News & resources

Quiz for Entrepreneurs – Are you on track with your Personal Finances?

July 30, 2017 - Less than a minute read

As a business owner, sorting your own personal finances can be difficult.  This 10 minute quiz gets to the bottom of whether you are giving your personal finances enough time and effort.

Investing for your children

June 5, 2017 - 4 minutes read

If you have read my blog for long enough now, you will know that I like to start off with a story.

When I was 16, my father gave me £2,000 to invest.  The money was really his but it was up to me to find the stocks to invest in.  

So off I went, into the back of the Daily Mail (don’t judge me).  Towards the back of the Daily Mail in the Business section, are a number of different share prices and companies with some brief performance figures.  I had made my mind up

Do you know your F you number?

April 12, 2017 - 5 minutes read

Everywhere I look at the moment, I seem to find a business guru showing entrepreneurs how to “scale up” or “grow” or “plan your exit” and all those popular buzz terms.

I have a different phrase that needs to be addressed by a business owner - “Do you actually know your F you number”

Why are You Doing This?

March 14, 2017 - 3 minutes read

Whenever I meet a new business owner I always ask them about how they started their business.

It usually goes something along the lines of:

“I just had an idea that I thought would help people” or “I wanted control over my week” or my favourite “I wanted to change the world”.  

Everybody’s story is different and is always fascinates me to question why someone started a business as it gives me an insight into their mindset.

The idea of Low Cost / High Return

January 17, 2017 - 5 minutes read

I often get asked:

“How much return do you think you can get me Adam?”

I will tell you my answer - I don’t bloody know :).  No one can predict the markets, if they tell you they can, I would run a mile.  All I can do is look back at what has happened previously and I can advise on what I think gives you the best chance of making a decent return - Hint, it is usually just buying a cheap global index tracker.

Advice – How to plan your income

November 29, 2016 - 4 minutes read

I will let you into a secret. Money is designed to make you fail. Very clever people realised many moons ago that people don’t like to deal with their money and personal finances.  

The banks realised that if they sold you a really attractive 0% credit card, the chances are that you are not going to pay off the balance and get charged a fairly high rate of interest when the “teaser rate” ends.  Teaser rates are by nature meant to tease you in and then a game begins.  They are basically backing themselves that they will beat you, mainly due to people’s inertia or lack of control over money.

Blog – A simple trick I used to improve my work/life balance

November 7, 2016 - 3 minutes read

I have a confession. At the start of the year, I got my work/life balance way off.

I had just had a knee operation, and setup another company (training younger planners) all at the same time as advising at Xentum and also being a Director on the Board.  Things were busy but in all honesty, I was loving it.  I loved my job and I was starting to really see some progression in my career and for the first time in a long time, I was really passionate about the future of the financial planning.

Blog – Fees and Conflicts in Financial Advice

October 18, 2016 - 4 minutes read

Everywhere I look, I see ways to save money.  I see utility companies falling over themselves to get my business.  Only this week I switched from Sky to BT and pocketed £130 through a cashback site.  You cannot breathe in the modern world without some kind of sale getting you to part with you hard earned cash.

Where I don’t see it yet is personal finance and although the profession is getting better at being transparent, it isn’t being discussed enough.  People generally don’t know what is a good deal and bad deal in personal finance, especially business owners who frankly have better things to do.  I am therefore writing this blog slightly out of frustration as every client I come across these days seems to have been flogged a bad deal at some point and hopefully this improves awareness.