2017, Business Insider produced this great article about financial advice for 20 year olds. There are 2 simple elements to a great foundation for young people – save and don’t spend. Continue reading “What’s the best financial advice for a young person?”
The chances are, all you can remember is that last year, your family Christmas cost a lot. You probably put a figure on it, guessing roughly – but hoping that it was nowhere near that amount. Here’s a really easy way to stay in control of your spending… Continue reading “The best way of budgeting for Christmas”
Reflecting back on your recent travels, journeys and holidays, how was it for you? Was it the tranquil, pleasurable experience you had hoped for, or did you experience challenges along the way? Did you embrace the moment, or just endure aspects of it?
Were you a tourist or a traveller?
Travellers tend to enjoy everything, embrace the moment, experience, wonder, not over prepare or over complicate, and focus on enjoying the here and now.
Tourists however, tend to want to tick things off their lists, have to be over prepared, everything planned to perfection, collecting photos for Facebragging and deeply concerned with telling everyone else what a great time they are having – sometimes, to the detriment of their own real enjoyment.
Similarly, if you have planned a wonderful holiday, are you tempted to lose some of the joy by travelling there on the cheap – budget accommodation, the cheapest transit, overnight journeys or inconvenient flight times?
Take a £3,000 holiday, yet you scrimp and save on getting there – maybe a slightly cheaper option to return home overnight when your travel plans suddenly change (would an over-night hotel stay left you feeling fully refreshed for your return). By saving perhaps under £100 (3% on the overall cost) you put yourself to hours of discomfort and lack a sleep – yet the point of the holiday was to relax, enjoy experiences and feel good about yourself. The whole point of the experience has been compromised.
Are you just wading through this life, collecting badges, medals, things, almost like living in Pokemon? Or, do you embrace what comes your way, taking in the moment to enjoy everything around you, feeling grounded, experiencing something different?
Is it too much to stop, embrace, reflect and make the most of what is happening around you, taking your time, adapting plans, and enjoying the moment?
Memories are made of new experiences, and being a traveller in life. It is only by exploring the why – why you want to go somewhere, that you then start to look for the real meanings and qualities of your journey, and that, is what Financial Life Planning is all about – finding the point and the purpose – not just being a tourist in life.
Life is far more than just attaining or doing – it’s about enjoying the whole experience along the way.
It seems, there is at least some logic as to why a 2 year old wants to play with the box a toy comes in more than the toy itself – exploration! Continue reading “Experiences or gifts – which is the most appreciated?”
There is far more to life than just having the traditional ‘bucket list’ – here is why…
Take running a marathon, once that is done, do you stop running? Once you have had the holiday of a lifetime, do you stop holidaying, once you have built or developed the ideal house, do you become complacent about it? If you were to become a senior manager of where you worked, would the name badge be your goal? Look beyond the tangible things in life.
Take running a marathon again, is it bragging rights you are after and to get a medal? To have a focus to keep you training to improve your overall fitness, or to push yourself to the max? Similarly, with travel, is visiting places just an opportunity to say ‘cross that one off your list Margaret’ or are the deeper experiences, memories, understanding and experiences to have? What would that ideal house give you, more than a big house to look at, but perhaps a haven a home, the space for your family to just be. Finally, achievement at work – is the name badge and title really all that matters, or is it that you inspire and lead continually, rather than just puff your chest out feeling important all of a sudden. Once you know the WHAT you want to do, ask yourself WHY you want to do it, and what if you didn’t do it.
Your plan, your goals, your vision. That’s all great, focus is a wonderful thing, but not to the detriment of all of those around you. Training for a marathon requires a lot of compromise and balance with your family. The ideal holiday, has to be agreeable with everyone else, and then the key is not to lose sight that it is also their trip and experience as well. Just because it was on your list, does not mean that your view on what should happen is the only one which counts. The house – it’s again key to allow everyone to enjoy it, to find their own spaces, enjoyment, way of living. Overall it is a home, and one for people to feel safe and loved in, not just a pile of building materials. Pursuit of a career without recognition of everyone else leads to huge unhappiness in many families. Leaving home at 7am, returning at 6pm – really, what quality of life is that, and sometimes, it is easy to kid ourselves that we are doing it for everyone else. If you died today, guess what, your boss would replace you tomorrow! Always remember who will be by your bedside when you die.
