LIFE AND MONEY REFLECTIONS Archives - Page 3 of 23

Are Giants Falling From The Sky Yet?

Dominic Thomas
Feb 2026 • 3 min read

Are Giants Falling From The Sky Yet?

We have all heard the warning “be careful what you wish for”. Stephen Sondheim reminds us, using the most basic of story forms that wishes have consequences, in his musical Into the Woods. Sondheim brings together several well-known fairytales, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella and Rapunzel into a funny and poignant musical yarn for adults.

The lasting lesson is that each of the characters want something more from life, something that they believe they lack, that this will make their lives complete. By the end of the first act they have all had their wishes granted and should thus be living happily ever after. However, this is the real world and everything has a consequence.

The paths we choose and the manner in which we attempt to attain our desires have an impact on others and ourselves. This is obviously not a new idea, though it would seem that the concept of actual accountability is something that many adults will do almost anything to avoid and ignore. Take the Epstein files and those in ‘elite’ powerful circles who are caught up in this vile network of villainy, including ‘our own’ royal family, politicians and businessmen. The similarities with fairytale characters is remarkable.

The arrogant entitlement of princes, the scheming consumption of the wolf, the wicked stepmother enslaving children, the witch locking away a child, the baker and his wife so desperate for their own happiness that they will do anything. The foolish Jack who will steal to impress, not simply survive and will sell his best friend for a few beans. The vacuous stepsisters who delight in despise and the steward “I don’t make policy, I just carry it out”. The young girls, becoming young women, who are prevented from exploring who they are and might be. Jack’s widowed mother, frustrated by her inept son and struggling to survive in a system that actually does not reward hard work.

Fairytales were always meant to be broad warnings about life, identifying common fears and making light of them. The journey to adulthood is far from an easy one, we all go into the woods and despite healthy feelings of anxiety tell ourselves that “the woods are just trees, the trees are just wood”. Denial, as any therapist will tell you, is an incredibly powerful force.

Still, we live at a time when liars are in power (or seek it) and will do whatever they can to protect their own interests and have little, if any, regard for yours and mine. Truth has become shaped by those who own the looking glass, poisoned apples are sold by the basket. Vanity, greed, envy and power have welcomed hatred and truth is the victim that lies centre stage whilst stepped over, around and ignored.

We all have an ability to resist reality, we are all capable of drawing from the deep well of denial, but a proper conversation about your values and hopes for life means confronting some truths, choices, paths and crossroads. Your financial plan might be a map in a deeply flawed Kingdom, but you still get to make the choices, select the path and decide what is important, necessary and actually fulfilling. Be wary of those playing the proverbial golden harp of things you wish to hear – comforting lies – and those offering a constant supply of golden eggs, the truth is that our choices have consequences, both personally, locally and internationally. A great financial plan isn’t wishful thinking, it’s grounded in your values and adapting to the unfolding reality. It is your story.

Over the coming months, hopefully (please) we will see some justice, but beware of giants falling from the sky – they leave an impression.

Some 40 years after its premier, Into The Woods directed by Jordan Fein is currently performed at The Bridge Theatre (near Tower Bridge) and is a marvellous production. Kate Fleetwood plays an impressive Witch with a real ensemble cast. Into the Woods runs until Saturday 30^th May 2026. The performance that I saw was fabulous, click this link for (tickets) and here is the official trailer.

Careful the things you say, children will listen. Careful the things you do,
Children will see and learn. Children may not obey, but children will listen. Children will look to you for which way to turn, to learn what to be. Careful before you say, “Listen to me.” Children will listen.

Stephen Sondheim, Into The Woods (1986)

#Release the Epstein files.

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Are Giants Falling From The Sky Yet?Jemima Thomas2026-02-19T13:18:57+00:00

Is Love Ever in the Air?

Dominic Thomas
Feb 2026 • 2 min read

Love is in the air

As you will gather from your inbox, television and general trips to the high street, Valentine’s Day is upon us. I imagine that we all have different responses to this, I have a great deal of sympathy with those who think it’s commercialising love and actually making many people feel entirely left out.

I should probably admit my own biases. I started dating my now wife on Valentine’s Day many years ago (we were at school) and I took her to Paris to propose to her on a Valentine’s Day a few years later. So I’m a sucker for ‘romanticism’! I was a lot younger then and far less experienced (weathered by life). We still celebrate and mark the occasion, but I certainly see the problematic side of commoditising ‘love’.

