LIFE AND MONEY REFLECTIONS Archives - Financial Planning in Surrey

If your portfolio was your house

Dominic Thomas
April 2025 • 2 min read

If your portfolio was your house…

As you come across news stories about sudden market falls, (I doubt you have read one about a sudden market increase, unless it’s designed to prompt feelings of envy), I wonder if thinking of them is better if you consider it in the context of your home.

“HOUSE PRICES AT LOWEST POINT IN 5 YEARS”

If you read the headline above, you may be a bit miffed, but you are unlikely to change your plans. You almost certainly don’t ‘panic sell’ your home worried that the value may fall further. Panic selling a property is also generally pretty difficult, even with the most attentive broker, conveyancer, lender and buyer, it’s unlikely that the process will complete within three months, certainly not the next day. This process, whilst decidedly unhelpful to people buying and selling, does help reduce the impact of panic.

If there is a property crash, generally you sit it out, waiting for things to improve. A few people may be caught out, those in the middle of a sale or who have to move for various reasons – it is these people who are most likely to suffer the pain of a downturn.

Similarly, your portfolio is set up to provide a lifetime of income and capital. It is anticipated that the value will vary each day. Unlike your home, share prices are based on corporate results, track records and expectations for their trade in the near future. Your home is valued based on similar properties in the area; what you think it’s worth and what someone else is prepared to pay are often very different.

In short, your financial plan is designed for you, stretching out over the years to come. Yes; we don’t know how bad things will be in the short term, or indeed how quick or how full the eventual recovery will be, but it will happen.

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If your portfolio was your houseJemima Thomas2025-04-27T19:24:52+01:00

What is your love language?

Dominic Thomas
April 2025 • 3 min read

What is your love language?

Life can take a sudden, unexpected twist. One of many twists is the loss of a spouse or partner. This is hard at any stage of life and brings its own challenges. Raising the family you started together on your own, or starting a family without the other being there to even witness its beginning are both situations that we have experienced with our clients. Life can change in an instant.

Any good financial plan will ensure that you have ample financial protection in the event of a spouse or partner suddenly dying. This would normally mean clearing off any outstanding debts and mortgages, everything from the credit card to the car finance. In addition, a regular income or a fund to provide one for a given period of time or perhaps indefinitely.

A serious or long-term illness can arguably have a worse financial impact – should the main income earner be unable to work, all those bills keep arriving and many probably increase, so it is important for those reliant upon an earned income, be they self-employed or an employee or perhaps own a business, that this is reviewed regularly to make sure there is ample cover in place. When such a situation arises I have never heard anyone tell me that they had too much cover, but most had wished that they had considered rather more.

The new Bridget Jones film Mad About The Boy is a sympathetic look at life after the death of Bridget’s husband, Mark Darcy. In the previous films we witnessed their haphazard relationship of opposites attracting. The latest in the series is perhaps rather more unexpectedly autobiographical from the author Helen Fielding, who explores singleness in our culture and the pressures to conform. Fielding’s first book Cause Celeb was published in 1994 and followed up by Bridget Jones’s Diary in 1996 which was released as a film in 2001 and saw two further follow ups in 2004 (Edge of Reason) and 2016 (Raising A Baby). She published Mad About the Boy in 2013. She started a relationship with her partner Kevin Curran in 2000 and they had two children together. Curran died of cancer in 2016 aged 59.

Admittedly, in the film, there isn’t any talk of Wills or life assurance, but it is clear that Human Rights lawyer Mr Darcy has ensured that Bridget and his children are well provided for; her choice about returning to work is optional, not financially necessary.

As the film was released around Valentine’s Day, an email caught my attention from an insurance company who pronounced that an act of love is to ensure that you have taken out life assurance for the benefit of those you love. I had heard something similarly expressed before, but in all honesty, dismissed it as a bit gimmicky. Nowadays, I do rather think it’s probably one of many “acts of loving” that make the world of difference.

The death of a spouse or partner will happen at some point, if you are fortunate for this to be much later on in life there are other impacts too. Often finances are handled by one member of the couple, or perhaps one has an old-style final salary pension which provides ongoing income, but at half the level. Adjusting to a new paradigm isn’t easy and we take great care helping clients fully understand the important elements of their finances and provide reassurance about their ability to maintain their standard of living without running out of money. The challenges can often feel overwhelming, but we will be here to help ensure that everything works to your advantage.

