News & resources

Blog – My thoughts on Monzo – a new kind of Bank (well sort of)

October 27, 2016 - 3 minutes read

First off - this is not a plug. I have been using Monzo for a few months now and wanted to give my thoughts on how my family has used it. I have not been paid to write this article and Monzo if you reading this, you know my card details :)

I actually managed to get hold of one of the first Mondo Beta Cards. Yes it was called Mondo before they decided to rebrand with a new name with something that made me immediately think of Sesame Street (I love Sesame Street).

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.

Advice – 3 Questions to ask yourself before you sell your business

September 14, 2016 - 4 minutes read

I have had quite a few meetings recently with people looking to sell their business. It is the dream isn’t it - sell your business for millions and gain financial freedom overnight. Having been through this with quite a few clients over the years I thought it might be quite valuable to actually raise some questions that a business owner needs to think about when going through the process: