News & resources

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.

Info – The lowdown on Lifetime ISAs (LISAs)

October 11, 2016 - 2 minutes read

Earlier this year the government announced that it would be introducing Lifetime ISAs from April 2017 to help address the dilemma facing young adults of getting on the housing ladder and the need to save for retirement.

The key features of Lifetime ISAs are:

Advice – Are you financially blind? (And a Free Tool to fix it)

October 4, 2016 - 3 minutes read

I will always remember one of my first clients at Xentum.  It was a couple in their late 50s and the husband/father of the family was approaching retirement in his head.  I specifically remember this client as they brought a box of paperwork into the office with the message:

“There you go, can you sort through that and let me know when I can retire”

It will always stick with me that particular sentence.  At the time, I found it unbelievable how someone had worked so hard for 30 plus years had no idea how much or what they had in savings, life cover or investments.  They had of course been sold all sorts (some good and some bad) and had merely switched off from the issue of finance.  

Blog – An article I wrote for a trade publication – “10,000 Hours”

September 29, 2016 - 4 minutes read

I wrote this article for a popular financial advisory blog called the Adviser Lounge

I am thinking a lot at the moment about the route to becoming a top end financial planner.  It is partly the work I am doing with Nextgen planners but I am also interested in this anyway.  I have always had a chip on my shoulder about age in financial planning.  As a young planner, I have obviously had the mantra that if you are good enough, you are old enough.