Inheritance tax may be a regular hot topic in the media, but this is only an issue for people who are not married or for beneficiaries. Whilst important to ensure your estate is passed on as you would wish, it is rather more important that your spouse/partner is able to adjust to the new reality of life without you.

If you know someone who is recently bereaved and would welcome clarity and understanding about their finances and new reality, do suggest that they get in touch. All our initial meetings to discover if we can help are at our own cost.

Meanwhile, here is the trailer for the new Bridget Jones film:

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What is your love language?Jemima Thomas2025-04-17T18:01:03+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

Worrying about money?

Dominic Thomas
March 2025 • 2 min read

Worrying about money?

Admittedly, all of us respond differently to pressure and some of us (if not all of us) create our own. I say this as a slight caveat to the statement I will now make. More than half of those aged over 55 are worried that they will run out of money.

This is the finding of research conducted by Oxford Risk, a rather bright bunch that offer services for modelling, measuring, managing and explaining risk to you our clients. As ever, the sample size of the survey wasn’t vast at just a touch over 1,000 people (all over the age of 55). Only 27% of them were not worried about running out of money in retirement.

It won’t please Gen X, Z or Y that around 12% are worried that they will likely be dependent on their children for financial support in their retirement, which when some reports laud the age of an enormous wealth transfer, clearly this will not be everyone’s experience and I suspect the hoped-for inheritance to finally enable joining the property market may be short-lived. It won’t help if your estate suffers a lot of inheritance tax.

Of course, some of this may be merely a reflection of the current cost of living crisis and inflation which at checkouts and cash registers seems to stubbornly ignore ONS official data. It may have something to do with a growing awareness of the exorbitant cost of care or maybe the apparent fragility of the state of the world.

I would love to be able to tell you that we can provide complete reassurance about the future, but it is of course unknown. What we can do is work with your real spending patterns and plans in conjunction with your existing resources and create a plan to avoid running out of money. This relies on regular reviews and sense-checking of our assumptions and your objectives. The intention is obviously to empower you to make informed decisions and have a high degree of confidence about the future, but no one can actually guarantee this, despite what they may be willing to tell you.

We aren’t afraid to wrestle with reality and construct a viable, sustainable plan for your future that will deliver successful outcomes, albeit within the context of a changing and imperfect world.

You don’t need to be worrying, we have a plan that will alleviate this, this is what we do and have done with great success.

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Worrying about money?Jemima Thomas2025-03-21T15:43:07+00:00

Money & Film: Bank of Dave 2

Dominic Thomas
Feb 2025 • 2 min read

Money & Film: Bank of Dave 2

“We’re going to need a bigger boat” is a line from the 1975 film Jaws as Captain Martin Brody recovers from the shock of seeing the destructive great white shark glide past Quint’s small trawler boat (The Orca) leased to hunt and destroy the predator currently consuming the inhabitants of Amity Island.

The Loan shark is similarly as consumptive, ruining the lives of those who attempt to borrow a few hundred pounds to meet the latest small calamity for which they have no other reserves. The exorbitant interest charged and the intimidation by ‘collectors’, all result in a toxic, suffocating environment that many unsuspecting borrowers become quickly entrapped.

The Netflix platform is currently screening Bank of Dave 2 – The Loan Ranger. The film is largely a work of fiction; it’s an exaggeration, but it doesn’t detract from the central message that payday loan companies are ruining lives. However, it is far from a documentary or even a dramatisation of what happens. It is a decent, charming little film of David and Goliath and of course panders to our British support of the underdog.

Dave Fishwick (on whom the story is based) is a credit to his community and frankly I thoroughly agree with his desire to destroy companies that deliberately destroy lives. You may never have used a Pay Day loan company, many of which originate in the US, and many are or have been key sponsors of football teams, normalising the ‘service’ that they provide. He took on many of these companies, who did indeed attempt all sorts of dirty tricks to thwart his attempts to stop their practices.

There is a documentary The Loan Ranger (released on 15^th January 2025) which considers the real story that inspired the film and the misery that Dave Fishwick seeks to end. Payday loan companies will of course argue that they are providing a service to people that need it, one which traditional banks do not or will not. These are invariably short-term loans for a couple of weeks until the next payday. The interest charges are high (one has an APR of 1721%). These lenders, like all others, fall within the regulatory remit of the FCA.

