Working Archives - Financial Planning in Surrey

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

Rainy Days

Debbie Harris
May 2024 • 2 min read

Can anything good come of the cost of living crisis?

Writers block hit me hard today.

Any of you who have ever communicated with me will know, I rarely struggle with this!

So I did what any self-respecting chatterbox would do … I took to the internet!

My working title for this blog post was ‘has anything positive come out of the cost of living crisis?’ and despite a very specific search, ‘the Google’ had nothing positive to say about the cost of living crisis whatsoever.

As an aside – I got distracted and went down the proverbial rabbit hole and happened upon ‘the 100 most googled questions’ – THAT deserves a blog post all of its own to be perfectly honest; but for now, the answer to the question “why were chainsaws invented?” will have to wait. (FYI – more than 200,000 people a month on average google that question worldwide!)

So anyway … I had to return to my own thoughts and reflections about the cost of living crisis and (as an eternal optimist who can find a silver lining in most grey clouds) try to figure out why I even thought this working title would give me ‘stuff’ to talk about!

And after much deliberation I am pleased to tell you that from my own personal experience of the cost of living crisis (which I do realise isn’t quite over just yet); there are indeed some positives (if you look hard enough for them!)

So here goes – my list:

An increased awareness of my own spending (and waste)
Re-evaluation of my priorities and those things I class as ‘essential’ (fewer ‘things’ than you might think … although ‘coffee’ stays!)
Finding creative ways to save a few pennies – ‘rainy days’ is my latest exercise … I shift £5 to my savings account every day it rains … since the beginning of this year alone, I have set aside more than £200 (which says more about climate change than my saving-savviness I think!)
Being resourceful in finding costs to cut and ways to cut them
Fixing things rather than replacing them – less waste; better for the planet; a little self-righteousness (how clever I am to glue/stitch/tape this xyz back together!)
An appreciation for all the things we DO have
An attitude of gratitude to be in gainful honest employment (doing a job I love by the way!)
A genuine mindfulness and concern for others who have been hit much harder than me by the cost of living crisis and a commitment to help friends and family whenever I can
A sense of community and connection with others in a shared experience.

If you can think of any others, we’d love to hear from you!

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Rainy DaysJemima Thomas2024-05-24T15:40:51+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