This week Spring has been in the air. Each morning I open the kitchen window and smell fresh air and the bouquet from the huge bunch of daffodils on the window sill. The smell of daffodils is Spring! I feel a sense of hope, renewal, of having come through.. there are lighter, softer days stretching ahead. Joy is bubbling in my heart...   Then I read the key points of George Osborne's Budget and my mood crashed. I shouldn't let it bother me, it's only a Budget, moving money around, taxing this and giving away that. It doesn't really matter to us real people... But it does, it really does. It affects every aspect of our lives, how we spend our money, who gets help and who pays for it. It is an expression of our value... read more

Welcome to Episode 1 of my Baby Boomer series. Not able to watch the video today? Why not read the transcript below instead:   We are going to be starting right at the end by looking at ‘Death’.  Essentially, this is a subject that I talk a great deal about with clients because it is a key to the way in which we plan our finances.   Benjamin Franklin said “The only thing that’s certain in life is death and taxes” and of course, to an extent, he is right!    Death is an emotional subject - I have my own experiences around this and all I can offer you is just some very simple basic ideas on what you should be thinking about around death.   Remember, by looking at th... read more

Eighteen years ago today, on April 9th , my father died. My brother Simon, my mother and myself stood at his bedside in Intensive Care as his breathing faded. I remember the moment clearly.   I have talked about my father's death before and how it has helped me to understand why my work as a financial planner matters so much. Earlier today walking down a street on paving slabs made shiny by April showers, I remember he used to make concrete slabs at a yard in Walsall. This was a man in his late fifties with a heart condition who spent his working days lifting concrete slabs on and off a truck. On and off. Over and over.   I have a black and white photograph of him on my office wall standing in his yard. Looking straight... read more

Everyone knows that money can't buy you happiness... right? Obvious! The evidence is overwhelming – lottery winners who end up in a dreadful mess despite their millions, successful businessmen and women with divorces and strained relationships despite their wealth and success... the list goes on.   In my experience the opposite is also true. Lack of money is equally debilitating – too much month at the end of the money, rising credit card debt, a mortgage that never seems to diminish. This leads to a corrosive sense of hopelessness which looks and feels very much like despair. Most of us have had an experience of this at some time in our lives – and none of us want to go back there.   Where is the bala... read more

The British have a unique and deeply neurotic relationship with property, houses especially, places we call home. We are a nation of homeowners. When house prices are rising we feel good. We feel successful. Even if our incomes do not quite meet our expectations, we comfort ourselves with the thought that we've always got 'the house' to fall back on.   Enabled by the massive expansion of funding from the banks and building societies in the eighties and nineties, millions of us have played snakes and ladders with the property market. For many of us it has been a saviour – rising prices have allowed us to move up the ladder and create wealth for ourselves and our children.   Consider these facts:  ... read more

Being a child of the fifties I pretty much missed the 'Summer of Love'. I was twelve at the time (1967) and 'free love' was a vague (although appealing) concept to me. Reading that question right now I am embarrassed, I'd prefer not to get into that question. Let me re-phrase that: I'm not going to get into that discussion.   Turns out I am in the minority. Research conducted by University College London with 15,000 men and women found them SEVEN more times likely to discuss whether or not they'd had an affair (I'm cringing) than discuss their income. Three per cent refused to answer intimate questions (that would be me) whereas twenty per cent refused to reveal their salary.   We really don&... read more

Do you want more money? Daft question. We immediately say yes, without thinking. Of course.   If we are asked what we want to do with this money we'll probably say: go on holiday, buy a newer/ bigger car, build a conservatory, get some clothes. Tick the one that applies to you or add your own.   Our perspective then is to look out into the world and want more. More money to get more stuff, to feel safer because the more we have the better off we are. Easy.   And yet we have so much.   It's a fair assumption if you're reading this that you have probably got some money. You will probably have more than enough to eat as well as access to unlimited supplies of clean water. You will live in a house w... read more

I ask the question because the NHS has launched a controversial calculator which predicts when you will have a heart attack or stroke – and compares a person’s heart age with their biological age. The issue is significant because coronary heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in the UK and in 2013, more than 18,000 people died prematurely this way. Most deaths from coronary heart disease are caused by heart attacks with an average of 90,000 attacks in England per year.  The rationale behind the calculator is simple. By showing people their heart age and detailing their risk factors – smoking , weight, family history, diet – the hope is that they will make changes and give themselves a chance... read more

As part of my Lenten journey this year I spent five days living in a Benedictine Monastery at Worth Abbey.  I have always been drawn to the simplicity of a monastic way of life and this was an opportunity to experience it. The rhythm of the day is determined by ‘offices’ or services beginning with Vigil at 6.20am, progressing through the day with Lauds (Morning Prayer) Midday Prayers, Vespers (Evening Prayer)  and finally Compline (Night Prayer) at 9.00pm. Breakfast, lunch and supper are eaten in silence. It occurred to me that the rhythm of the monastic day is a perfect metaphor for our lives. At the dawn of our lives, we emerge reluctantly from the darkness of the womb into the world. And so it is for the mo... read more

ME:    I’m a financial planner. I help people make sense of money. PC:     Really...You’re a better man than me (smile). I’ve always found it to be confusing and boring. And, to be honest, I’m not sure you can trust anyone these days. So what do you actually do? ME:    It’s kind of you to ask. Do you really want to know? PC:     Yes I do. ME:    Okay. I help people to articulate their goals and objectives, their aspirations if you like, and together we work out a way of making that happen for them. We start with the end in mind and work out what we need to do to get there. It can be very exciting. PC:   ... read more

