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

What month would you be in if life were a year?

Dominic Thomas
Aug 2025 • 3 min read

What month would you be in if life were a year?

One of the most difficult aspects of my work is approaching the subject of death. We covered some practical elements of this in our last edition of Spotlight (Spring 2025). It’s a very difficult topic, one of the last taboos. Most of us would prefer to avoid the discussion, in fact I have even met a couple of people who told me not to talk about it because it would hasten their death, which is one of the more strange responses I have had.

Most of us grow up with the expectation that life will be long, we will reach old age and have a lengthy, good retirement. We all come to experience loss; some of us at a very early age. We are often shocked by the news of someone young, or relatively young who has died. It feels as though their lives have been cut short.

The purpose of raising the subject is not to be the voice of doom, but to enable you to really do two things. Firstly, prepare for your death, which means getting your legal documents in place and ensuring that your beneficiaries are properly taken care of. Secondly, it is a reminder that life is brief, none of us know when it is our time, so we ought to be attempting to live a full life, one that doesn’t have too much deferred into the future, but feels very fulfilling here and now in the present.

You may have seen all sorts of data showing the average life expectancy of a man or woman in the UK. There is even a “death clock” which takes your age now and calculates the expected day of your death based on your health, outlook and country of residence. This of course is an informed guess based on international averages. The reality is that if you have a financial planner, you have money. And if you have money, you probably have the ability to access better healthcare and make better dietary/fitness choices. You probably (not necessarily) have a lower level of stress. As a result, you are likely to outlive the average.

However, most of us rarely think about this and go about our lives with the expectation of a fairly long and healthy future ahead of us still. We tend to think life will stretch out ahead of us, there will be ample time. However, if life was a calendar year, I wonder what month you would be in?

If we were to consider each month representing eight years of our lifetime, then life expectancy would be 96. Turning 56 means it’s July with the expectation of a few summer months. At 72 you have reached October. I wonder if thinking about life this way might encourage us to take each day a little more thankfully – and thoughtfully. The average person would have each month represent seven years, so at 56 it’s August already.

It’s a bit alarming and perhaps morbid, but surely an important reminder that life is very brief indeed. We don’t know what the future holds, but ask yourself, do you really want to be spending a significant proportion of it worrying about money or attempting to manage it? Ultimately, that is the point of delegating your financial planning to us, so that you can go and do the important things that you value most.

Sadly, I regularly meet people with diagnosed conditions that shorten their lives; and whilst we all know that money cannot buy time, actually you can create more time to do the things that you value because of the backdrop of a great financial plan based on what’s important to you. It is never about you spending valuable time managing your own investments.

References:

Death Clock: https://www.death-clock.org/

ONS mortality tables: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths

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What month would you be in if life were a year?Jemima Thomas2025-08-21T15:39:46+01:00

Money & film: A Complete Unknown

Dominic Thomas
Jan 2025 • 2 min read

Money & film: A Complete Unknown

The New Year is very much underway; my inbox has been full of emails from investment companies telling me what they expect from 2025. These days I’m rather more circumspect and much more defensive about your money than I was 25 years ago. It’s a year like any other; unknown. We know some things will almost certainly happen (they are in the diary); things we expect to happen and then a plethora of stuff we suspect might happen and then the things we will be surprised by. Sounding a little like Donald Rumsfeld – we don’t know what we don’t know.

What we do know is that your financial plan is best based around your own values, circumstances and expectations. We know that over the longer term, holding global equities provides the best chance of maintaining and improving the purchasing power of your money, but with this comes volatility.

There’s a new film A Complete Unknown; the story of Bob Dylan, a man whose name most people will know. It charts the start of his career in 1961, aged 20, meeting Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger, both successful musicians of their day who recognise his talent which provides the platform for his arrival on the scene. It’s a time of change, JFK is sworn in as Number 35, The Beatles are starting out, The Bay of Pigs invasion, civil rights protestors are harassed by Police, beaten by KKK. There are riots in Paris, a host of stand offs between Soviets and the US, the Cold War really starts and the year closes with JFK sending 18,000 special military advisers to Vietnam. Despite all the disasters and uncertainty, 1961 saw the US market up about 19%.