The problem is that there will always be a market for people who struggle with finances and unless there is a change in circumstances, and perhaps behaviour, the likelihood of climbing out of the money trap is small at best. Whilst our clients don’t have these sorts of challenges, few people are actually terribly good at budgeting. Those with ample incomes rarely look in detail at how much they are spending, save for a few significant purchases. Having a well-managed cash system and control of your finances is crucial to your long-term financial wellbeing. To find out more about how to do this successfully, please get in contact with us.

You can see Bank of Dave 2 starring Roy Kinnear on Netflix. Here is the trailer.

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Money & Film: Bank of Dave 2Jemima Thomas2025-02-25T13:37:00+00:00

British Sign Language – it’s not an ‘ology’

Debbie Harris
Jan 2025 • 3 min read

British Sign Language – it’s not an ‘ology’

I read a News article last year about plans to introduce a GCSE in British Sign Language (BSL). I would have loved to have had this as a choice when I was selecting my options some decades (*ahem!) ago … what a brilliant idea.

Signing isn’t only used by deaf folk; it has also been a tool for communication for sufferers of autism for many years as well as for people with speech impairments and/or learning difficulties. Obviously it is also used by the carers of these members of our community and by anyone playing a supportive role in their health and wellbeing.

The British Deaf Association estimates that over 150,000 people in the UK use BSL with ‘only’ 87,000 of them being actually deaf.

I have struggled with significant hearing loss for the last 20 years and so this is a subject close to my heart. I benefit from the advancement of hearing aid technologies and am able to manage my partial deafness very well … but I know that I’m lucky.

This new GCSE is a great step towards equality for the deaf and seeks to improve inclusivity and reduce isolation for deaf and hard of hearing children in our Nation’s schools.

I am always in favour of practical exams in useful subjects that can be meaningfully used in adult life and frankly think BSL could and should be taught in our schools earlier than age 14-16, but we have to take the wins when we can.

I have a heart for education and I am always on the lookout to learn new things … perhaps I may even do a GCSE in BSL (likely to be far more interesting than most of the learning opportunities that tend to land in my inbox … being mainly around the financial services industry of course!)

We often talk here about how little ‘financial education’ our young people receive in our schools – many leave the education system without understanding what income tax is; what a pension is; how to budget etc – many of them are going straight into paid work (so have an immediate need to have some decent financial awareness/knowledge) and many of them head off to University (to live on their own for the first time, with no real idea about balancing a budget; or even how much things cost – utilities, council tax, household insurance etc) so it seems to me there’s a gap in the system here for this too; a need to be met.

Many schools attempt to cover some of the priority information in PSHCE sessions but if you have any other suggestions for how we can help our school-leavers; we’d love to hear them. If you have children or grandchildren in this age group, do you think a ‘workshop’ style event would be useful or even just a ‘workbook’ – both of which would potentially have the objective of arming your young people with some of the financial basics?

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British Sign Language – it’s not an ‘ology’Jemima Thomas2025-01-30T13:10:32+00:00

Money & film: A Complete Unknown

Dominic Thomas
Jan 2025 • 2 min read

Money & film: A Complete Unknown

The New Year is very much underway; my inbox has been full of emails from investment companies telling me what they expect from 2025. These days I’m rather more circumspect and much more defensive about your money than I was 25 years ago. It’s a year like any other; unknown. We know some things will almost certainly happen (they are in the diary); things we expect to happen and then a plethora of stuff we suspect might happen and then the things we will be surprised by. Sounding a little like Donald Rumsfeld – we don’t know what we don’t know.

What we do know is that your financial plan is best based around your own values, circumstances and expectations. We know that over the longer term, holding global equities provides the best chance of maintaining and improving the purchasing power of your money, but with this comes volatility.

There’s a new film A Complete Unknown; the story of Bob Dylan, a man whose name most people will know. It charts the start of his career in 1961, aged 20, meeting Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger, both successful musicians of their day who recognise his talent which provides the platform for his arrival on the scene. It’s a time of change, JFK is sworn in as Number 35, The Beatles are starting out, The Bay of Pigs invasion, civil rights protestors are harassed by Police, beaten by KKK. There are riots in Paris, a host of stand offs between Soviets and the US, the Cold War really starts and the year closes with JFK sending 18,000 special military advisers to Vietnam. Despite all the disasters and uncertainty, 1961 saw the US market up about 19%.