For me, Valentine’s Day is an anniversary, a reminder of the past and a happy form of accounting. Whilst I am not a fan of nostalgia, I do think it can be helpful to look back and see how far you have come. One of the greater challenges in financial planning is that we are often pointing to the future, the illusive horizon of opportunity, yet it is really important to pause to consider just how much has improved.

Most of you will now have an incredibly low-cost investment portfolio, genuinely designed and shaped around your plans for the future. You can check in to monitor its progress at any time (not a great idea, but you can). It is optimised for tax planning and incredibly well organised. Many will have a far better sense of structure and order having got rid of the deadwood or expensive legacy ‘stuff’ that you once had. You’ve had a proper clean out, a new broom though your finances. It’s a far cry from a collection of dog-eared papers stuffed into files or retained for posterity in their envelopes with nothing seemingly joining up and feeling very random.

Your financial planning now, hopefully feels that it fits you like a good outfit, bespoke to your circumstances and needs. I appreciate that you may not completely remember why an ISA is so good, or what pension rules you are adhering to, the tax and charges saved that you didn’t pay, but you presumably (yes?) trust us to have this under control (and certainly under our responsibility).

It may be a stretch, but might I suggest that your financial planning now holds the imprint of love – your passions, people and dreams. You are living and giving. It’s not simply about you, it’s about you and. Yes that is a deliberate statement, not an unfinished sentence.

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep; the more I give to thee,

The more I have, for both are infinite.”

Act 2, Scene 2 Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare.

So as we face a world that often seems in desperate need of love; I encourage you to pause to remember how far you have already travelled; you are and have been, taking action to make the world a better place.

Much love.

Oh and here is a lovely scene from Romeo and Juliet (1996) directed 30 years ago by Baz Luhrmann with a few very familiar but much younger fresher faces.

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Is Love Ever in the Air?Jemima Thomas2026-02-25T09:38:23+00:00

Has a line been crossed?

Dominic Thomas
Feb 2023 • 2 min read

Has a line been crossed?

It was over a decade ago that I was at the BFI London film festival and saw a preview of Desierto (2015) by Jonas Cuaron. It was a truly horrifying film about the Mexican border with the US and how various extremely brutal nationalists ‘protect’ their border. At the time, I took this to be a grim story that thankfully was a stretch of the imagination.

A year later Trump was going around the United States calling for a wall to be built and paid for by Mexico. Once elected he began arranging contracts for its construction. It is not a continuous wall and even “Sleepy Joe” Biden agreed to fill in some gaps. Trump, in his second term has issued new contracts for further work.

The sentiment of the film is a hatred and dehumanisation of Mexicans or frankly anyone in opposition. As we have all seen, the brutalism by ICE murdering US citizens and lynching anyone in the wrong place, there is a palpable sense that the film was, if anything ‘mild’. I often hear people say “oh that would never happen here” but then, to be blunt, they didn’t really expect it to happen in the US. Yet here we are.

Investment doesn’t really have borders. Your portfolio is global and holds shares and bonds from companies located all over the world. The investment world is generally carved up into national or regional markets and the North American market (including Canada) is roughly 65% of the entire world market. Whatever you and I may think of it, remember that the companies that build walls, buildings or anything else when contracted to by a Government are invariably enormous and listed on the market. That includes concrete suppliers, bulldozers and so on – so generally Government spending on private company contracts is probably good for your portfolio. This assumes that things go well (we can all recall the PPE Pandemic providers when it seemed you could be a minnow and grab a piece of the £48.1bn of contracts awarded to known political connections, of which around £14.9bn was written off by the Department of Health). The Chancellor Rachel Reeves is determined to get back some of this money, which of course may win her some praise at last.

Reference: HOC statement: https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2025-12-09/hcws1144

Trump signs contract to build the wall (25 January 2017) – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/25/donald-trump-sign-mexico-border-executive-order

Here is the trailer for Desierto (2015) … warning, even the trailer is brutal:

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Has a line been crossed?Jemima Thomas2026-02-16T11:10:12+00:00

Will We Remember Not to Forget?

Dominic Thomas
Jan 2026 • 1 min read

Will We Remember Not to Forget?

There is so much intentional division at the moment, all of it is deliberate policy from extreme right politicians. There seems to be no depths to which the American President will not sink and just as you think his administration cannot get any worse, they defy reason again. The evident truth is then gaslit, denied or simply reinvented to suit his twisted narratives.

