November 2014 - Page 2 of 2 - Financial Planning in Wimbledon

The End is Nigh

We’ve all seen some rather sad looking types, clutching signs declaring that the end is nigh, if not on a high street somewhere, perhaps within a film. Occasionally I ponder what makes anyone do this, but most of the time, I dismiss it as a form of madness and delusion. Yet, I suppose there is a sense that the end is always here. Something or someone is always at the point of extinction. Death is very much a part of life, albeit an often unacknowledged one.

In commercial terms, innovation is the lifeblood of a thriving business, of course I really mean the right type of innovation. Kodak and Polaroid were innovative, but not in the right places. Similarly the F1 racing teams are all innovative, but two have failed to complete the season due to financial woes and being unable to remain solvent. The world moves on.

So it was with a degree of mirth that I came across a new advert about the extinction of the Independent Financial Adviser. I can take a joke (I hope) and am not criticising Beagle Street for their advert, but as with most things, getting some facts right invariably helps. For starters, pretty much anything that helps the UK public to look after themselves financially is a good thing and certainly life assurance is a financial product. Cost is often the main criteria for term assurance, but there are also questions about Trusts and how the cover is set up… knowing a little can sometimes be more dangerous than knowing nothing. Sadly, the content of the Beagle Street advert suggests that they neither understand the market or those within it, which does rather patronise the audience. Admittedly there are some valid points – jargon, bureaucracy, complexity and waste… though much of this was (and still is) due to regulation (designed to protect) and Government – designed to… well… distract.

Beagle Street are right in asserting that the days of advisers arranging life assurance as they used to are over, but then those that arrange products have had their days numbered for many years. The adviser that they seem to describe is someone from a bygone age and probably is more representative of “the man from the Pru” who used to turn up on your doorstep to collect a few pennies for a savings plan. That was way before my time (1991). In a world that has shifted from “Buyer Beware” to “Seller Beware” (Dan Pink – To Sell Is Human) anyone simply selling “Product A” is unlikely to be successful, even comparing A with B and thinking others cannot do that for themselves is definitely looking at a short career. Advisers are at the hub of the money relationship, providing contextualised, accurate, professional, independent advice – and paid for doing so. Admittedly I tend to only attend events with high calibre advisers, most of whom would call themselves planners – so my experience is possibly not entirely representative of all 20,000 advisers. Anyway, news of my death has been exaggerated…

Oh and for the record, Beagle Street are not independent, they are a representative of an insurance company. So for all the talk of evolution, they haven’t even evolved as much as those adorable meerkats… also what is the current obsession with things that look like “monsters” or “gremlins” in TV adverts these days… have the Ad Agencies really got so few ideas?

Dominic Thomas

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I found this post in my draft file, so its a little later than intended.

Summer holidays often provide the opportunity to think about our current circumstances and the future…perhaps its just me, but given the number of people that are tempted into viewings of villa’s abroad whilst on holiday, somehow I suspect that I’m not alone. Sitting poolside with a good book and glass of something refreshing begins to get the imagination whirring into life. A plethora of self-reflective “What if’s?” are posed. I’m at a new landmark in my family life, my youngest daughter is now about to start University (yes it is hard to believe that I could possibly have a youngest daughter old enough, but there it is). Of course many of you will have experienced this already, some will do so in the future, as for me, this is a new chapter. There is newfound “freedom” albeit with the proviso that we have an attention-loving cocker spaniel.

As I was driving with my youngest today, she remarked how she meets so many people that don’t seem to like their job. She has been having a “gap year” (which I encouraged) and has involved various activities, one being to work for a well-known retailer. I wanted her to gain some practical experience of “real work” and earn some money to help her along at Uni. It has been an enlightening and worthwhile experience. Despite the brevity, she has experienced good and poor management, office politics, a degree of red tape and a considerable amount of “customer rudeness”. She wasn’t really prepared for this and has been surprised, disappointed and generally staggered by the manner in which some treat “shop staff”. All rather good life lessons. Anyway, she quickly appreciated that a considerable proportion of the working population regularly have either a bad day or are trapped in jobs that they simply loathe. All from relatively brief but telling interactions. So she asks me “how come you love your job?… was it just luck?… didn’t you just get lucky and find a career at a very early stage?”

Truthfully… yes, but it wasn’t always this way. I grew into my “work” (I don’t like calling it a “job” any more than calling being a parent or husband a “job”). I do think that I was lucky… even though the first two firms I worked for were considerably stressful, due to my unwillingness to sell financial products that I simply didn’t think were suitable, (even by my then naive standards) and subsequent lack of earnings. To this day I still don’t really like financial products, they bore me. What I love and enjoy is helping people to imagine, verbalise and clarify a better future for themselves, then figure out, how I can help bring this about. In a world without financial products I could still do pretty much what I do. There was never really a single epiphany, but and gradual process of maturing, becoming more skilled and accomplished. I still have much to learn, which is something that I find exciting rather than anxiety inducing.

So whilst many are heading off to University, having had a thorough grilling from family and friends asking “what do you want to do?” I do wonder if we are not simply trying to get ideas for ourselves. Most people don’t plan a career, much less a life. Some do. Albeit that I am a planner, there is a degree to which one can over engineer dreams. Sometimes, if we are honest, we lack a little imagination, go for the easy, expected answers – to travel, buy a yacht and so on. Whilst clearly I don’t believe these to be wrong, we must challenge our own beliefs to determine if they are truly ours, or just the implanted marketing messages. Your life after all is uniquely yours, so when you are describing your “dream” make sure that it really is yours.

Dominic Thomas