life Archives - Financial Planning in Surrey

How would you Cope?

Dominic Thomas
Feb 2026 • 3 min read

How would you Cope?

Amour

It’s the award season for films and one previous winner is the French film Amour (2012). It’s beautiful but a really tough watch about a topic that many of us will experience.

George (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) are a retired couple, they have been married for decades and are enjoying their retirement in Paris. Anne used to teach piano and has helped launch several professional careers.

Life changes dramatically for them when Anne has a stroke and the couple navigate all it entails. This is a brutally frank depiction of living with a degenerative condition. They experience a mixture of responses and support and have some firm views of their own.

The sudden upheaval shifts their focus from the finer things of life to the basic tasks of surviving as comfortably as possible. Fortunately they have ample financial and emotional resources to weather the initial challenges and are able to look back appreciatively on their long life together.

When we create your financial plan, we emphasise the importance of living on your own terms and having those experiences that you can whilst you are fit and healthy enough to do so. When we have a decent level of health we take these things for granted, often ignoring the warnings from health experts and our good fortune.

None of us know how long we will live, but it’s also the case that we don’t know how long we can live with good enough health. The ONS data for 2024 showed that in England 531,953 people died, the bulk of them (69%) were over 75 as you might expect, but 26% were 50-74 (yes, so 5% were under 50). The data doesn’t tell us how unwell they were or for how long; we do know most causes of death but not the duration of the decline. Strokes account for nearly 10% of deaths each year.

You may be reading this and thinking – come on Dominic, could you be a bit more cheery and less pessimistic. In truth, I doubt the data will really encourage anyone to make the most of this short time on earth, what may be encouraging is the confidence you can take from a well-crafted financial plan, based around your values and hopes about the future.

It’s the ‘living with regret’ that I think most people struggle with, realising a little too late that they had other choices. Your plan can be a bit like a sliding doors moment, a what if …

Let’s ensure that you live your life on your own terms as far as possible, and whilst we are at it, let’s tell everyone that this is the real purpose of a decent financial planner, not simply to find a better ISA or pension. Those are the tools not the purpose.

It makes a lot of sense to also talk through the difficult issues of personal crisis and life changing health issues.

The charity The Stroke Association report that on average around 400 people a day in the UK have a stroke. That’s about 1 every 3 minutes.

Here is the trailer for Amour which took best film in a foreign language at the Oscars and BAFTAs in 2013. This may be a good way to prompt some discussion about the subject and how we might think about it together in relation to your plan.

Click here to tell a friend about the power of a proper financial plan.

References:

How many deaths in the UK?

What is the data for Stroke in the UK?

What is Critical illness cover?

What is Estate Planning?

Who do Solomons help?

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How would you Cope?Jemima Thomas2026-02-26T16:30:51+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”

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Will We Remember Not to Forget?Jemima Thomas2026-01-27T16:47:51+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 Thomas2026-01-22T16:55:00+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

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

Would you hire a person to pretend to be your… ?

Dominic Thomas
Nov 2025 • 2 min read

Would you hire a person to pretend to be your…?

One of the adages most of us grew up with (perhaps negatively) is the idea of keeping up with the Joneses. The societal pressure to use our money to buy things and experiences so that we fit in with our neighbours (who do the same thing). I think it sits in an uneasy relationship with the religious concept about coveting.

As is invariably the case, real life is more nuanced than a list of dos and don’ts. There is a degree of merit to be found in improving our lives and communities (if that is what it is); on the other hand it can be rather vapid consumerism that is nothing more than tokenism, ‘society’ is surely what we choose to make it and conformity is the method of control and regulation.

The film Rental Family considers a more extreme aspect of Japanese family life and the expectations placed upon people to save face. This is on many levels a wonderful thing but of course has its evident flaws – an inability to accept the reality of difference.

It is very debatable if Japan is actually extreme at all in this regard, perhaps they are merely more honest about the problem than we may pretend. The recent rise in far right rhetoric is quite evidently appealing to those who like conformity, uniformity and control with little regard for the reality of difference or a hatred of it.

Rental Family is essentially a story about the need for support and understanding of difference and an acceptance of it. In a crowded world where isolation is rife, despite the illusion of increased interconnection, we can see that many people struggle with their sense of aloneness, sadly an increasing number (over 6,000 a year) take their own lives.