The right wing is “rising” here in the UK, or at least that is what the BBC Board (Robbie Gibb, who ought to be removed) and directed News programmes would have us believe; with further platforming of failed and corrupt former Tories jumping right. These same people who all push nationalist lines and wax lyrical about our Armed services, don poppies each November, yet seem irredeemably unable to learn from the past.

Over the Christmas break I read In Search of Meaning by Viktor Frankl who survived the holocaust concentration camps. He eventually became a therapist and died in 1997, nearly three decades ago – I wonder what he would make of things now. Today, 27^th January 2026, is International Holocaust Day and we are encouraged to light a candle to ensure that this sort of monstrous inhumanity never happens again. Over six million people were murdered by the Nazis.

I cannot really fathom what it would have been like to have been in a concentration camp. I can only admire Frankl’s ability to survive. He wrote “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances”.

We can choose our attitude towards those who are determined to discriminate and perpetuate hatred, but I think it requires more than an attitude. Waiting for things to improve doesn’t inspire confidence in me and as far as I can tell, doesn’t prevent evil from thriving.

So whilst we may endure market swings and I will encourage you to be patient, waiting for the inevitable recovery, I do think that this is an active state, not a passive one. There is certainly a lot going on behind the scenes here at Solomon’s, despite activity on your portfolio seemingly appearing to be “not a lot”. Similarly, we cannot simply wait and hope that history does not repeat itself, we all have to ensure that it doesn’t, which I think means being actively engaged in defeating racism. As Frankl said:

“In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible”

Here is a trailer to a documentary Vickor and I (2010) by Alexander Vesely.

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Will We Remember Not to Forget?Jemima Thomas2026-03-16T09:09:36+00:00

Do you feel invisible?

Dominic Thomas
Jan 2026 • 3 min read

Do you feel invisible?

One of the statements I hear increasingly, perhaps I am more aware of it myself, is that with age, there is a growing sense of feeling invisible. Lately a number of thrillers or crime stories have played with the idea of being invisible in plain sight.

I was struck by this and had the sense rather amplified by an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art by Kerry James Marshall. His work depicts his background (a black man born in 1955 Alabama and living in the United States) and confronts this stark reality. An entire room is entitled Invisible Man based around the 1952 book by Ralph Ellison which I bought last year and still haven’t got around to reading. His study is fascinating and deeply unsettling at the same time.

His work confronts injustice, inequality and his African roots all whilst deeply engaged in various foundational aspects of art history and process; incorporating contemporary, even very temporary, aspects of pop culture. A striking piece is his 2003 Black Painting which is totally in black (a comedy sketch from The Fast Show immediately comes to mind as I write) but this is the polar opposite – a couple lying on a bed, the room gradually coming to life as you notice different items and symbols such as the Black Panther flag. It’s very potent indeed and may be an imagined depiction of Fred Hampton moments before he was murdered by Chicago Police in 1969.

What on earth has art got to do with financial planning? Nothing and everything. Art is story and an insight into how the world is seen through the eyes of an artist, yet of course we are largely surmising and viewing through our own lens. When we are building your financial plan, and you are asked about what you may wish to do in the future, it’s common to think that you are expected to offer up some ideas of the places you would like to visit, the beaches you wish to experience, on your yacht whilst popping off for a hot air balloon ride, the golf club membership and advanced skills that you can acquire. There is nothing wrong with any of these things of course, but they are invariably dreamt up by the Don Drapers (Mad Men) of this world and not necessarily what you really wish to do. The truth is that our unique sense of who we are can become invisible even to ourselves as we become so accustomed to social expectations of what we should want from life. I also tend to believe that “if you don’t sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice”. The question I ask you may even be unfair in the sense that it is so rarely asked at a deep level, and to provide an answer immediately is far from straightforward.

Most of us will struggle to explore much of our personality beyond the boundaries of our upbringing, which is perhaps why there is currently a palpable sense of rose-tinted nostalgia of a time “when things were better”, for which most of us really mean – less different or less challenging to an inability to address the life force of life – growth. It is evident that the struggle for equality is ongoing, the word itself seems to be a nuclear trigger to right wingers.

To honour who you really are and to embed your values deeply into your financial plan, to my developing mind, seems to require a sense of where you wish to arrive (if indeed that is possible) but certainly what impact, memory, impression or legacy you wish to leave with those who care about you and hopefully ‘know’ you.

I suspect that a common problem is the notion of being ‘ordinary’, but I believe that ordinary is surely what we wish to be, an acceptance of who we are yet a willingness to learn, change and improve what we can. The inability of world leaders to own the reality of their ordinariness is the fuel for their narcissism and inability to actually serve. However there is the other sense of ordinary, being ordinary but uniquely appreciated.

