FINANCIAL PROTECTION Archives - Financial Planning in Surrey

‘I had a stroke at 24’

Matt Loadwick
June 2025 • 2 min read

‘I had a stroke at 24’

In recent years, England Football’s Lionesses have well and truly been showing the men how it’s done. First, winning the Euros in 2022, before reaching the World Cup final (and almost going all the way) just a year later in the summer of 2023. Ellie Roebuck was a member of both squads to have achieved such success, vying with goalkeeper Mary Earps, BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2023, for a place between the sticks. With the world at her feet, there was no way she could have predicted what was to come just months after England’s loss in the final in Sydney …

Around Christmas in 2023, she began to feel that something was not quite right, feeling nauseous, a bit off balance, and fatigued. Being a goalkeeper, her employer at the time, Manchester City, felt the most likely explanation was that she was suffering with concussion symptoms, possibly having been hit by a ball, or another player. But as the weeks went by into January, Ellie felt certain it was something else.

In a recent interview, she describes being sat down with the club doctor revealing the results of a head scan, when she was told that she had in fact suffered from an “infarct in her occipital lobe”, which in English, means a type of stroke. Strokes happen when blood supply to a part of the brain is cut off, which can have disastrous consequences such as paralysis, and in some cases, death.

Her first thought was “will I ever play football again?” Something that at the time, medical professionals were unable to answer. Ellie was unable to train for 12 weeks, but fortunately in that time was able to rehabilitate, so successfully so that she recently signed for European champions, Barcelona.

She counts herself very lucky to still be able to do what she loves for a living, knowing that things could quite easily have gone another way.

As scary as it may be, a story such as this certainly drives home the fact that we should be grateful for our health, and for the ability to spend time with our loved ones doing things that we enjoy.

From a financial perspective, such a story also highlights the merits of protection, with a variety of policies available to meet various needs; whether that’s something to keep you and your family afloat in times where you’re incapacitated, or to ensure that your loved ones are looked after financially in the event that the worst should happen.

At Solomon’s we want to look after all areas of your financial wellbeing, and if you’re currently considering aspects of your financial protection, you know where to find us.

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‘I had a stroke at 24’Jemima Thomas2025-06-20T16:39:49+01:00

Legal & General protection

Matt Loadwick
May 2025 • 2 min read

Legal & General protection

Legal & General (L&G) has revealed that it paid out over £1 billion in protection claims in 2024, covering life insurance, income protection, and critical illness policies. This figure breaks down to an average of £2.5m paid out in claims every day.

According to the provider, more than 20,000 customers received claim payments – the highest number in a single year for L&G. On average, each customer received around £50,000, offering crucial financial support during challenging times such as bereavement, serious illness or a sudden loss of income.

The total amount paid was over £100m more than in 2023, marking the third year in a row that both the number and value of claims have increased. L&G partly credits this rise to enhancements in its digital claims process. In particular, the use of its ‘My Account’ self-service portal has streamlined submissions and cut the need for follow-up medical evidence by more than 25%.

Historically, the perceptions of the insurance industry have sometimes been mixed, with stories of difficult claims processes or perceived unfair practices with insurers exploiting loopholes to delay or deny payments to policyholders. As such, it’s good to see a major provider that’s increasing its payouts in consecutive years (both in volume and value), hopefully thus increasing levels of trust for retail customers.

As part of our holistic approach to looking after our clients’ financial wellbeing; ensuring that our clients have sufficient financial protection is important to us. Whether it’s to provide your family with adequate income and the ability to clear loans in the event that you were to die suddenly, to provide a monthly income if you become ill over the long term and are unable to work or to provide a lump sum upon diagnosis of a serious illness; these policies provide funds that can be used for treatment or simply to reduce/remove financial pressure).

Whilst we do not directly arrange these financial protection policies these days, it is important for us to ensure that you are adequately covered, so please get in touch if you wish to discuss your protection arrangements.

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Legal & General protectionJemima Thomas2025-05-27T10:47:44+01:00

Sit tight

Dominic Thomas
April 2025 • 2 min read

Sit Tight

What the global markets are currently experiencing is not new. It is only different in the sense that it’s utterly pointless and caused by one particular individual. That in itself suggests that ‘the system’ is very flawed and if I could change it I would – but I can’t and neither can you.