The film explores Dylan’s rise to fame as a folk singer, his relationship with Joan Baez and his need to continually change, adapt, leave and move on. Some, it would seem (like Seegers), wanted him to help restore folk, but Dylan found this suffocating and a tie to the past that was unhelpful. His transition to the electric guitar was unwelcome by most in the folk scene.

Dylan is now 83 and has his next birthday in May. He is undoubtedly a survivor, his career has been long in the making with over 125 million records sold world-wide making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. He has been the change and witnessed it, but often it has been a slow train coming…

Your planning is best viewed in the long-term. Whatever the world throws at us in 2025, take the long-term view. Change is constant.

Here is the trailer for the new film.

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Money & film: A Complete UnknownJemima Thomas2025-02-07T15:53:47+00:00

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.

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How are you spending your time?Jemima Thomas2025-01-23T10:50:57+00:00

Curry & fi-naan-cial planning

Curries financial planning (Fi-naan-cial planning)

In my opinion, nothing can beat a homemade curry to warm your cockles as we approach another cold, British winter. But last week, as I was bearing the brunt of chopped onions I thought to myself ‘What could be worse than this? Ah! I know! Writing a blog about it.’ All joking aside, it occurred to me how similar the process of cooking is to financial planning. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions on this …

Preparation is hardly the highlight of either endeavor, but as in all things, one of the most essential. Imagine you’ve chopped your onions, garlic & ginger before moving on to the chillies, only to find you forgot to buy them or you don’t have enough. The horror! (“In my book a Korma is pointless, it’s futile. I won’t touch it.” A curry needs heat.)

I’m also a fan of smoother curries than usual, which requires several ingredients to be chopped very finely or blitzed in a food processor – but everyone has different preferences (whether we are talking about food or what they will do with their financial freedom).

Once the initial prep work is done, it’s time to heat up the pan and get your aromatics in. Starting with a small amount of vegetable oil and a reasonably large amount of butter/ghee. Fat means flavour and will make your sauce rich and velvety. Onions are added first (it is important to remember that the order in which you do things matters…), followed by garlic and lastly the chilli & ginger. Adding ingredients one after the other rather than all at the same time will help layer the flavour of the sauce; giving depth to the dish. Often we do things for clients here at Solomon’s in waves or phases – the timing and order of those is important (even though at times it may seem arbitrary).

Once the vegetables are cooked through and slightly softened, your home will smell incredible but that’s far from the end of the story … we haven’t even added any spices yet! The importance of mixing the spices with the aromatics in the frying pan is that as you toast the spices, they’ll begin to release all of their wonderful oils & aromas. This takes time. At this point you’ve got a curry paste that can be smelled simultaneously in multiple postcodes.

Only a keen eye and an experienced hand knows when the time is right to combine the elements of the paste with the base of your sauce. I like to use passata (sieved tomatoes) due to that smoothness factor, but personal preference plays a part here. The two need to be mixed well, so you have to be fairly vigorous and focused on the task at hand. At this point, I tend to add some fresh coriander to provide yet another level of flavour to the sauce, though I use a clever herb infusion device that hangs off the side of the pan which allows for easy retrieval of spent herbs… it’s a universal truth that experts in their field often have tools (and talents) at their disposal that are not commonly found elsewhere.

The final step is to simply add cream or crème fraiche. This will help further the silky richness of the sauce. All you need to do is bring the sauce back up to temperature. Just before it starts boiling, lower the heat and allow the curry to simmer and thicken for as long as you can hold off the urge to eat it. Generally the longer it’s left for flavours to get to know each other and any water to cook out, the better the result. We often talk about taking a long-term approach to your financial planning as it takes time to see all the component parts of a plan (or recipe) come to fruition.

Once your sauce is ready you can add in your preferred meat (or veggies) and just let it ‘cook in’. Let’s not forgot thought that it also matters what you serve with your curry – everyone has their preferred accompaniments! Whether you like a speciality rice or just plain boiled; a keema nan or a paratha; a Bombay aloo or a bhajee … just like financial planning – no two palettes are the same and you need to be mindful that the flavours you introduce to go with your curry complement that which has been carefully created.

