existing investments fit into your goals? This is often a hard question to answer because there are a lot of implications of switching old investments, not the least of which is taxation. In the Premium system, you can get an evaluation and a suggested fix-list based on our expert teams' inputs.

That's not all - there are a lot more that will help you keep track of your investments, returns, diversification, taxation and practically everything else that will help you achieve your financial goals. Take a look at Value Research Premium for the full details.