Our regulator would want you to know that a 10% fall has happened – it hasn’t yet, but frankly by the time you read this, it may have done. Knowing that doesn’t help. In fact, I would argue that you are better off switching off the news and social media and not looking at your portfolio at all. It’s not good for your mental health or any sense of wellbeing.

Your financial plan is designed for the long-term – the rest of your life. It is not designed for the next year, but for every year. We believe, because of the wealth of evidence from history, that markets rise and fall very suddenly, often for poor or misguided reasons. However, they always recover, given enough time (which is key). I do not like seeing the valuation of funds drop any more than you do – I can assure you. In fact, I am pretty certain I’m far more fed up with it, as it is so needless.

“Sit tight” is very easy for me to say, but it’s very hard to do, I know that. However, we have been through similar events before, lots of them. It’s never comfortable and often feels like “this time it’s different”. It is certainly different having an idiot as a President, but there are lots of similarly foolish and vile men (and some women) running countries around the world. It’s part of our lives and something we each contend with. Yes; Trump is unpredictable (other than in his capacity to lie) but even so, there is a limit to his real power. You are invested in companies around the world, many of them trade with each other and are interconnected, something that Trump will never understand. No economy is an island of penguins.

Yes, this is concerning, anyone who has invested in the last month has taken a hit on value, but it will recover. You still own and hold the same ‘stuff’, it’s just that the perceived value is lower than it was at the start of January. Attempting to ‘time the market’ is only ever easy in hindsight and requires at least two decisions, to exit and to re-enter. Neither are easy and from experience most fail to get even close (and if they do, to be honest it’s nothing more than luck as they can never repeat their achievement).

Your portfolio is global, hugely diversified and very low cost. Values will rise again once we have got through this period of self-inflicted insanity. Sadly, I have nothing good to say about the current President of the United States, or his cabinet and supporters. To me they look, speak, sound and smell very much like a fascist dictatorship, certainly it shows all the signs and actions of one in its infancy. I can only hope that his premiership and his regime ends very suddenly before the allotted time. He has no sense of decency and no understanding of history. The sooner he is gone the better.

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Sit tightJemima Thomas2025-04-11T15:47:25+01:00

The Unspoken Cash Crisis

Dominic Thomas
Jan 2025 • 2 min read

The Unspoken Cash Crisis

There are lots of topics within the subject of a cash crisis. This could mean anything from struggling to find a bank to deposit a cheque, the growing number of retailers and businesses refusing to accept cash as a form of payment, struggling businesses, individuals, families, local authorities and national institutions. However, I’d like to turn to some rather alarming recent research about the level of savings that the general population has.

According to some recent research by a much-loved Building Society in the north east, the average adult doesn’t have much cash to fall back on in a crisis. Whilst admittedly a small survey of 1,200 adults (you’ve seen adverts for women’s products from multinationals who seem to have barely left the building to ask such small numbers of people and then claim 8/10… but I digress) only 13% had at least a month’s salary saved (in cash, not pensions or investments).

The younger members of the survey unsurprisingly fared worst with 57% of 18-25 year olds having no savings at all. The “at retirement group” aged 55-64 still had an alarming 34% without any cash savings at all.

There is, of course, multiple millions saved in bank and building society accounts. Data from the Building Society Association suggests that by the end of October 2024 there was £381,581,000,000 in Cash ISAs, but despite recent rises in interest rates, the average saver is getting a paltry 2.5% interest or 4.2% for those who have actively sought a one year fixed rate.

Today, cash management systems like Akoni, Insignis or Flagstone all offer a portal service to multiple banks and building societies, enabling you to receive very competitive rates, spread across different banks, with the added advantage of spreading your FSCS collapse insurance around without hassle.

Cash, as I have said before is always good to have. It’s there for planned projects and emergencies. There are no hard and fast rules about how much, but as a guide … 3-12 months of normal spending ought to be enough for most people who have not retired, but also allow for your projects and I’m not including your ‘saving to spend’ pots for your holidays.

Any questions, please ask.

As an aside – Accountants are currently in the throes of finalising 2023/24 tax returns and some have expressed surprise at just how much extra interest our clients have gained using cash management platforms (which, unfortunately, is subject to income tax).

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The Unspoken Cash CrisisJemima Thomas2025-01-27T13:44:00+00:00

Lasting Power of Attorney – the DIY option … ?

Debbie Harris
Nov 2024 • 2 min read

Lasting Power of Attorney – the DIY option … ?

Last month, I sat down with my elderly parents (it still feels weird referring to them in that way – they just don’t seem ‘old’ to me!) and we thrashed out their lasting powers of attorney instructions.