It is great to have an idea, a vision of what it may be like, but remember, that is in your head – it is your reality, but not anyone else’s. A sub 4 hour marathon may need to become a 5 hour one, the holiday may be slightly, or even very different from what you had imagined, the house may not be a new one, but a renovations, a different location, anything could change – what if it is a red door instead of the blue one you had dreamed of? It’s just the portal to your haven – not the end of the world! What if you don’t become a director or senior manager of where you used to work, but rather found something very different elsewhere? Not the pin-striped suited meeting in a glass clad office, full of ego and materialism, but a real influencer, someone who made a difference – to others not just the owners bank balances? Go with the flow, like a river, the twists and turns often bring the most unexpected joy and happiness.
Life is an ongoing development, change, adaption, and experience. Yes, of course it ends one day, but life as it is, is ongoing journey, something constantly changing. Take the marathon, maybe it is a shift to a healthier lifestyle which is the key, yes, the desire of a medal or running for 5 hours is the catalyst, but it is the shift which is the deeper aim. The travel may be to enjoy experiences, to enhance our understanding of the world, to create memories and to have happy times. Picking destinations is the catalyst. The house may be to create a safe haven a family hub, a place where you can all be together, and the career may well be to make a difference to others, which once we understand is not necessarily done with name badges, starts to release that attachment and ego. Life is not a list of achievements, it is a sense of feelings, of messages.
Life is who you are being along the way. So when you compile your bucket list, 101 places etc, start to look examine the reasons and feelings – that’s and is why working with a professional financial life planner is very different from just saying ‘cross that off your list Margaret’.
Just when you thought you had it all sorted, one of the few people to still be in a final salary pension scheme, a good salary, and making additional pension contributions, suddenly, it all goes wrong.
Redundancy sends you on a very different journey indeed.
However, being the diligent person, paying additional amounts into your pension, perhaps maximising your annual allowance of £40,000, the future looks ok, especially with the large redundancy lump sum you are going to be paid in the present tax year.
Then the tax regime comes tripping merrily in your direction : Continue reading “How could redundancy affect your pension?”
Many people find that their view and experience of their retirement may be very different from what they expect. Reality can be a pretty harsh awakener (especially if it’s your own retirement).
In the financial part of the equation, you can of course model, plan and adjust assumptions and figures as you head towards the big day and the rest of your life. Of course it takes a high degree of knowledge and skill to get the figures absolutely correct, and with the aid of technology, it is easier to get pretty close, even building in re-runs of the 2008 credit crunch (remember that?).
Even if you have the financial plan in place, it may be that the other side of retirement – LIFE – can all of a sudden, not unfold quite as you had imagined.
Will your retirement be all holidays and lunches at garden centres? Will it be just looking forward to watching your favourite TV show with an eccles cake and a cup of tea at 3.30pm ? Or, could it be full of purpose, full of fun, a brand new start?
Frequently people who had such high expectations for their retirement, find that a year or two in, they have managed to find themselves in a rut of mundaneness (they may even be fulfilling their spouses retirement and not even thinking about their own). They may even look back and wish that they had stayed working and be paid to be bored, rather than sacrifice an income and lack little social interaction.
People just like you are quickly realising that they need to plan their retirement just as they plan their future. That planning is not just about scheduling in a month-long break to Malta each October, but figuring out how each day and week may look for you. What will you do to happily fill the time, and regain your purpose and passions which may well have been put on hold for 50 years (whilst ‘grown up life’ for in the way).
Finding your happy retirement is not just going to be attached to a number – a certain amount of income, especially if all those years lack fun, freedom and a real purpose. You will probably find that the things which bring you the most joy, may not even cost much at all, you just need to find them and not be trapped in a retirement bucket.
Together we can bring some Serenity to your life
‘Parenting & finance’, ‘pocket money’, ‘treats’, ‘can I have’, all things which crop up frequently once you have children.
You may think that children only hear and see what we want them to, however, how many times have you listened or watched them playing, and thought ‘oh my – that sounds just like me’ or even more shuddering sometimes ‘wow, they sound just like my parents’.
Most of us, and our children may have learned these lessons about money from our role models (Mum and Dad), and so the cycle goes on. Continue reading “What should I teach my children about money ?”
Even those of us in the profession get phone calls offering a free pension review (I have also been told that my investments have underperformed and I am entitled to compensation, my life cover was not advised properly, and my mortgage was not set up on the right rate) recently, I had this call which went like …
“Hello, I am from the pension review service, and we are phoning to give you a free review of your pension as it is probably underperforming”. Continue reading “Pension reviews – the new timeshare scandal”
Pure goals and objective based planning is far better than the greedy pursuit of ‘more’ which has been the bedrock of financial advice for many a year. Look at it, once we have more, we want some more of that more – it is a never satisfying cycle. Continue reading “Why just goals or objective based planning is selling the client short”
Escaping The Bucket 