A gorgeous curry and a great financial plan take time and care. Experience and patience.

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

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Curry & fi-naan-cial planningJemima Thomas2023-12-01T12:12:42+00:00

RESCUE ME

TODAY’S BLOG

RESCUE ME…

Five months ago, my family and I finally decided (after years of discussion!) to foster a rescue dog.

Within three weeks of the decision being made, and all applications & home checks completed, we collected the lovely Bella. A 15 month old collie/greyhound mix, she had been found in a field in Romania as a 4-month old pup. She had been in the UK with another foster family for about a year before we got her.

The first few weeks were immensely stressful – you can never be entirely prepared for this adjustment! It took a huge amount of effort and a ton of patience to get through those early days.

Bella has ‘stranger anxiety’. And it’s severe. I’m not talking about ‘a bit of barking’ here; I’m talking about unadulterated terror. It was heartbreaking to see her freaking out at the mere sight of a stranger (human or animal) passing the house or on the other side of the street.

Scroll forward a few more weeks (and a bunch of dog-training sessions later) and Bella had made huge improvements – we could see her trust in us (her ‘hoomans’) growing and she was starting to allow herself to be reassured by our reassurances. We couldn’t let up on our efforts however and I have to be frank … it was exhausting.

Fast forward a few more months to today and she’s like a different animal. She still has the ‘stranger anxiety’ but it’s much less fearful and much less ‘robust’! She is happy and settled.

Now I could give you #637 reasons for NOT having a dog, but there are only two reasons for having a dog and they trump all 637 of these … hugs and love! And Bella is all over these – she is the only dog I have ever known to enjoy having her paws massaged! Whatever love and affection is on offer … she’ll take it!

She loves playing chase and finding random socks (from goodness only knows where); she is a cheeky, soppy girl who will be an absolutely awesome dog in her forever home. We only have her as a foster; and we know there will be a big hole in our family when she leaves us (and the house will feel painfully quiet!).

We are still waiting for her to be re-homed and every extra day we have her is a blessing – she is so trusting; so adoring; so vulnerable.

But we started with the end in mind. We knew it would be temporary; we knew it would be challenging; we knew it would be heartwrenching; we knew it would be worth it.

So where is the connection between my ramblings and financial planning … ?!

It’s a big decision
It’s a big step
It’s hard work in the early days
It gets easier
It’s rewarding
It’s absolutely worth it

And for the dog-lovers among you – here are a couple of my favourite shots of our girl …

Debbie Harris
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on our blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to us about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

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RESCUE MEJemima Thomas2023-12-01T12:12:54+00:00

VEGANUARY

TODAY’S BLOG

VEGANUARY

Food is such an integral part of life. I have many nostalgic memories of meals shared with friends and family, filled with laughter and storytelling. My Father was a particularly impressive cook, always experimenting with new flavours; he loved impressing people with unique dishes using unusual fruits and vegetables. When I went to university, meals at home became sacred. My favourite meal upon my return was beef stew, usually accompanied by a glass of red … the ultimate in Winter comfort food.

A few years ago I got sick and after much research looking for things that could ‘heal’ me, a lot of data suggested a vegan diet. My deep love of charcuterie boards, roast beef, steak, lasagna, cheese would make it hard to cut out – but I was also desperate to feel well again. I’d reached a place where it was difficult to work, difficult to eat and was often in and out of hospitals and doctors’ surgeries – so I took the plunge.

Following a vegan diet means not eating meat, fish, dairy or animal biproducts such as eggs, honey or gelatine. I seem to have inherited my Dad’s love of cooking, so the creative side of trying new dishes was fun, but I felt like I had to keep reading research papers to convince myself I was doing the right thing. Not eating a meal made up of meat, carbs and vegetables on the side, felt wrong, as though I would somehow be weakening my body, not strengthening it.

One thing that is important if you give up meat (vegetarians listen up!), is to take a daily B12 supplement (in liquid form) as it is an important part of helping the nerves work and without it can lead to nerve damage. I have to plan meals thoughtfully to ensure that I’m getting the right nutrients from the food I eat but, after several months of experimenting with new vegan dishes, I began to feel better. I’m not ‘healed’, but I was able to return to work, eat solid food again, and even start weaning off some of the medication I’d been put on. I’ve found new favourite meals and enjoyed taste-testing lots of different products to find replacements for the foods I ‘miss’ the most.