We interspersed the tough conversations with lots of gallows humour (that’s how we do it in my family) and submitted the applications to the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG). We could have done it online, but my dad is a self-proclaimed dinosaur and insisted we send them in the post (with cheques … none of that new-fangled online banking stuff for him!)

About a month later we received confirmation that the applications had been received and could take around 12 weeks to be processed.

To my surprise then about a week later, we received another letter (or rather four of them – one for each LPA) to say that the applications had been processed (and not rejected!) and we could expect to receive certificates within about five weeks. Well played OPG – under-promised and over-delivered!

Anyway – despite the intense stress of making sure everyone signed everything in the right place and in the right order (that’s important!), the process was remarkably straightforward and simple.

Dominic and Daniel (our financial planners here at Solomon’s) have been encouraging clients to put LPAs in place sooner rather than later and to have a go at doing it yourselves rather than incurring the expense of engaging a legal representative (we were quoted over £1,000 for a solicitor to do it!).

I am pleased to confirm that my experience of helping my parents do theirs was really positive. It’s always great when someone in the team here has the ‘actual’ lived experience of things like this, so that we can confidently make recommendations to you and explain the process and the potential obstacles. If Daniel or Dominic have advised you to ‘have a go’ – I would encourage you to do so – it feels daunting I know, but it really wasn’t difficult in the end.

Just a couple of things to bear in mind …

~ you need someone to be the applicant and someone else to be the ‘proposer’ (an independent person – could be a friend or trusted colleague) to say that they have discussed the LPA with the donor (the person who the LPA is for) to ensure that they are not under any duress to sign their powers away! You need attorneys (and possibly replacement attorneys). And they all need to sign the forms in the correct order. With the ones we did – we were all together in the same place at the same time, so it was easy to do this; but will be slightly more difficult if you cannot arrange such a gathering (we did it over a shared meal together which made it a far more enjoyable experience!)

~ there are two types of LPA – one for finance and property related matters and another for health and medical issues (the cost currently is £82.00 per LPA per individual)

~ get them in place well in advance of when you think you might need to enact them (as it can take many months to complete the process – especially if the application forms are rejected at any point)

As ever – if you need any further information or help with this, please get in touch – we are always happy to assist.

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Lasting Power of Attorney – the DIY option … ?Jemima Thomas2025-01-21T15:19:51+00:00

Are you under the finfluence?

Daniel Liddicott
Sept 2024 • 2 min read

Are you under the finfluence?

Social media has become awash with financial influencers (also known as ‘finfluencers’) over the last few years. Whether they are talking about tax on TikTok or informing people about ISAs on Instagram, there is a real danger that those viewing their content may be at risk of making harmful financial decisions as a result.

Giving financial advice as we do is extensively, and rightly, regulated to ensure that any recommendations that are made to you are coming from specialists who are authorised to do so. Whilst more generic financial information is not necessarily harmful i.e., explaining the ISA annual allowance; some information given with good intentions to the wrong group of people could lead down a dangerous path.

I have seen one such example from a YouTuber (naming no names). She explained junior ISAs (JISAs) and how she and her husband have started paying into one each month for their toddler. Not an overtly bad thing to do by any means. She continued to show projections of what she believed the value of the JISA would be at their child’s various milestone birthdays – a powerfully persuasive method of showing the benefits of doing this.

However, there are problems with this. She used returns figures for her projections that are unrealistic (even if using a stocks & shares JISA over the long term). She did not once mention that the value of investments can go down as well as up and that the funds could realistically run out. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that some people viewing this content might then have opened a stocks & shares JISA for their child without fully understanding the risks involved.

This is just one relatively small example of how providing generic, selective information could lead to potential financial harm. Finfluencers have also been known to promote high risk, unregulated products such as cryptocurrencies without truly understanding or conveying the risks involved.

When under the finfluence, caution is required.

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Are you under the finfluence?Jemima Thomas2025-01-21T15:19:38+00:00

Have you been scammed?

Dominic Thomas
Sept 2024 • 2 min read

Have you been scammed?

According to a recent report for LV, roughly one in seven adults have been the subject of an attempted pension scam in the last 12 months! That’s an enormous number, translating into about 7.3 million people.

A staggering 14% were encouraged to transfer money from their pensions by text message. It may interest you to note that about 4 million British adults lost money to such scams over the same period. That is an awful lot and begs the question – are the regulators really focussing on the right things?

