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

The Last Showgirl

Dominic Thomas
May 2025 • 3 min read

The Last Showgirl

Rare is the day that the word ‘pension’ is mentioned half a dozen times within the first half of a film, yet as I sat in my local cinema recently, I couldn’t help but notice this unusual occurrence. A new film written by Kate Gersten and directed by Gia Coppola with Pamela Anderson in the lead role is probably much as you might have anticipated. Anderson plays Shelly, a senior (57-year-old) Vegas showgirl, both the show and her career are forced to face the cold reality of dwindling interest.

In the gambling capital of the US, Shelly’s story is of a woman who assumed that her career could continue uninterrupted. For her, the spotlight of the much-needed attention was almost reward enough except sadly she has not reaped any financial rewards beyond merely managing to stay a little ahead of the next set of bills.

We learn about her struggle to balance life and the personal sacrifices she makes for her career that result in an estranged relationship with her daughter. The experience that many (most) women have in the workplace juggling childcare (and care for parents), relationships and a career and the brutal savagery that the loss of a youthful appearance is rarely a career-ending problem for men. This is, albeit a fairly untypical example, one of the various structural problems that many women face and why so few have careers, pensions or investments that are on a par with men. Scottish Widows run an annual report on the gender divide, the latest is here: https://www.scottishwidows.co.uk/employer/insight/eh-insight-gender-pension-gap.html

Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis) has perhaps an all-too-common experience for women towards the bottom of the economic ladder. Already dropped from the showgirls, she is working as a waitress on a zero hours contract and minimum pay. When asked if she will save her gambling winnings for her retirement she answers:

Annette: Retire? like, bankers retire. Waddaya think I have a 501K? I’m gonna work and then I’m gonna work some more and then I’m gonna die. I’ll probably die in my uniform. That’s my long-term plan.

Jodie: You don’t want to retire?

Annette: It’s not an option, Jodie.

Our opinions about the American dream may have altered over the years as it evidently has not worked for the many; but certainly for a very few. Annette is for me, symbolic of the optimism that Americans have, having the courage to keep going, but numbing the pain of reality with another margarita. You won’t forget the performance by JLC.

Men by comparison have it easier (there, I said it). Men also have it cheaper – we simply don’t have anything like the pressure of appearances. However, life is clearly more complicated and nuanced than I suggest. On the one hand, this is a tale about the consequences of a lack of planning (and saving), making assumptions about the future, which all too swiftly arrives ready to consume hope. This happens to lots of people (most) irrespective of gender, but certainly women generally are at a significant disadvantage.

The film has received a warm response. There are rather obvious parallels with Anderson’s own life (though I imagine she was and is better resourced financially) known primarily for her ability to run across a beach in Baywatch (1989-2001) which at one point was the most watched TV series with a weekly audience of 1.1bn.

In some senses, this is a story of consequences, of not paying attention to the important and being caught up in the familiar. At 57 it isn’t impossible to start a new career or finally start saving for your future into a pension, but it is certainly a lot harder.

The financial services sector hasn’t been the most welcoming to women, there are relatively few female advisers or business owners in the sector, but things are improving. Here at Solomon’s more than half of our clients are women, I hope it’s partly due to the sense of trust and transparency in our advice and connecting money with being used to facilitate the really important things in life, something which many men simply neglect in the pursuit of more.

The sooner you speak with a financial planner who puts your interests first, the better. Whether you are 24, 34, 44 or 84, I can assure you that we can make money make sense.

Here is the trailer for the film The Last Showgirl

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The Last ShowgirlJemima Thomas2025-05-06T10:24:53+01:00

What’s the most visible legacy of Covid in everyday life?

Ben Hutton (Business Development Manager for 7IM)
June 2024 • 5 min read

What’s the most visible legacy of Covid in everyday life?

The odd mask still being worn on public transport? A faded sign explaining, in intense detail, how to wash your hands? A Perspex screen somewhere it really doesn’t need to be?

I think it’s something else. Office fashion.

In fact, in the UK, men’s suits were taken out of the ‘representative’ inflation basket in 2022* – if no one’s buying them, they aren’t representative!

Loaded question: imagine I’d given you perfect foresight on this trend towards casual and away from formal back in 2022. Armed with this information, if you had to buy the shares in athleisure super-brand Lululemon or ‘stuffy’ Marks & Spencer, who would you have backed?

Prepare to be as shocked as someone seeing the price tag of a pair of premium-brand leggings for the first time.

In the past couple of years, Lululemon’s stock has basically gone sideways, while M&S’s share price has doubled.

The thing is, even if you know exactly what the world is going to look like, it doesn’t always translate to share price performance.

There are lots of specific reasons Lululemon has struggled – there’s only so much money you can spend on tracksuit bottoms, clothes wear out less quickly at home, other brands have emerged to grab a slice of the market.