My first day as a 'financial adviser' was June 28th 1982, over thirty-three years ago. The eighties were the 'glory days' for financial services – on the back of her Falklands victory Margaret Thatcher was leading a Tory government committed to entrepreneurial endeavour. Making money was good – and there was plenty of that in the City of the eighties with a Stock Market boom (at least until the fateful crash of October 1987), deregulation of the Banks and everyone a shareholder with the privatisation of BT, British Gas and others. Margaret Thatcher sold the family silver and saved the nation or so we were told.  Gordon Gekko the protagonist of the film 'Wall Street' played by Michael Douglas as... read more

Toby sits in the first floor window sill of our bedroom staring intently at the birds, mostly squawking gulls, across the street. Occasionally he will whimper and his tail will bang up and down in, what I imagine, is a mixture of frustration and anticipation. He’s wanting...  and wishing.  The gulls fly past the window. Nothing in Toby’s head connects with the impossibility of his wanting and certainly not the ludicrous nature of this endeavour. He just carries on wanting like the cat that he is, driven by some ancient instinctive part of his brain over which he has no control. Sound familiar? Idle wanting. We all do it. One of my clients said he wants an Aston Martin. No real reason. He probably likes the sh... read more

That's what we're called... those of us in our late fifties and early sixties... sandwiched between our ageing parents who need our care and grown-up children who need our financial and practical support as they launch their careers and their own families.   Sometimes life can feel like an endless daily round of demands and obligations leaving us with no time to be ourselves. As soon as we've picked up a grandchild from school and delivered them safely home it's time to pop in on an ageing relative and make tea and...   In her new novel 'Not Quite Nice' actress Celia Imry (star of Calendar Girls) writes about 'put upon' grandparents who are exhausting themselves to help their fam... read more

Standing in the queue at the Orchard Cafe I found myself staring longingly at the beautiful chocolate cake on the counter. Lost in reverie I turned to the lady standing next to me and said, “This is definitely a good day for chocolate cake.” “Oh yes,” she replied, “I haven't had any chocolate for a whole month...” I looked shocked. “I was doing a sponsored 'no chocolate month' for the British Heart Foundation. I've raised seventy pounds” I looked at this lovely lady in amazement. It happened to be the anniversary of my father's death. He died of a massive heart attack. As my emotion welled up at the extraordinary synchronicity o... read more

You know all those daft things we do with money, all those seemingly innocent peccadillos that if left unchecked spell big trouble sometime down the line. All that money we spend satisfying our little wants (often describing them to ourselves as 'needs'): clothes, phones, coffees, pampering (I deserve it!), not to mention our spectacular lack of interest in saving, planning and budgeting. Well it's okay folks because it's not our fault. We were born that way! Dr Stephen Siegel of the University of Washington writes in the Journal of Political Economy: “Each individual is borne with a genetic predisposition to a specific savings behaviour, an effect that is found not to disappear later in life.”  ... read more

Walking down a cobbled street with expensive looking shops on either side I can see a young man sitting on the pavement. There are a few coins in the bowl in front of him. I lean down and drop two coins into the bowl. He looks up. His face is pale, his eyes are dull and there is no expression in his voice as he says, “Thank you.”   I walk away. A middle class man living in a 'prosperous' university city. My two coins have... what? Salved my conscience, helped him momentarily? Both perhaps...and they have made me feel okay for a moment because I was able to put those coins in his bowl without worrying. I could afford it. Today.   Tomorrow.. who knows?   I sit talking to my friend Peter Roper (www.t... read more

Sara Cutting was 47 when she was diagnosed with cancer. To raise £10,000 for Macmillan cancer support she has published a photograph of herself on Twitter every day since her diagnosis in October 2014 wearing something outrageous on her bald head. Head gear has included a vintage radio, a teapot, purple orchids donated by celebrity hatter Philip Treacy and a fascinator donated by her Mum. Cutting regularly exhorts her thousands of followers to, “now go check your tits.” (You can follow Sara - @fizzysnood) There will be 2.5 million people living with cancer in UK in 2015 according to Macmillan Cancer Support. The majority of these people will survive five years. Most of these people will face significant financial har... read more

There it is! A simple financial plan that will never let you down. All each of us has to do is work out on a regular basis how to allocate our money between these three priorities. By doing this we learn to make choices, those sometimes uncomfortable trade-offs between ‘this’ and ‘that’, between ‘now’ and ‘tomorrow’, between the ‘right’ thing and the ‘fun’ thing. Gradually we learn to view our financial lives as a continuum not, as so many of us do, from pay day to pay day. When do we start? Right at the beginning of course when we are children. Here is a life-changing observation: You can’t always get what you want. For the Stones fans out there, t... read more

1.2bn smart phones were sold in 2014, a 28% increase on 2013. The majority were sold by Apple who pipped Samsung to the post by a small margin. I would like to bet my aging Apple smart phone that very few of those 1.2 billion people had this kind of conversation with themselves while purchasing their phone: “How much is that lovely shiny smart phone?" “About two month’s work after taxes, national insurance and all other essential costs like food and shelter. Is it worth it to you?” “Well, that’s a lot of work, just for a phone... are there any cheaper ones?” “Yes.” That last question is wonderful: Are there any phones that cost me less of my life?” My twen... read more