Pensions are both simple and complex. Simple in the sense that they are a savings plan that you access to provide income in your retirement. Ideally this needs to last for the remainder of your lifetime, which then presents the inevitable question “how much is enough?” which of course is subjective and dependant on your expectations and lifestyle.

Pension rules are ludicrously complicated, made by successive Governments, each of which has been utterly lacking any long-term thinking. Complexity is perhaps a double-edged sword. Most people know enough to realise that they probably need advice, but the cost of this is prohibitive. A lot of the cost is due to regulation, but in fairness most of the regulation is well intended.

A problem we all face is that scammers are getting better. Deepfake technology makes a decent scam difficult to spot. It is relatively easy to set up an email, phone number and website that all look perfectly legitimate. Something like 36% of scams were reported as fake HMRC emails and text messages.

Regulators, pension companies and advisers would all likely say the same thing – please seek advice. The scam rate amongst regulated advisers is very low (contrary to press-driven opinion). The majority of scams take place through the everyday technology you use at home. If you come across friends or family who you suspect may be about to make a catastrophic blunder, please (please!) get them to call us. Certainly not everyone is going to be a suitable client for us, but if we can save someone from self-destruction, we are happy to take calls or emails.

Don’t wait for a friend to get scammed, get them in touch with us, so that we can ensure that they don’t get caught out.

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Have you been scammed?Jemima Thomas2025-01-21T15:19:59+00:00

What decisions would you alter from your past?

Dominic Thomas
August 2024 • 3 min read

What decisions would you alter from your past?

The appearance of Michael J Fox on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury with Coldplay was a reminder of the need to savour the moments that we have.

For those who don’t know, Michael J Fox has had a successful career in film and television, most notably for his performance as Marty McFly in the Back to the Future movies. He has since revealed his battle with Parkinson’s disease which has had an increasingly debilitating effect.

In the original movie, teenager Marty McFly travels in time from 1985 to 1955 and meets his parents when they were at High School. The difference in fashion, attitudes and culture in just three decades made for good entertainment. Today it is now longer since the film was released than the time travel that Marty experienced, nearly a decade longer! As with most time travelling fantasies, the lesson learned is that a change in the timeline will likely lead to different outcomes.

Aporia is yet another film on the topic, but rather than travel back, time is bent to change the past. Malcolm’s sudden death as a result of a drunk driver leaves Sophie widowed and struggling to make ends meet, their daughter Riley is becoming increasingly disinterested in school or friends. Malcolm’s friend seems to have done the impossible in his spare room and invented a working Time Machine. Sophie (despite having seen Back to the Future!) decides to interrupt the time continuum with the hope of preventing the fatal accident.

I am sorry to say that my pedantic self took over as events unfold, I immediately thought, why don’t you now take out a decent level of life assurance! This is your warning, you have seen how difficult life can be when tragedy strikes and a lack of funds merely compounds the difficulty. Whist money does not compensate for the loss of a loved one, it certainly helps survivors to cope and continue.

No, it’s not terribly romantic of me is it! But then my view is that romance is for the living. Early in my career there was a well-known training film about the impact of death on a family. Its aim was to highlight the importance of life assurance and the relieving of stress on a widow… which of course had the agenda of getting me (and every other adviser) to sell more life assurance.

Over the years I have worked with many people who have lost a loved one. Some were far better prepared than others and some were not prepared at all. We get constant reminders that life is short and death is inevitable; yet most of us avoid thinking through the consequences of our death on the families and businesses we may leave behind.

It’s time to change that. You can take action today, there are not as many tomorrows as you think.

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What decisions would you alter from your past?Jemima Thomas2025-01-21T15:41:28+00:00

Are you falling in love with a scammer?

Jemima Thomas
June 2024 • 3 min read

Romance scams – preying on the kind hearted

I apologise if I’m becoming the bi-monthly agony Aunt in reminding you about the importance of financial trust in romantic relationships; but being able to trust your partner in any relationship is imperative. It’s also important to remind those of you who are single, divorced or widowed that it is vital that you’re not taken advantage of when establishing a new relationship.

We know that you, our clients, trust our advice and expertise, which is why we’d like to think that if any significant financial decisions needed to be made – you’d get in touch with us.