Anyway, you are appreciated and certainly not invisible to our small team at Solomon’s. We recognise and value your story and seek to help you to allow it to unfold. Whether you realise it or not, you have already made an impression on us. I certainly hope that you do not feel invisible when dealing with any member of the team.

Remember, the goal isn’t more money, the goal is living life on your terms.

The Kerry James Marshall: The Histories exhibition runs at the RA until 18^th January 2026. Here is a link to a video of Marshall talking about nine shades of black. https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/video-kerry-james-marshall-black-paint

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Do you feel invisible?Jemima Thomas2026-01-26T11:51:55+00:00

Are you building a bridge to your future?

Dominic Thomas
Jan 2026 • 2 min read

Are you building a bridge to your future?

Financial planning straddles the past, present and future. Here at Solomon’s, we like to start with the end in mind, the second habit of “highly effective people”. We need to know what you are aiming for and where you are now. It’s helpful, significantly so, to also know enough about the history that has lead to where you are presently.

One of the many problems with great financial planning is that it requires time and therefore patience. A combination that is not something that is easy to master and arguably the antithesis of our current cultural impulses; it’s also problematic because you only get the long-term once.

Compounding investment returns is a crucial part of your plan, in practice we are not magicians and really have three main ‘dials’ to operate – spending, contributing and time. So I wonder if you would consider the example of an actual bridge – the one that you have probably known about since early childhood nursery rhymes and probably crossed more than once … London Bridge. Construction of the first stone bridge started in 1176 and took around 33 years to complete; at the time it was the sole bridge across the Thames.

For hundreds of years, London Bridge was the only crossing of the River Thames. It had a total monopoly.

If you wanted to cross the bridge to get to the City, you paid a fee
If you wanted to sail under the bridge, you paid a fee
If you wanted to fish off the bridge (ill-advised in the Thames most of the time!), you paid a fee
If you owned one of the 140 shops/houses on the bridge, you paid a fee

Since opening in 1209, those payments have been accumulating and administered by Bridge House Estates (now called City Bridge Foundation). To give a sense of scale, the 816 years of being open for business until 2025 is obviously a very long time indeed.

To give you a sense of what compounding can do, if you’d invested the princely sum of £100 in 1209 and made a 3% return every year for the last 816 years, you’d have £2,986,588,300,073 today.

Today, now a charity doing all sorts of work and also the owner of Blackfriars Bridge (1769), Southwark Bridge (1819), Tower Bridge (1894) and the most recent Millennium Bridge (2000), the Foundation has annual income of over £42m a year, of which around £10m is from admissions and visits. The latest accounts report assets worth over £1.6bn. This gives rather a lot of meaning to terms like “spanning the generations” and is some serious legacy planning! Imagine the wealth of history that the bridge has witnessed – albeit rebuilt several times.

References:

Report and Accounts: https://www.citybridgefoundation.org.uk/about/governance/annual-reviews-and-reports

Charity: https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/charity-search/-/charity-details/1035628/assets-and-liabilities?_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_organisationNumber=1035628

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Are you building a bridge to your future?Jemima Thomas2026-03-24T16:26:11+00:00

Is this The End?

Dominic Thomas
Jan 2026 • 3 min read

Is this The End?

One of the most difficult topics with new clients is a discussion about endings. Sometimes a new client is leaving an existing adviser or abandoning their former way of thinking about their finances; however you will probably gather that I’m more of the Stephen Covey persuasion … of starting with the end in mind. I encourage discussion about what will have been truly important when you reach the end of your life and look back on your decisions.

At the start of the month, I went to see a new play by David Eldridge at the Dorfman – National Theatre simply called End. It’s a single act with just two characters – Alfie (Clive Owen) and Julie (Saskia Reeves). I found it utterly engaging. Set in north London in June 2016, it’s a remarkable piece full of topical history and poignancy. Alfie and Julie are confronted with an inability to communicate well in the present for fear of the future and the legacy of the past; a very familiar condition. As the play only runs until 17^th January 2026 I doubt I will be providing many with problematic spoilers.

We quickly learn that Alfie has terminal cancer but has had enough of the treatment, therefore he is thinking about his ‘end’ and reminiscing, but perhaps romanticising it. He doesn’t want Julie or their daughter with him, therefore he will say his goodbyes and head off quietly, like cats do. He wants to be buried with his parents.

