Everybody Has A Plan (Todos tenemos un plan)

This week has been a cinematic one for me. It is the BFI (British Film Institute) London Film Festival.  One of the films that I saw was “Everybody Has A Plan”. Now call me a cynic, but no they don’t. In fact my experience is that the majority of people do not have anything vaguely resembling a plan. By “plan”, I mean a deliberate, thought through approach to what they want from life and how to set about making it a reality. That is in no way to detract from what is otherwise a really good film about the choices that twin brothers make and how wishing for someone else’s life may not be the best approach to changing your lot.

Living Deliberately

Financial planning when done properly doesn’t come from a place of envy. It comes from a sense of connecting your personal values and integrity with your money. Clients use us to help them maintain or improve their existing lifestyle, it is very rare that I meet clients that want to downsize their lifestyle – though I do meet some, who are always very interesting people. Many people drift in life as it throws up its challenges and changes. Some of this we can control and some we cannot (or at least if you really figure out how, let me know). We can determine our focus, what we want, yet few people actually verbalise this in a clear manner, let alone share it with their spouse or partner or financial adviser. I think that this has something to do with the fear of failure, if it’s not said or written down and it doesn’t happen, then who can tell? Whilst entirely understandable, fear should not be our main guide in life.

Are You Ready For The Truth?

The film explores the difficulty of several relationships – one where a husband and wife have very different expectations of their marriage and desire for children, another the belief that there is no escape from a life of crime – to become a bully or become a victim seem to be the only choices. Good financial planning is more than a binary set of choices +/- life is rather more complex. Good financial planning takes hope and gives it a strategy. Helping clients to visualise what it is that they want from the future can also help – there is certainly some resonance in the notion that “seeing is believing” (now I’m in danger of living up to my own surname). Anyway, enough said – here is the trailer for the film. It is in Spanish and well subtitled. The lead actor is very impressive (Viggo Mortensen, who was in the Lord of the Rings trilogy).