Unfortunately, preying on the kind-hearted isn’t at all unusual in the landscape of financial scams and fraud. We hope that all our clients would call us if you were getting a ‘gut feeling’ when something doesn’t seem or ‘feel’ quite right. We are here to reassure you on things and to flag up anything out of the ordinary to prevent you coming to any ‘financial harm’.

Lloyds Bank research shows that the number of people falling for so-called ‘romance scams’ rose by over 22% in 2023 (on the previous year). The statistics revealed that men and women aged 55-64 were the most likely group to be tricked by “fraudsters masquerading as love interests”. However, it is 65-74 year olds who lose the most money in these scams, giving away an average of over £13,000.

The fraud prevention director at Lloyds Bank, Liz Ziegler, weighs in:

“Targeting those looking for love is a cruel, but sadly common, way for fraudsters to cash in. Scammers can be incredibly convincing and leave their victims both emotionally and financially drained’’.

I appreciate that this is a delicate topic; some people loathe to talk about such personal circumstances with their financial adviser, but your relationships intertwine with your finances and we are very honoured that our clients are willing to share these details with us. Rest assured – like a close friend or a doctor – your stories and questions will always be confidential and received without judgement.

On the same note, I would like to remind all of you about the importance of both parties (if in a couple) attending initial or annual review meetings with either Dominic or Daniel. It is crucial that nothing is ‘lost in translation’, and this way we can ensure that we keep everyone as included as possible. For us, it is all about transparency and clarity for each and every one of you.

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Are you falling in love with a scammer?Jemima Thomas2025-01-21T15:41:28+00:00

You know when you’ve been tangoed

Dominic Thomas
May 2024 • 5 min read

You know when you’ve been tangoed

I read a recent report which, to be blunt, left me a little speechless (an achievement in itself). To my mind it merely confirms the need for detailed planning rather than a back of the envelope guesstimate. I will concede that anything to do with the future is a bit of a guess, but an educated one, based on relevant data is somewhat more reliable.

Does my Boredom Look Big in this?

I am on fairly safe ground if I suggest that most tedious aspect of working with me is gathering and providing details about your spending. For this we have the Spending Plan (I’ve included the link for you here) but it also needs updating. This is a total pain, but until most of us have confidence that banks will accurately share your data with us via technology (probably no time soon for most of you) then it’s a hard graft.

Anyway, the purpose of it is foundational to any financial plan. If we don’t have a good idea about what income you have and how you spend, then frankly we have as much chance of being vaguely right as any other economic forecast (not very).

Imagine my surprise on learning that the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) increased the amount of the income they expect to provide a single person with a ‘moderate’ standard of living in retirement from £23,300 in 2022/23 to £31,300 this year, an increase of 34%. For context, according to the ONS, the average salary in the UK at April 2023 was £35,464. You can find the RLS here. Yikes! That’s some increase, substantially above the rate of inflation. That’s an orange fella’s slap round the cheeks wake up call if ever there was.

To give you some context a full State Pension (35 qualifying years of National Insurance payments) is about £11,502 in 2024/25 meaning that even by their error prone forecast most single people will need about another £19,798pa from other sources (in todays money). As we have set the bar as guesstimates, that’s a pension and/or ISA/investment fund of about £494,950 to provide £19,798pa. (Please assume all the warnings about assumptions and investments blah blah blah..). In my guesstimate, I’ve used the 4% rule, which is contentious, but a better guide than most. Let’s just call it £500,000.

Little wonder then that one in seven retired people are currently having to return to some form of work to top up their income to make ends meet. This is having to, not choosing to.

Financial Adviser Truth…

As difficult as it may be for pundits, compliance officers and regulators to accept, most people need a fairly aggressive investment strategy to stand much of a chance of getting the target income they actually want. That means a high allocation to shares (or equities – same thing). Holding fixed interest securities because you don’t like seeing your statement valuation reduce is not going to get you where you need to go, at least its unlikely, but I can only really tell you if you engage us to do a proper plan for you.

If you are a client already, this is why we request that you check our reports for you and you provide details of your income (before tax) from all sources along with your spending details – ideally rounded up and inflated by you for good measure.

Of course, if you want to return to work that’s an entirely different matter, but good financial planning is about enabling you to maintain your standard of living, your lifestyle, for the remainder of your life.

If you have no idea what I mean about being tangoed, here is the advert from many years ago, I’m presuming that the drink is largely available at all beverage retailers. (No I am not about to paint myself orange to make the point).

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You know when you’ve been tangoedJemima Thomas2025-01-28T10:03:28+00:00

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