Julie is shocked at his reluctance to continue his treatment, she wants him to fight to live and has been scouring the internet for alternative treatments. She admits her own romanticised ideas of burial, but it wouldn’t be with her mother-in-law and she also notes what a practical problem it would be for her to make the trip to visit the site anyway.

As you might expect, there are heated and emotionally exhausting exchanges. We learn of their past relational problems, their disappointments with one another and their very deep real love. We learn of their careers, triumphs and setbacks, their ‘dirty laundry’ and some of their contradictions. Life and relationships are never without complexity if they are honest. The societal setting is also helpful – Brexit, the recent end of an era as Alfie’s team (West Ham) moved from Upton Park to the Olympic stadium and his particular taste in music, acting as a wonderful signifier of change. There are plenty of nods to the social forces that are about to be unleashed and how for many of us progressives, the London Olympics was the high point of the last five decades with a decline ever since.

Alfie and Julie just about manage to navigate the highly charged topic of impending death, something that many of us have experienced (and some of you very recently) and undoubtedly each audience will have been touched deeply by these experiences too; it is all too common and all too ordinary, but ordinarily ignored or avoided. Dashed hopes and expectations from a life that we have little real control over.

The truth is that great financial planning is about your ‘story’, wherever it may have started and whatever direction it may take. My role is to help you to clarify what is important, therefore bringing a sense of structure and direction – and then build the financial pathway to facilitate this, but of course, we cannot predict the future. I have a crystal ball in the office as a bit of a joke, but I rarely use it in a meeting (it’s a fairly lame joke and to be honest I forget about it!). The point is of course that on one hand we all would quite like to know the future, believing it would provide the illusion of comfort, but the reality is almost precisely the opposite. Knowing the future strips the unpredictability of life and its joy. The little that we can truly control and hope to master is our response. Much like you, Alfie and Julie, I am also a work in progress with much to learn. I wonder how your conversation’s going about the one certainty?

Therefore as we face a new year, which appears to have begun with more chaos, quite deliberately manufactured by a deranged right wing, I am mindful of the challenges to be confronted, whilst acknowledging that people are people and beliefs, however baseless, are rather difficult to change.

Is this the end? Yes and no. It is the end of something but the start of something else. What I do know is what you know … life is brief – so make the most of it. Was the play worth seeing? Most definitely, brilliant performances from both of them. You will probably be able to see it on the National Theatre streaming service. Here is their trailer which gives little away (as a trailer should!):

Ref: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/end/

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Is this The End?Jemima Thomas2026-01-20T13:45:24+00:00

New Year’s Resolutions … Resolved?

Debbie Harris
Jan 2026 • 1 min read

New Year’s Resolutions … Resolved

We are now comfortably into 2026 and most of us have probably already broken our New Year’s resolutions and there is a tonne of ‘scientific’ research about why we fail at these so quickly.

I won’t bore you with the details (willpower / arbitrary / vague / emotionally thin / fresh start illusion etc), but thought I would offer an alternative for anyone feeling deflated about this!

I used to religiously set New Year’s resolutions on December 31^st having given them zero thought and no meaningful attention. They were often vague and usually unrealistic!

I read an email several years ago that happened to land in my inbox at an opportune moment (1^st January) which suggested setting my goals for the year … in February (revolutionary!)

The author of the email had some good advice about how to do this … like making your goals challenging yet achievable (standard) but also recommended trying ‘small wins’ and far fewer ‘ongoing’ goals. Most importantly they talked about reframing the actual words we use – thus turning them into an “identity system”.

So now my annual goals are very (oddly!) specific and many of them are ‘one and done’; some of them are teeny tiny non-negotiables. For the ‘big things’, I avoid goals like “lose weight” and “read more” and substitute these with things like “this year I will become the kind of person who usually eats one piece of fruit a day” and “this year I am determined to read at least a chapter a week”

Life is too short to beat ourselves up over failing to meet self-imposed unrealistic (or idealistic) expectations. Whilst I am all in favour of self-improvement, it’s important to tell ourselves often:

“you are good enough as you are”.

I wish you a belated Happy New Year and hope that 2026 is full of great times and memorable moments.

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New Year’s Resolutions … Resolved?Jemima Thomas2026-01-14T14:25:13+00:00

Clickbait headlines anyone?

Dominic Thomas
Jan 2026 • 3 min read

Clickbait headlines anyone?

