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

Not able to watch the video today? Why not read the transcript below: The fifties are a little close for me as I am barely through them having reached sixty this year. I have a simple observation: we are the 'Sandwich Generation' . We are slap bang in the middle of our children in their twenties and thirties trying to establish themselves in life with careers and partners. They need our moral support, a listening ear and often our money too if we have any spare. And sometimes even if we don't! At the other end of life we have a responsibility for our parents many of whom are engaged in a guerrilla war of trying to maintain their independence in the face of failing health. They need varying amounts of support and so... 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

Happy New Year and welcome to the first video of the Baby Boomers series! In this series of video blogs we will be talking about some of the important issues that, as Baby Boomers, we need to be addressing – it’s going to be a kind of mental spring clean! Not able to watch the video today? Why not read the transcript below? As baby boomers in our early sixties we’ve reached the point where we have accumulated some money and now, hopefully, have some time to do some of the things we want to do. This series of videos is about prompting you to attend to the 'housekeeping' issues that we'd all prefer to avoid. These are: The financial consequences of death The potential effects of dementi... read more

Welcome to the second video of the Baby Boomer Series - Today we are looking at the subject of dementia. Not able to watch the video today? Why not read the transcript below instead: Although dementia is a topic we would all probably prefer not think about or address, unfortunately it is a huge reality of old age The purpose of this video is simply to give you some information about the financial consequences of dementia.  If someone close to you, your family, your spouse, is unable to look after their own financial affairs it can create chaos. It may not be possible to access a bank account or do something as simple as renewing a car insurance policy. You cannot make decisions on a person’s behalf unle... read more

Welcome to the third video in my series for Baby Boomers. Cant watch the video today - why not need the transcript below?   This time we are lightening the mood just a little bit and talk about talking!   Most couples find financial planning is helpful in getting them to talk to each other about their finances. People tend to need prompting to do this!   With most couples there is a tendency for one person to take responsibility for the money.  Although there is nothing the matter with this, what tends to happen is that the other person ends up not knowing anything.  Inevitably somebody, usually the person who is responsible for it all, dies, and the other individual is left just not knowing what on... read more

Welcome to the fourth video in the Baby Boomer Series – this week we’ll be looking at the issue of downsizing your home. Downsizing a large family home is becoming a very popular option for releasing capital and reducing living expenses. Many Baby Boomers find themselves owning a huge home thanks to the housing boom of the last thirty years. By huge I refer to the amount of space it takes up and the money it takes to run it. My suggestion is that you talk to your family about downsizing and whether it's right for you and your loved ones. Let’s think about this: suppose you have a house that’s worth £300,000. If you need some capital released from the  house, now is the time to do it, while y... read more

Can't watch the video today? Why not read the transcript below: Welcome to the penultimate video of The Baby Boomer Series; today we’re discussing debt. Let’s get straight down to the bottom line - debt does not die with you. Many of us have been through a tough period during the recession. Those of us in our late 50s are still working, and some of us following a redundancy because of the recession, have started our own small business. We may have re-mortgaged the house to put more money into the business. If so It is very important for you to understand that it is a debt, and if you were to die unexpectedly you would leave that debt to your dependents, principally your spouse or partner. I have heard peopl... read more

Unable to watch the video today? Why not read the transcript below instead: I just wanted to say thank you very much for watching my Baby Boomers series. I hope very much that you found it to be helpful in organising your thoughts about the sort of things you should be doing (or we should be doing!) now that we are in our sixties and seventies. If you recall, we covered the five main areas of this age: the financial consequences of death, the financial consequences of dementia, debt, the importance of having a discussion between yourselves so that you know what’s going on with your finances, and we talked about downsizing, which I think is a very important part of everybody’s financial planning if you happen to ow... read more

Welcome to the second of my mini video blog series on Myths about Money. Myth number two is simply “Having fancy stuff makes us wealthy.”  Not able to watch the video today? Read the Transcripton below: Even saying it sounds ridiculous! Nevertheless, many of us (and I am included in this) believe that the more impressive stuff we have, the wealthier we are. If we stop to think about it, I think we know this is not true. My Mum had a wonderful saying, she used to say “Oh yes, we know about them – it’s all kippers and curtains”.  What she was saying was look at those people, they live in a big house, it’s all beautifully impressive. On the outside they’ve got f... read more

Welcome to the third blog in my ‘Myths about Money’ mini blog series. This week I’m going to address the extremely common myth of “‘I don’t understand money!”. Not able to watch the video today? Read the Transcripton below: What this concept/idea actually does is to stop us from doing anything at all! We just get trapped in a sort of mental-prison continuously telling ourselves how we don’t understand money.  Let’s put a stop to that! Here’s the question to ask yourself – “What would have to happen for me to become the financial director of my own life?” In fact the answer is really, really simple. I didn’t say it was easy, but I promis... read more

There are so many myths about money it of course won’t be possible to cover them all in a short video blog series, but I wanted to address the three main myths which I think, once addressed, could have a positive impact on your life. This week we look at our final Myth of the series – more money means more happiness. Can't watch the video today? Why not read the transcript: We all know in our hearts that this myth isn’t true but it doesn’t actually stop us trying to earn more money, trying to get ‘more stuff’ and, somehow, believing that this will make us happy! Here’s a question for you though; it’s all very well talking about this ‘stuff’ but what do you... read more