This is our blog page where we hope to pass on valuable information, which could help you be better prepared when dealing with your financial arrangements. Whether we explain basic principles, debunk financial myths, or provide general tips, this page is an opportunity for us to share our thoughts which can help you make better financial decisions.

But to be clear. We’re not providing personal advice here (you have to pay for that I’m afraid!) and any arrangements that you make having read these pages are entirely your own affair.

We don’t believe in forecasting the future, and in the event that we discuss specific products, funds or assets here, our opinion should be taken as that, our opinion and not a personal recommendation to buy or sell.

A Fresh Start

Summer is a distant memory. The children are back at school or University, and from what I’ve experienced many of you have turned your attention to getting things done. The change in season is a useful trigger for making a personal change, as Katy Milkman explains in her excellent and very readable new book ‘How … Continued

Two Truths About Inflation

UK inflation rose by 2.5% in the 12 months to June 2021. In the US the new rate is 5.4%. The impact of which I found out recently when I went to the local pub for an eye wateringly high £6 pint! Roll out the media’s widespread inflation analysis, and personal finance articles offering help … Continued

What is Financial Advice?

On Sunday I caught up with Rational Reminder, one of my favourite podcasts on sensible investing and financial decision making. At the 18 min 40 sec mark of Episode 142: What is Financial Advice? one of the hosts, Ben Felix, considered a question recently asked of him. It’s a great question! Why would I, a … Continued

What Tony Hawk Can Teach Us About Risk

In 1989, I was a teenage skateboarder. When school closed for summer, I’d be outside on my board every day. From sunrise to sunset my friends and I would explore London, visiting the very few skateable locations available to us at that time. It was a brief but hugely enjoyable period of my youth, and … Continued

Remember March? It Was Wild

So that’s it. Christmas week is upon us and 2020 is nearly at an end. What. A. Year. Other than the bleedin’ obvious, you’ll have your own reasons for remembering 2020. Hopefully, some are good. But what you might have already forgotten, or purposely avoided at the time, were the crazy days of March when a … Continued

When a Balanced Risk Investment is not Balanced

The word ‘balance’ is defined by Oxford Languages as “an even distribution of weight, enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady”. In mathematics ‘balanced’ is defined as “when both sides have the same quantity or mass”. Of course, you already know this. But balanced is also a term encountered regularly in finance. It’s … Continued

Market Timing is a Mug’s Game (Part Eleventy)

Under normal circumstances, I don’t follow or comment on the daily ramblings of the stock market. But on Monday the UK’s stock market (FTSE 100) ended the day up by 5%, and the American market (still open as I write) reached an all-time high. I write to you today because there is a lesson to … Continued

The US Presidential Election

Today is the day of the US presidential election and this one feels particularly important, even though in reality they ALL should be. There are some monumental issues at stake and the outcome will likely set the tone not just for the next four years, but beyond. I’m no US political expert but I’m emotionally … Continued

What Next?

Recession. What next? Well, I was going to write something original, but I read a great piece by fellow financial planner and friend of mine Matt Aitchison at Clear Vision Financial Planning. His own note to clients touched on all the points I would likely make myself. So, I thought why reinvent the wheel? With … Continued

What do World War II Planes & Investment Funds Have in Common?

I’m currently reading “How Not to Be Wrong – The Hidden Maths of Everyday Life”, a book by Jordan Ellenberg. The premise of the book is to demonstrate how mathematical thinking can help us understand the everyday world in a deeper, sounder, and more meaningful way. In the very earliest pages, the author tells the … Continued

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