Financial Freedom Day Archives - Financial Planning in Surrey

How are you spending your time?

Jemima Thomas
April 2023 • 3 min read

How are you spending your time?

We always want our clients to be able to prioritise what enriches them in life. We hone your financial plan to suit your needs, with an eye on making sure that your spare time is spent doing what you love with ‘financial comfort’ making that possible. With a fair few bank holidays on the horizon, we hope that you have been able to set some time aside to spend it doing the things that bring you joy.

We’d love to hear how you are spending your long weekends in May. Will you be surrounded by loved ones? Engaging in a favourite hobby? Travelling somewhere? Or simply taking time to relax and breathe? Whatever you have planned we hope it’s thoroughly enjoyable and gives you the opportunity to rest and recharge.

Spotlight (our client magazine) is due to be in your hands very soon, and as usual we’ve had a number of clients who have contributed. It’s always lovely to be able to present real examples in Spotlight of lives well lived – which is why we do what we do here at Solomon’s; Time well spent deserves to be celebrated and your story shared.

BACK TO ALL BLOGS

Blue Jasmine lacks any self-reflection

Woody Allen is 77 and still doing what he loves – making movies and making music (he is a very accomplished Jazz musician). His latest film plots the downfall of a New York socialite (played by Cate Blanchett) who is married to a property developer. The story begins to unfold the chaos and denial in which Jasmine loses herself. This isn’t the classic American story, but the opposite of the traditional Cinderella tale. The film is very well acted, but I found myself having little or no real empathy with the main character, who was so self absorbed and lacking in any real self-reflection that having any empathy for her was difficult to say the least, despite the efforts of Cate Blanchett. This isn’t my usual reaction to a Woody Allen movie.

Financial Freedom Day

What has this got to do with financial planning? Well several things. Firstly Woody Allen is doing what he loves. He doesn’t live by other peoples expectations of “retirement”. I really like this about him (and many others). To me, retirement is not an event in the way that most mean it to be. I prefer to think of it as financial freedom day – the day when you don’t have to work to pay the bills to have the lifestyle, but you may choose to do so. However the film itself touches on ideas about trust, value, esteem and money. There are valuable reminders that “if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is”. The suggestion that turning a blind eye is no excuse when it comes to financial fraud and never (never) put all your wealth into a single investment.

Filter Out The Junk

Some might watch the film and think it wouldn’t happen to them, but the problem with investment scams is that they rarely sound “too good to be true” and often looking under the bonnet needs more than a cursory glance, a message repeated throughout the film when it comes to assessing suitors. A significant proportion of my time is spent preventing clients from making mistakes such as falling victim to yet another financial scam. On many occasions, it isn’t even a scam, its just a reaction to the constant media storm about the state of the world’s markets which is invariably counter-productive to their own well being. A good adviser helps filter out much of the junk and will not bombard you with investment information. Financial planning is not really about investing. Its about the lifestyle you want and how you should arrange your finances to get there and stay there or make you aware of the consequences of your own actions. Sometimes this is an uncomfortable truth, some prefer to ignore it and look the other way, rather like Jasmine.

Blue Jasmine is showing in nationwide at the moment, for more information check the IMDB page.

Dominic Thomas: Solomons IFA