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It is a bit of a corny line - but none-the-less true. After all, when you think of our day-to-day work, most of us try to be as organised and efficient as we possibly can - yet when we go home something strange happens, especially with our personal finances. Compare this to when you start a business - you wouldn't even think of beginning without being properly prepared - a business plan, financial projections, research, basic data, planning assumptions all backed up by strategies and targets. You would most probably prepare cash flow forecasts, a balance sheet and run it past an auditor to check it all stacks up. Yet when we shut our front door, any form of financial planning and organisation seems to go out of the window. Financial decisions seem to get relegated to the latest "best" idea and joining in yet another financial fad.

Whether it is because financial services are dull, possibly incomprehensible, or just that we have all got more interesting things to do at home, for some reason most of us do not seem to bother. In fact, what normally happens is that we tend to collect a series of financial products over the years. These seem either to have been "a good idea at the time", or flogged to us by that persuasive salesman who caught us off guard one day.

Usually evidence of this "financial magpie" approach can be located in the third drawer down on the left hand side of your desk at home. The contents would, in all likelihood, include some old endowment policies, a pension scheme, old ISAs and PEPs statements along with any National Savings Certificates and Premium Bonds. There is also, often, every chance that there will be old share certificates and allocation papers for old demutualisations and privatisations and some ageing unit trusts probably invested in a bombed out technology fund. Finally there's a slight scratching sound in the back of the drawer, which upon further investigation turns out to be an old, bent Krugerrand which you had bought for your grandson. The sum total of your family finances.

Of course, all our personal finance drawers will vary and some will, in fact, bring out quite an array, but they all have one thing in common - none of them have any form of financial planning applied to them.

As families we will all have different specific requirements but often similar needs. For example we probably all have to consider everything from education fees to pensions and health care. However, we tend to address each only separately.

The answer lies with the need for professional planning across all your family's assets and liabilities. All our families are different across all the generations, but when linked together the strength of the family is far greater than the individuals who are just targets to be picked off the by the next financial salesman.

So there is an important phrase for us all with our money 

"If you are planning to invest - DON'T!"
"Invest in planning".