The film explores Dylan’s rise to fame as a folk singer, his relationship with Joan Baez and his need to continually change, adapt, leave and move on. Some, it would seem (like Seegers), wanted him to help restore folk, but Dylan found this suffocating and a tie to the past that was unhelpful. His transition to the electric guitar was unwelcome by most in the folk scene.

Dylan is now 83 and has his next birthday in May. He is undoubtedly a survivor, his career has been long in the making with over 125 million records sold world-wide making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. He has been the change and witnessed it, but often it has been a slow train coming…

Your planning is best viewed in the long-term. Whatever the world throws at us in 2025, take the long-term view. Change is constant.

Here is the trailer for the new film.

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Money & film: A Complete UnknownJemima Thomas2025-02-07T15:53:47+00:00

What’s your reaction time?

Dominic Thomas
Jan 2025 • 3 min read

What’s your reaction time?

Those who know me, know that I struggle with fairness. I don’t like unfairness of almost any type. My inner child is petulant, often easily triggered by things that I disagree with. I feel it and the response in me is often almost instantaneous. This isn’t limited to the world through the lens of television or monitor, but leaks into very basic mundane tasks like a simple trip in the car.

I have acknowledged this problem and have spent years working on myself. It took longer than I would have liked to leave the world of Twitter and much social media. There was a sense of community with my peers within the financial planning space; we would share ideas and concerns, helping us all become better at what we do for our clients. However, within the same space, it seemed largely irrelevant how many filters were selected, there were countless issues and opinions designed to trigger, agitate and frustrate; to cause grief and angst. To divide.

So I left. Several months ago, very rarely looking back. Today neither my PC nor phone retain memory of my presence there.

There is a lot to trigger most of us, most of the time. There is a balance between engagement and disinterest. It isn’t always clearcut. Your opinions and beliefs are nothing more than opinions and beliefs. Facts are facts yet seem skewed and interpreted, reframed and deflected to suit a particular previously held belief.

We can argue about almost anything and despite the lessons from history, we seem determined to repeat making the same mistakes. On the one hand, it doesn’t matter what the topic is -American politics, a war somewhere that is being forgotten as lives are destroyed, an Olympic event or ceremony, a celebrity, the billionaire, immigration, monarchy, the poor ‘working’ class white male, or your politics of the day. These things trigger each of us very differently.

A few months ago in my bubble of sector news, I read the headline: “Reaction as inflation rises for the first time this year”. This was from Money Marketing magazine. I assume the editor really knows that this is wrong on various points:

Inflation means prices are rising
They mean that the rate of increase has increased (it was still inflating)
My reaction to it or anyone else’s is largely after the event, but of course this is designed to arouse a sense of greater anxiety, in an already uncertain world

The article went on to quote reactions and ‘research’ that half of investors believe that inflation will rise again over the next six months (frankly about as useful as a coin toss, half do, half don’t). Anyone who has paid for a holiday or hotel or a theatre ticket, will know that prices have risen… is it coincidence that your flights and holidays were booked during the time of “rising prices”?

We know inflation is a big deal. It erodes the value of your spending power. Hence why you invest in real companies, making and providing real things with a future. One of my peers calls most of the financial news “financial porn” which seems fair. A lot of people are addicted to stuff that doesn’t serve their own wellbeing. In fact, it’s largely detrimental.

We could all do with pausing for thought a little more. Whether consuming what is often described as ‘news’ or scrolling through social media or driving your car and getting stuck in yet another over-managed section of roadworks. We don’t need the reaction times of a motor racing driver; we have our own goals and plans and shouldn’t be swayed by the agenda of others.

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What’s your reaction time?Jemima Thomas2024-12-20T11:07:23+00:00

New Year; New You?

Debbie Harris
Dec 2024 • 1 min read

New year; New you?

I wanted to write about the value of New Year’s Resolutions, so obviously I took to ‘the Google’ to see what the internet thinks!

I was mildly surprised that the vast majority of articles that appeared in my search provided reasons why we should NOT make New Year’s Resolutions.

So I guess I’m in the minority on this; because I think they’re a great idea!

The 1^st of January represents a finite moment when you can set some goals for the coming twelve months … but then I also love Mondays (much to the disbelief of my colleagues), clean bed linen, a new notebook – all of which represent a fresh start; a new beginning.