In all honesty I don’t think I expected changing my diet to improve my health this drastically, but here I am almost a year later with no desire to revert back. Food should be nourishing and delicious and that is very achievable on a vegan diet.

So what does this have to do with financial planning, you might well ask!? Well, if you try and compare being physically unwell and being financially unwell (lots of debt perhaps; no clear direction; no idea what the best path is; no idea where to start; how and when should I invest…) then the analogy begins to reveal itself!

Depending on what financial problems you have, a personal plan is crucial. A financial plan is different for everyone (although just as with physical health … there are some recurring themes). As with physical problems, the relief from financial ‘pain’ isn’t instant – you aren’t ‘healed’ just because you have a treatment/lifestyle plan. It can take quite some time for the plan to take effect and for you to feel the benefits. As with treatments for physical ailments, sometimes you have to tweak your financial plan to ensure that you remain on track. As time goes by and the ‘treatment’ becomes habitual, you don’t even really have to work that hard at it. In the beginning, there can feel like a long road to travel and a lot of learning to do, but once you’re on your way … it’s liberating and empowering.

This is why we do what we do (and why we love doing it!) – financial freedom and financial wellbeing are absolutely our goals for all of our clients, whatever their financial ‘ailments’ may be.

Abigail Liddicott
Solomons IFA

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VEGANUARYJemima Thomas2023-12-01T12:12:56+00:00

TWENTY-ONE

Dominic Thomas
Jan 2020 • 3 min read

Twenty-One

We have turned twenty-one. We are still here and growing again as I outlined in my last post. One of the many aspects of my work that I really love is the constant learning and improving. Whilst learning new things often seems a little frightening, a little bit of time and perhaps a lot of work can provide a reassuring perspective.

It is tempting at anniversaries to do a lot of looking back at what has been achieved. However today I was introduced to a fairly stark image – no, not the usual pictures of backtracking ministers or inept politicians – a reminder that life is very, very short.

Tempus Fugit – Our constant

The author, Tim Urban (really?) continues to use and develop his basic visual tool to explore other ideas, but these all stem from the same basic idea of measuring life in different types of units, rather than perhaps monetary ones. A good financial planner will have discussed this notion to some extent with you – trying to help you appreciate that life is short and you may not get to do all the things you say you would like to do because time runs out. This is fundamental to any good financial plan in terms of knowing how much is enough. I’m not meaning “just enough” but enough.

The graphic shows a human life to age 90. For many humans, this will be longer than they actually live, for some it will not be nearly long enough. Tim spends time reflecting on things he does with his time and then tries to estimate how much he has done and how much he has left. It helps him to focus on what is important to him.

I wonder what you think? Its easy to get started with your own life in weeks, but its also rather daunting when you see how much time remains… hopefully. So I’m likely to adapt this idea to help you think about what’s actually important in your life and what you definitely don’t want to run out of time for. Anyway, the place to start is where you are now… and then cross out everything before or mark it as completed…. I’m available to discuss.

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TWENTY-ONEDominic2025-02-04T16:25:46+00:00

WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE TO GO BACK IN TIME?

TODAY’S BLOG

WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE TO GO BACK IN TIME?

The concept of time is something that we all like to play around with. We recall memories, sometimes embellished, some highly accurate and others somewhat muddled. We encounter the present with our baggage and sense of identity based on the past and have hopes for our future.

To travel through time is what we all do, on a daily basis, yet to time-travel, well that is something for the writers of science fiction. As we all know, there would be some significant advantages to be gained if we could “correct” our own actions and perhaps those of others in the past. The chance to have another, better attempt at anything with the advantage of hindsight is the fuel of regrets and if only…

Time flies, The Old Bakery, Solomons IFA

Do we ever learn?