But the more interesting case is why M&S has thrived. As a business, it does something we think investors can learn from. It diversifies.

From food to clothing, to homeware, and even finance. So as their formalwear struggled, the rest of the business kept going, giving the fashion side time to adjust, ditch the formalwear, and evolve.

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What’s the most visible legacy of Covid in everyday life?Jemima Thomas2024-06-20T12:22:12+01:00

Working in financial services … A calling?

Debbie Harris
April 2022 • 3 min read

Working in financial services … a calling?

Normally when someone asks what I do for a living, my answer creates a knee-jerk reaction of eyes glazing over, hunching of the shoulders and the stifling of a yawn before the sarcastic comment “that sounds … thrilling” (or variations thereof!)

And I get it – to an outsider, financial services is Dull (with a capital D). In fact, to many ‘insiders’ as well, financial services is pretty dull! But I consider myself truly fortunate to be working in a firm like Solomon’s, with a great team of people, and a fabulous bunch of clients, doing the work that we do.

As a relatively small company, we don’t have hard lines between our roles here, which means we all get some exposure to marketing, finance, report writing, admin, client liaison, writing content, editing, checking each other, creative processes, planning, business growth. It’s a dynamic work environment for us and it’s the absolute opposite of the toxic workplaces that grace so many threads on social media at the moment. The team works well together as we all like and respect one another (even when we disagree).

solomonsifa.team – Debbie, Jemima, Abigail

Financial planning is not known as a caring profession (that expression seems to be reserved for medical personnel) but at Solomon’s (as a firm and as a team of individuals) – we genuinely do care about our clients and the work we do with them and for them. It is a great pleasure and an honour when a client realises they can retire earlier than they imagined; or that they can afford to do something that had seemed out of reach; or quite simply that they can ‘stop worrying’ about some of the ‘big stuff’ like “will I run out of money?” or “what would I do financially if I lost my spouse?”.

Most of our clients have been with Solomon’s for MANY years (some are counting in decades) and we know them very well … to a point of reading an article in the news or social media that reminds us of a client (a football team winning a big event, the sale of a very old and valuable stamp, or an interesting gardening fact – you catch my drift). We are invested in our clients’ lives (not in a stalker-ish way!) quite simply because we care what happens to them. We care that they are separating from their spouse, we care that they have been diagnosed with a critical illness, we care that they have lost a parent (or sadly a child).

We aren’t just about the money; we aren’t just about the work; we ARE about people; we are about empathy; we are about relationship.

We are a small firm with a big heart.

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Working in financial services … A calling?Jemima Thomas2025-09-16T13:25:52+01:00

WHEN MONEY TALKS AND WE DON’T

Solomons-financial-advisor-wimbledon-blogger

WHEN MONEY TALKS AND WE DON’T

The lack of money will test anyone and has a tendency to play havoc with relationships. This is explored in the new movie “Wildlife” starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Carey Mulligan and new, rising star Ed Oxenbould. Set in the late 1950s at the crossroads of domestic politics in the US, we enter the world of an aspirational family. Jerry and Jeanette Brinson are shackled by their class background and struggling with compromises between their traditional upbringing and the reality of life as they experience it.

Jerry loses his job which seems to be something of a familiar story, this forces them to confront how the family might realistically pull together, meaning Jeanette would need to find work. Their son Joe helps out too, by finding after school work. Whilst the lack of money may be the catalyst, the sad reality is that the Brinson’s are not good communicators, each having flaws that make things worse rather than any better. Their dysfunction is played out before Joe, who struggles to comprehend how his once seemingly nice, normal family life becomes a chaotic lonely environment.

Fighting the Bonfire of our Vanities

Whilst set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, there are of course parallels for today. The lack of work in parts of any country turns it into a wasteland with few signs of hope. Whilst it is undeniably true that the percentage of people in poverty is reducing, this does not mean that life is easy or even good for many people. It is precisely this lack of hope, the desire to blame anyone or anything different, that certain politicians will take advantage of. The sense of shame in being poor and the anxiety that it produces cannot be overstated. Jeanette will trade her dignity for security. Jerry will dice with death just to demonstrate his contempt for his lot. Joe, meanwhile (a boomer) is caught in the crossfire, trying to make sense of the gap between child and adult and what becoming a man might mean for him.

You get one lifetime but another shot at honesty

One of the biggest assumptions that financial plans make is that a couple remains together. Sadly, this can often be a mistake. That’s not to say that divorce or separation are a “sad” thing, it can be healing and of course healthier. What I mean is that the self-awareness required to allow for this or make provision for it is often lacking. The assumptions being made about investment returns or taxes are frankly small beer when it comes to division of assets and the implications for all.

Here’s the trailer.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

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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WHEN MONEY TALKS AND WE DON’TDominic2023-12-01T12:17:43+00:00