skills Archives - Financial Planning in Surrey

Captain of a 737

Debbie Harris
Nov 2024 • 2 min read

Captain of a 737 (sort of) – for an hour!

In my ongoing endeavour to do new and different things this year, I recently spent an hour flying a Boeing 737 flight simulator!

My ‘children’ will tell you that I am utterly dreadful at video games as my hand-to-eye coordination is shockingly rubbish, so I went into this particular experience with the mantra “please don’t let me crash”.

Suffice to say, my visual efforts were much better than my rely-on-the-instruments efforts, but I successfully took off and landed the ‘aircraft’ which felt like a massive achievement frankly!

At the end of the session, my co-pilot (*ahem!) said that I had learned a tiny fraction of what pilots have to learn. I laughed and told him that I would not ever in a million years be able to do what they do – absolutely not my skillset!

Which reminded me that we delegate tasks to other people all the time – train drivers, mechanics, plumbers, doctors, financial planners – because they are trained to do what you cannot (or have no desire to do).

And did I crash? Well no – at least … not the airplane. The simulator software on the other hand – I managed to crash that – TWICE!

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Captain of a 737Jemima Thomas2024-11-21T15:02:02+00:00

Money management for children

Debbie Harris
Feb 2024 • 2 min read

We don’t need no education…

It is widely recognised and acknowledged that children start forming their spending and saving habits as young as seven years old; yet still we do not teach money management skills in our Primary schools here in England.

Largely therefore our children develop their relationship with money in a very organic way – largely from what they see or hear (from parents, friends, advertising, TV programmes, social media etc); which means it is basically a game of luck as to whether a child learns good habits or bad habits!

The Scout Association has seen this ‘gap’ in the education of our young people and has introduced a merit badge called the Money Skills Award (with some funding from HSBC and consultation with the charity Young Money).

In order to achieve this badge, children have to complete a selection of money-related tasks … anything from creating their own currency to budgeting for a trip.

Bear Grylls, UK Chief Scout, hopes the new badge will help Cub Scouts and Beaver Scouts develop life-long financial skills “in a way that only Scouts can by helping them build their confidence and understanding of money in hands-on format”.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase in use of contactless payment methods, young children typically may not see coins and notes very often anymore and instead have a sense of money coming from a ‘magic card’ that seemingly has an endless supply!

Older children are also suffering from the impact of the pandemic – with literacy and numeracy ‘falling short’; the knock-on effect of which is that millions of people have problems budgeting effectively, planning for the future and making informed decisions about their finances.

At Solomon’s we have a real and genuine desire to educate people (regardless of age) around the sensible and wise use of their resources and we often look for ways to impart useful information in an easy to understand format.

For any of our clients with young children (or grandchildren), if you would like to receive any resources from us that might be helpful – please do let us know; we are building a useful ‘bank’ of information from various sources that we could pass on to you.

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Money management for childrenJemima Thomas2024-02-01T09:53:09+00:00

Today I found myself in a hard hat and reflective jacket

I was reminded this morning about something that is often pretty obvious to most people but seems to pass me by on occasion. The outcome you seek is not about the process, it is not about the tools, its about the result. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m a process believer and of course having the right tools for the job is vital. However I am prone (as many of my peers also seem to be) of wishing that there was “one bit of kit” that enabled me to do my job fully. The reality of being a good financial planner (let alone a great one) is that this is still a pipe dream.

I have a lot of “kit” yes it doesn’t look terribly big or significant, because it resides mainly in cyberspace and on my computer. It would be nice to have a single application for client work, in theory this is achievable, but only in theory and assuming everyone (or enough people) want the same thing and work the same way – which of course is at best a temporary condition. I have a plethora of software and a fair amount of hardware – enough to make the moon landing look like a walk in the park. I need to accept that my various tools (which are invariably fairly expensive given the industry I operate in) are suitable at different times for different jobs and different aspects of the same piece of work.

So what happened this morning to remind me of this? well the local council has finally decided that our road is worthy of proper repair (delight to the local residents). We were only given at best 24 hours notice that the road would be closed and cars needed moving – not ideal for those working abroad or on holiday. Rather like a small boy I gaped at the various trucks, diggers, scrapers… all German of course! that came together as a team to each perform their task like a… well good orchestra may be stretching it, but it was pretty impressive. “So what will you do about the cars in your way?” I asked. “We’ll lift ’em out, photograph them and put them in another road… that skip too”… if only I could do that with some of the pension companies that I have to deal with. In essence, we have a tool for the job and will get things out of the way so that we can get it done. There were, as you might imagine a lot of blokes in fluorescent jackets each operating machinery and playing a part. No it hadn’t really occurred to me to properly observe this along the motorway in the days before Sat Nav and I set staring at lines of cones. It was a helpful reminder that the single tool to dig up and relay the road properly, does not currently exist… similarly, whilst I may have to combine software applications, reports, websites and so on, the job is the outcome and having the right tools is important, but knowing which one to use, when and how to orchestrate a team is where the effectiveness really shines.

If you are a client (or thinking of becoming one) you have to put up with a lot “bits” of information, requests for it and so on, I know this can feel a little frustrating… isn’t there just an easy way to create a financial plan? I can assure you that what we ask for is necessary to get the job done to the best of our abilities. I can assure you that the end result is worth the effort, once it is neatly packaged and put into clear terms that make sense and above all, provides information to inform your decisions…we are, after all, laying a new road to your future.

Dominic Thomas – Solomons IFA

Today I found myself in a hard hat and reflective jacketDominic2023-12-01T12:23:40+00:00