The G.A.P. Method™

What is The G.A.P. Method™?

The G.A.P. Method™ is Wealth Gap Advisory’s three-stage advice process: Goals, then Architecture, then Pathway. Goals establishes what the money is for, Architecture designs the structures that hold it, and Pathway sequences the decisions over time. The order is the point — each stage constrains the next, and reversing them is the most common reason advice does not work.

The name describes both the process and the problem. There is usually a gap between what someone earns and what it is actually doing, and the method is the route across it. The five wealth gaps identify where the distance is; the method closes it.

Stage one — Goals

Goals establishes what the money is for before anything is recommended. That means the date work is meant to become optional, what the money needs to make possible, what is intended to be left behind, and which of the five wealth gaps currently applies. Nothing is recommended at this stage — recommending before this is settled is how people end up with products instead of plans.

This is the stage most often rushed, and the one that determines whether everything downstream is coherent. A structure cannot be judged good or bad in the abstract. It can only be judged against what it is meant to achieve.

What happens here: a conversation about how you want to live, rather than a risk-profile questionnaire. Collection of the actual position — entities, balances, debts, insurances, existing advice. And a diagnosis against the five gaps.

What to expect: that the questions are less financial than anticipated. Most of the first meeting is not about money.

Stage two — Architecture

Architecture designs the structures that will hold the wealth — which entity owns what, how income and gains move between them, how much liquidity is needed and where, and what happens if something goes wrong. It is deliberately done before any investment or product decision, because the structure determines the after-tax outcome of everything placed inside it.

This is the stage other processes skip. A great deal of financial advice consists of selecting investments inside a structure nobody has examined — which is a way of optimising the smallest variable in the equation.

Architecture asks a different set of questions. Are the existing entities doing anything? Would the same assets held differently produce a materially different result? What breaks if the income stops, or if the earner does? Is anything here designed for circumstances that no longer exist?

An honest note: a frequent output of this stage is that the existing structure is adequate and should be left alone. Restructuring costs money and can trigger tax, and it is not worth doing unless the benefit exceeds the cost of moving. Being told to change nothing is a legitimate result.

Stage three — Pathway

Pathway turns the design into a sequence — what happens first, what happens next, what is triggered by an event rather than a date, and what is reviewed when. Most plans fail here, because a document listing twelve good ideas in no particular order is not a plan.

Sequencing matters more than most people expect, for a simple reason: financial decisions constrain each other. Contribution room used this year is not available next year. A structure established now is expensive to unwind later. A gain realised before a rule change is treated differently from one realised after it. Order changes outcomes.

Pathway also assigns responsibility — which items are ours, which belong to your accountant or solicitor, and which are yours — because the most common way a plan quietly dies is that everyone assumed someone else was doing it.

How long does the process take?

Typically several weeks from the first conversation to a documented plan, depending on complexity and how quickly information can be gathered. Where multiple entities and several existing advisers are involved it takes longer, because coordination is genuinely slower than analysis. We do not compress it into a single meeting.

We publish a range rather than a promise deliberately. The largest variable is not our workload — it is how long it takes to assemble an accurate picture of the current position, which usually depends on third parties.

What do I actually receive?

A documented plan setting out the recommendations, the reasoning and the sequence, together with a Statement of Advice where one is required. Advisers are required to act in their clients’ best interests and to disclose how they are paid, and both obligations are reflected in what you receive.

What you receive is deliberately shorter than the industry norm. A hundred-page document nobody reads is not evidence of thoroughness. The plan should be readable in one sitting, and the sequence should fit on a single page.

What happens after the plan?

The plan is reviewed as circumstances and rules change — and both change more often than most plans assume. A plan built for the rules of three years ago is not so much wrong as out of date, and the review is where most of the long-term value of advice is actually delivered.

The next two years make this unusually concrete: superannuation and capital gains rules are both changing, with significant changes taking effect on 1 July 2027. Any plan written before those changes needs revisiting against them. It is the clearest available illustration of why advice is a relationship rather than a document.

How do I start?

Stage one begins with a Wealth Gap Conversation — a no-obligation discussion about how you want to live and what is currently in the way. There is no cost and no product discussion. Fees for any subsequent work are discussed and agreed with you before it starts.