Platitudes don’t really help, practical support and attention may, the effort is certainly worthwhile. The idea that in our ‘service economy’ we could now sell the service to act as a family member and actually make life better, which of course isn’t always true of actual family members. One might also consider that transactional relationships are nothing new – most of our monarchs have been based on transactions, not love.

Set in Japan, we witness where this service might be deployed – in an apology, a wedding, any social event, the selection process for a child applying for a school, someone to show interest in the end of a career (or life) or even a mourner – something that is actually a very ancient ‘paid for service’.

Who better than an actor to pretend? Someone who is skilled in character and responding to context.

As a financial planner, I hope that it is evident that we offer rather more than simply arranging money stuff. To be blunt, the part of my work that I enjoy the most is getting to know you, your values, personality, friends and family. It’s your story and is what interests me.

Our role is to help you make your story more obvious, more aligned to your stated values and to help remind you that it (life) is mercilessly brief. Our world has an unlimited number of distractions from the moment we wake until our head returns to the pillow (and that’s for those of us who have an ability to switch off at that point).

Money is not the goal, it is the lubricant to your life, its feature is to function, not to count.

As for the film, I utterly loved it, it’s beautiful, and it reminded me that I would like to visit Japan, a world that seems so familiar yet different, that is perhaps its beauty to me.

References:

ONS data on UK (England and Wales) suicide rates

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Would you hire a person to pretend to be your… ?Jemima Thomas2025-11-21T10:09:56+00:00

What about Grief?

Dominic Thomas
Nov 2025 • 3 min read

What about Grief?

The taboos of my childhood era were sex, death and religion. These, I was told (not by my parents), were topics that would divide and were not really up for discussion. The way the world seems to have evolved; the only remaining taboo seems to me to be death.

Like many of you and all of us eventually, I have had an ample dose of bereavement in my lifetime. The loss of very close friends, family members and clients. I can (obviously) only speak to my own experience and how facing each has been different, depending on the circumstances and relationship. There is a common process for grief or loss, but each has its own nuance.

An attempt to reflect on the misery, devastation and despair of losing a spouse is brought to life on screen from the book by Max Porter. I’ve not read the book and now intend to do so; the film attempts to make the unfilmable a film. Visually violently and bleak, it’s not one for those traumatised by Hitchcock’s The Birds and suffering ornithophobia.

As I watched I couldn’t help but think of one of my closest friends and wonder if I had even come close to helping him enough as he wrestled with the challenge of raising two boys alone. I realise that many people do this as single parents (mainly women) but that isn’t quite the same as also processing the permanent loss of the other parent forever. No conversations or arguments about the exhausting parenting experience with one another.

I’m curious and a little apprehensive to learn what he would make of it. The film shows ineffective conversation and platitudes of help. I hope that my approach of simply doing stuff was more useful. As a taboo, perhaps most of us aren’t really confident in our ability to talk about death with one another. I hope that I’m not misguided in thinking that I don’t find the topic threatening, I’m comfortable sitting with the uneasy … my psychotherapist spouse may want to add some thought to that though.

I found the film difficult to watch, not because of its content but because I was bottling up a list of seven things that could have been done to make the process better.

A properly connected therapist
A cleaner
Someone skilled to help with childcare
Someone to alleviate or handle a lot of the practical administration of death
A lot of life assurance
Relationships with friends who properly engage and get in the mire with you
A community

The sense that we have to do everything on our own is one of those ridiculously badly communicated notions set at school about our independence.

You do not have to do everything on your own. That’s certainly harder when you are single or your circle of friends is relatively small or you don’t have any obvious community. However in my experience, those can be discovered, built and encouraged. Even as your financial planner, we will more than readily get involved to help you with any elements within out remit.

You don’t have to be a genius or expert in all of life’s topics. We are here to help you master money management, we don’t expect you to simply figure it all out yourself and should grief arrive at your door, we will be on hand. In the meantime, we will encourage you to be ready by being prepared and making the most of now.

References:

Book: Grief the thing with feathers
Make your Will

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What about Grief?Jemima Thomas2025-11-07T16:28:45+00:00

Is there a ‘crisis of meaning’ in retirement?

Jemima Thomas
Sept 2025 • 2 min read

Is there a ‘crisis of meaning’ in retirement?