So what do the naysayers say about ‘resolutions’?

They’re too broad and we are therefore bound to fail
We don’t consider ‘why’ and therefore we don’t address our real challenges/motivations
We aren’t ready for the change we vow to make
We include things that are beyond our control
We don’t tell anyone what they are (not verbalising them means they don’t really exist!)

Suffice to say – there are a myriad of other reasons why you shouldn’t bother with them, but there are a lot of folk who are in agreement with me that they are still worthwhile!

For me – my goals are small and achievable (yet challenging) and, importantly, some of them do not require me to ‘last a full year’! So there may be things I want to achieve in January or in July. I don’t verbalise any of them to anyone (I don’t imagine anyone is that interested!) but they are meaningful to me and I do write them down.

Whichever camp you sit in on this; all that matters is that it works for you!

Here at Solomon’s – we like being prepared and organised; we enjoy planning (obviously) in all its guises and we value having goals and objectives; something to aim for.

What will your plan for 2025 look like?

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New Year; New You?Jemima Thomas2024-12-19T13:23:59+00:00

A Christmas Bungle

Dominic Thomas
Nov 2024 • 3 min read

A Christmas Bungle

At a recent team meeting, we were discussing topics that we could write about, I piped up that I had recently read a short story Skipping Christmas by John Grisham. This was about a couple whose daughter was taking a year out with the Peace Corps in Peru which meant that they would be alone for Christmas. Once they had crunched the numbers on how much money Christmas had consumed last year, they decide to avoid it altogether and fly out to the tropics for a much needed holiday, costing roughly half what they would have normally spent.

As I regaled the tale, I noticed that my team was listening with cocked heads; but clearly thinking something … I went on to describe how I was irritated with the couple who capitulate on their promise to each other as their daughter suddenly calls them from an airport, unexpectedly returning home from Peru with her new fiancé. A daft and rather nauseating comedic mad dash ensues to provide a decorated house, a party, food, drink and presents with a few hours’ notice.

“That’s Christmas with the Kranks” laughed one of the team… “you’ve just told us the plot of the movie – Christmas with the Kranks… with Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis!”

I hadn’t seen the film (and still haven’t – it’s got Tim Allen in it after all). We all laughed at my unusual lack of film knowledge!

So why did the story annoy me? Well, primarily because of the ridiculous amount of social pressure we are under to conform to ‘norms’ at Christmas; when most of these norms are actually contrived works of capitalism and have very little to do with Christmas. So when someone decides to do something different, one might even say ‘sensible’; it was a bit of a pity to see the opportunity wasted, and instead to simply capitulate into the consumerist event that it has become (particularly in America). I am not deliberately trying to be Scrooge, I am just as prone to overdo the decorations (you should see the tree I’ve got for the office!), food and presents as anyone else – it’s simply that this was offering the opportunity to explore the daft side of the expense.

In the end, the local community rally round to support, but prior to that had been deliberately conceited in their attitudes and downright intimidating. If they were my neighbours, I’d not think them an understanding, considerate bunch. I was left with that saccharine taste of an American Hollywood Christmas, that is playing the right notes to elicit a particularly superficial and romanticised nostalgia.

The points raised by Mr Krank are shuffled to the sidelines, written off as cronyism or “lacking fun”. Yet that was not how the story originated; it was yet another opportunity wasted to explore a more thoughtful approach to the festive season, which for many millions causes significant financial pain with many people left feeling even more in touch with their sense of loneliness or disconnection. It’s difficult to stand against a rampant culture. I even saw one charity flyer recently proclaiming that “nobody should be hungry at Christmas”. I immediately thought to myself – nobody should be hungry at any time of the year, unless they want to be. Christmas becomes this one day when we are told to suddenly regard each other with heightened empathy – for the day. It’s almost as fruitless as Remembrance Day, when we collectively vow that we will learn the lessons of heroes and not to go to war but then do so, repeatedly.

Compare this to Mr Scrooge, who is forced to reflect on his life choices, but who is changed, permanently for the better, to live generously. Dickens doesn’t pretend that change is easy nor that poverty will suddenly end, but he is all too aware that it starts with us.

Bah humbug!

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A Christmas BungleJemima Thomas2024-12-20T10:30:06+00:00

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