A story my dad told me early in my career has stayed with me ever since. A woman was standing in a supermarket, looking at two fillet steaks. She picked them up, then put them back. They felt too extravagant. The woman beside her said, quietly: “Buy the steaks. My husband died last month, and […]
View ArticleRemember Bill from a few weeks ago with the stock windfall? We met again a few days ago to run through his financial plan. I started by confirming his net worth – £4.8 million. He couldn’t believe it. He’d never added it all up before. His chosen lifestyle costs £60,000 a year. All but £200k of […]
View ArticleJust home. Tobin wanted a bike trip to Scotland for his birthday: 3 ferry crossings. 1 deer. 1 red kite. 1 beaver dam. 1 pistachio ice cream in Nardinis. Plenty of rain. Plenty of sunshine. We skimmed stones in Oban, played chess to a stalemate in Fort William, and kept one eye on Loch Ness […]
View ArticleMet a new client last week. Thirty years at the same factory. Same desk, same commute, same chat with the same workmates in the break room. For most of those thirty years, he drip-fed into his company’s employee share purchase scheme. Over 4,000 shares in Seagate Technologies, accumulated a few pounds at a time. Last […]
View ArticleSorting Nails Into Boxes At the weekend I took my first motorbike trip since 2018. I caught the boat to Scotland, then rode along the Queensway through the Galloway Forest, over towards Hexham, and then followed the Pennines down into the Lake District to meet an old friend. Gorgeous roads, great weather – time to […]
View ArticleTwo meetings last week stood out for me. The first was with a couple we’ve worked with for 13 years. When he first walked into our office, he had his sleeves rolled up, tie loose and looking utterly stressed. He hated his job. But it was cushy. Fantastic pension. Hard to walk away from. We […]
View ArticleIf you’ve worked at Seagate Technologies in Northern Ireland, you’ll be well aware of what’s happened to the share price recently. The AI boom has been good to STX. For many current and former employees, that means a number that looked comfortable a couple of years ago now looks significantly larger – and that’s not […]
View Article“You’ll never amount to anything.” I had a new client in the office yesterday He’s 70 years old, Sold his business a few years ago. No children. Hundreds of thousands of pounds sitting in investments, growing each year – untouched. He had shared with a friend the previous evening that when he was at primary […]
View Article“It Feels Like Throwing Money Away” I spoke to a group of young business owners last week about tax-efficient ways to take money out of their businesses. Great conversation – but when pensions came up, a couple pushed back. *”It feels like I’m throwing money into a pot I’ll never see again.”* I get it. […]
View ArticleTwo client conversations today really stood out for me. The first was about a niece who had recently come into an inheritance. She’d used the money to buy a beautiful new home complete with turrets (!!), a grand spiral staircase, the works. What struck me wasn’t the house itself, but where the money had come […]
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