I recently read an article about why the workplace is facing a ‘crisis of meaning’, and why and how to fix it. It’s a topic thrown around a lot this year with close friends of mine as we recently turned 30. Some of us are beginning to really flourish at work & can start to see our careers taking off, whilst others are beginning to question whether to start over entirely, or are feeling incredibly depressed with the notion of doing their job for the next 40 years, but simply don’t see what they’d do instead…

The article was largely reiterating that finding purpose in one’s job doesn’t have to be the ‘be all and end all’; but rather that your work being meaningful is strongly associated with greater contentment. Whilst this post isn’t meant to probe you to question your working life, there is a noticeable similarity on the meaning of work, that we sometimes have with clients and their retirement. There is the uncomfortable reality of what day to day life is going to look like without work, particularly when work has been a large source of gratification, so we know for some of you this can be incredibly anxiety-inducing. For the first time (pretty much ever) you will be faced with asking yourself questions work has largely been answering for you (or covering your need to ask entirely).

On the surface, it seems easy to conjure up a list of fun things to do when you retire, but imagining an average day, let alone how you’d like to live ‘the rest of your life’ can be hard.

Those of you who have been a long-term client of ours will know these questions are not new, nor are they ones we shy away from asking here at Solomon’s. So here is a small collection of questions I hope some of you begin to entertain before retirement becomes your reality.

What do you want to spend your time doing?
What do you enjoy doing?
What do you want to achieve with your life?
What makes your life meaningful?
Think of some people you admire – what do you admire about them?
What gives your life purpose?
What makes you feel like you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing?
What matters to you?
What values do you think are the most important?
How would you like people to describe you?

For our next edition of Spotlight we will be covering this topic further, so I would also like to ask those of you who have retired successfully … please share with us how your experience has been and what insights you can offer to those about to reach a similar milestone. You can reach me at jemima@solomonsifa.co.uk

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Is there a ‘crisis of meaning’ in retirement?Jemima Thomas2025-09-19T10:23:17+01:00

Do you know what you really want?

Dominic Thomas
July 2025 • 2 min read

Do you know what you really want?

There are lots of difficult big questions in life, one of them seems relatively simple, but most of us find it hard to put into words precisely what we feel. What is it that you desire? What is it that you really want?

It’s tempting to list a number of things or experiences, perhaps a sense of wellbeing or contentment. Whatever you wish for, it is likely that it will alter over time. When you don’t have something you tend to want it, when you possess it, there’s something else. It’s almost as if we are programmed to remain restlessly preoccupied with something other than what we have. Some of us are better at coming to terms with this than others; some simply deny it happens.

Think back to when you were finishing school, as many are at the moment. You were probably looking forward to finally leaving the confines of your classroom, hoping for a good long summer holiday and the right grades to get you to your next step. If you went to University, graduating and finding a good job and somewhere to live, then saving for your first home, then wanting a mortgage and then not wanting a mortgage, worrying about your career steps, your loved ones and your retirement, then if you will maintain your health and will you need help.

There is a sense of never really arriving.

We may experience certain critical moments in life when our values are brought more into focus, stress tends to be the catalyst for this. Love, death, sickness, betrayal, loss or simply change. These are moments where our values become tested and often the noise of life falls away and exposes what is actually important to us.

At Solomon’s, our planning attempts to evoke responses from you about the life you want to live. There are no judgements, no wrong answers, but of course it isn’t always easy to verbalise what you want when asked. Most of us don’t have a bolt of lightning moment when we know, it tends to evolve over time, sometimes many years. I think that for some people, a sense of purpose is really important, or connection to their community, however that is defined. Whatever it is I imagine and hope that it produces a sense of joy and deep calmness, a sense of your unique character being in a state of nirvana.

When life feels precarious or endangered, a sense of anxiety naturally rises, so whilst a financial plan cannot control the external, we can at least provide a roadmap for your route to contentment. One of the most common notions behind financial planning is that it brings about a sense of ‘peace of mind’. It’s a phrase that I’ve heard regularly over the years, but it’s never really sat well on my tongue. Any and every good financial plan has an acknowledgement of uncertainty – we don’t know what the future holds. We can align our finances and actions with our values and prepare for the future, getting organised, disciplined, making better choices and decisions.

For me, the thing I want, other than deep human connections, is a sense of limited freedom – I will always have limitations, but within those it is the freedom to choose and the sense of empowerment that it brings.

How about you?

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Do you know what you really want?Jemima Thomas2025-07-18T10:47:11+01:00

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