History is a great teacher, it is in many respects the best way we can apply “hindsight”. Yet we so readily ignore its lessons. Human behaviour has not really altered much over the years. We are having to adapt to new things all the time, but our nature seems slow to learn. The repetitive nature of war, division and “inhumanity” are sadly familiar. We don’t seem to learn.

Long-term thinking

The same is true of investing. We don’t learn very easily. Investing in equities (shares) has been proven time and again to provide the most likely way of increasing wealth above the rate of inflation. Looking at any long-term horizon, when considering the total returns (increase in capital value and income paid out by way of dividends) there is ample evidence to hold the very firm belief that over time, years and decades, equities are the obvious choice.

I can already hear you thinking “but…” and that’s what I have come to appreciate. We are not built for investing. Human nature has been built around the very useful instinct to flee at the sight of threat. This is helpful in a world of beasts and the beastly, but not in the sophisticated world of long-term equity investment. Every sign or signal of “downturn” is met with fear and panic. Pundits and journalists alike are designed to be storytellers, having something to say is better than the alternative. We hear “billions wiped off the market” yet we never hear “billions wiped on the market”. The news is skewed, we thrive on drama. Yet this passes and is arguably a vital aspect of equity markets, which always recover. Always. The crash comes, recovery comes, repeat, but we never seem to learn. Human nature is not our friend when it comes to successful investing. It is utterly inept.

These days the better part of my skill set is employed to remind you not to blow up your own financial plan. Indeed, it is to prevent you from doing so, which means confronting your own worst enemy… you. Some days will be very difficult. A 50% fall in markets is huge, but it will recover, not if, but when. The only measure for success with your financial planning is whether you reach your goals, not those of others. This is your story.

As for time travelling, there is a decent little series on Netflix called “The Umbrella Academy” which has some interesting ideas. Here is the trailer for the series.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

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WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE TO GO BACK IN TIME?Dominic2023-12-01T12:17:32+00:00

Arrival in Time

Solomons-financial-advisor-wimbledon-blogger

Arrival in Time

“There are days that define your story beyond your life, like the day they arrived”. Arrival, tells the story of an alien arrival (I’m not giving anything away). The film itself will likely get your grey matter working hard grappling with the concept of time. This is a very different alien movie, unlike any other that I have seen as it challenges the concept of time…well ok Interstellar did this too… and perhaps a little like the HG Wells story, but different in that it proposes time as non-linear.

Time as an image

As a financial planner, we use cashflow modelling in a very linear application. The present, perhaps a nod to the past, but a plan for the future. The result is translated into an illuminating image, which clients find very helpful indeed. Yet it is linear, which is of course it’s limitation. A great financial planning meeting will attempt to address questions about whether some of the plans in the future can be brought further forward, perhaps much more into the present. Never-the-less it is still a linear experience.

Life is a journey… and some

The movie Arrival is not really about aliens. It’s about communication and about being able to develop the adage “life is a journey, not a destination”. One that we play with in this site. Many people find financial services jargon to be fairly alienating. Communication is not something that our sector has done terribly well in the past. The film seems to ask the question whether we would change the image, if our life was reduced to a single image, with all its joys, but with all its pains. One might argue that there is something almost deity-like in this understanding of time and it is rather different from our more linear rational explanation. This might be viewed by the fairly expected traditional male approach of binary thinking, as often displayed in our world, with the “if you aren’t for us, you must be against us” rationale. This is given character in the usual full military display and response to anything different or other worldly. It takes a female linguist (Louise, played by Amy Adams) to have the humility and wisdom to listen and comprehend the message provided by the Heptapods.

Lessons from Arrival

Financial planning looks at the future and adjusts the present to have a better chance of reaching the one you want. Arrival, is more accepting of what is, when it was, is or will be, but all at the same time. Time is not linear. So, from a financial planning perspective, the movie doesn’t teach us a lot other than to remind us to listen to what is being communicated and attempting to avoid the binary choice mentality that is rarely constructive. However, the idea of being able to visualise and create an image of your life for you to see, well that’s very much an aspect of proper cashflow modelling, which is all about conveying your choices about the future visually.

If you haven’t seen it yet, here is the trailer for Arrival. I enjoyed it a lot.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

Arrival in TimeDominic2025-01-28T13:29:12+00:00