I honestly don’t know whether the headline “Majority of UK divorce settlements don’t consider pensions assets” was a deliberate attempt to get eyes on the page or held any truth. It would seem very unlikely to be correct if it means we are to assume that solicitors specialising in divorce “don’t consider” a pension. What is more likely meant, is that most pensions don’t get split up as a result of divorce; in other words – there are other assets around to come to an agreement.

It won’t surprise you that after a house, a pension is most people’s largest and most valuable financial asset – which always makes me wonder why so few people get advice about theirs. The ONS has data on divorces in England and Wales that goes back to 1858 (there were 24!).

The reducing number of divorces is open to interpretation, with the most obvious being that fewer people are getting married. The chart below shows the gradual decline in marriages (of all forms) since the peak in 1972 of 426,241. The pandemic saw a decline, but interestingly, there wasn’t a ‘double-whammy’ to make up for this.

It has been said that the fastest way to lose a fortune is to divorce, and it is indeed almost certain that without proper consideration of all marital assets, divorce will be very costly. The data backs up the statement that women generally have smaller pensions by an average of around £53,000 (for a variety of reasons) and we are all aware that pensions can be complex. The two basic types are final salary (Defined Benefit) which are a promise of a future income based on salary and service, and an investment-based pension (Defined Contribution) which is “simply a matter of the pot size” though this reflects the amount paid in, charges, investment profile and success.

Despite the fact that it is surprising that only 11% of divorces in the last two years have had a pension attachment order, I don’t believe for a moment that the majority of solicitors ignore pension assets; rather it is the agreement on how these are split up that often surprises me. Many will see the value of a home in the very real present to be of greater value than an income in the future.

What I would urge divorcees and their legal representatives to consider is a proper financial plan – a model of cashflow requirements into the future. This may do much to take some of the pain and heat out of discussions; with all parties able to be realistic about what is possible.

Divorce may not be something that you feel is relevant to you, but perhaps someone you know is struggling with this or you have children who may need to carefully consider the financial implications of the marriage contract. It is widely reported in the media that January is the most popular month to start divorce proceedings; the suggestion being that having got through Christmas and the New Year, newfound resolve is apparent. In practice, March is generally the month that most petitions are started, maybe it’s something to do with the approach of the end of the tax year?

As ever, here to help.

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Clickbait headlines anyone?Jemima Thomas2026-03-24T16:26:59+00:00

What Would Clooney Do?

Dominic Thomas
Dec 2025 • 2 min read

What Would Clooney Do?

In our latest edition of Spotlight, three clients outlined a little about their initial experiences of retirement – each rather different, but possessing some commonality. By way of another example (ok a bit of a stretch) the new film Jay Kelly starring George Clooney is a fairly stark look at the choices a hugely successful actor has made in his four decade career.

Those of you who know the Directorial work of Noah Baumbach will not be surprised to see a reasonable amount of self-disclosure in the plot. Kelly is hugely successful but has probably reached the twilight of his career (never a clear case for actors). He finds himself in the empty nest syndrome and reflecting on his life choices following a meeting with a former fellow student. Their careers took very different paths. Kelly is left clutching awards and accolades, but chasing a sense of connection as he chases his daughter around Europe.

It’s not about right or wrong, but promotes a thoughtful approach to the choices that Kelly makes, selecting his career over the alternatives. To some extent we all have similar choices, or have had them, rarely are they easy; most of us haven’t really had the luxury of seven figure (or more) short-term projects like a Hollywood actor, but rather more mundane – paying the mortgage, holidays, school fees and so on. It’s not always easy to remember that these are also choices – and who is to say whether they are right or wrong; the point is surely that we make them thoughtfully and consciously.

As we enter another new year, the one certainty is that time evaporates and all of us become increasingly aware of its preciousness and that it slips through our fingers; before long we all find ourselves at a point wondering about our choices. At your next planning meeting, you may want to check in with us to ensure we have really grasped your values, the lifestyle that you have worked for and wish to retain. Assumptions are rarely accurate and invariably disappointing, and our mission is to help you verbalise yours and help you achieve the peace of mind that comes from a clear, robust plan.

I enjoyed the film, which is currently on the Netflix platform and it’s had mixed reviews, but hey, that’s the joy of art. Anyway, Mr Clooney turns 65 this May and would still have to wait until 2028 to collect his State Pension if he were a UK resident. He may find himself waiting a little longer for a third Oscar, but he rarely has to wait long for a coffee or a compliment. Devilishly handsome and seemingly a thoroughly decent American.

Here’s the official trailer for Jay Kelly:

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What Would Clooney Do?Jemima Thomas2025-12-17T14:11:36+00:00

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