Introduction:
Welcome to this month’s money & mischief and what a month it has been! For me anyways, I have had a lovely time. So, let’s kick off with that. At the end of September, I went to see Oasis at Wembley and they were great, but for me, Richard Ashcroft stole the show. Absolutely brilliant and having seen the Verve at Brixton Academy in February 1998 (maybe March, something like that, I can’t remember much about that night…) it was certainly good to remind myself of his songs.
What shall we talk about this month? I know, let’s murder a song by twisting the lyrics to suit some kind of financial planning analogy!
All this talk of getting rich,
Is getting me down my love
Now the numbers don’t work
They just make you worse
But I know I’ll see your abacus again
Of course, you’ll know that’s a bastardised version of ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ and I’ll admit I shed a little tear when it was sang at Wembley, for the people they didn’t work for and the ones that never got the chance to have any. Anyway, this month we are keeping it sparky and not going down the morbid route, so just a quick reminder, as Paul Armson said,
“You think you have time. You don’t. Now get on with it”
Memento Mori (All Stoics Ever)
For those of you without a Latin A-Level like yours truly, that means:
Remember, you must die.
When the numbers don’t work
We are financial planners, and what that means is we help people understand their money, so that they can go do the things they want to do. Then, we switch it about to make it more efficient (tax, costs, returns) with the aim of getting them to their goals more quickly. Typically, those goals might be retirement, a certain level of expenditure, building a sum to help family out or to buy something big like a holiday home / yacht or whatever. It’s your one and only life! Dream! You must dream!
Most of the time, people are used to spending what they do and don’t want a great deal more, perhaps just sprinkling of a few nice extra things. And usually, when we crunch the numbers, they have a bit more than they thought and they can go off and do them.
Let me be clear here, they know what they have! They just have expectations of how much they will need that are much higher than likely in reality and expectations on earnings rates of existing savings that are far lower than is probable. We show them what is most likely and nudge them to do more of what they love now.
But sometimes… those expectations are completely off kilter! Sometimes, people’s needs, wants and desires are way more than their income can support and they are in cloud cuckoo land! Which will lead to inevitable disaster and a crash in their lifestyle far beyond how any small near term cutbacks would impinge on them.
How can we deal with this:
- Reality check / shock – this is what will happen if you don’t do something / change something. Imagine that life and how bad it would be…
That helps with the motivation, this is the practical stuff:
- Budgeting - If it’s easy to spend £100, it’s easy not to. How can we save? What expenditure is not absolutely vital! It’s just budgeting and realigning expectations.
- Earn more – if you are working age or retired and still got some oomph left in you, then working out ways to earn more is the best way to go. This can be relatively small changes and also, putting on your entrepreneurial hat is super exciting, and I reckon will improve your happiness levels. You’re going out there, saying this is me, and making a change to your life. This is far better for our psychology than cutting expenses.
Financial Adjustments:
- Increasing risk – if meeting longer term expenses is a concern, then increasing the amount you have in shares is far more likely to bring you more money in the longer term.
- Reducing Taxes – how can you structure your money so that you have less tax to pay? Treat this as an ‘expense’ like the rest of your expenditure and you may find ways that reduce the amount taken from your savings and investment earnings.
Financial Planning – Job done!
You have got everything into a state that is, probabilistically, most likely to be the optimum way of holding your assets and to me as your financial planner it looks absolutely dandy! I have seen it work before and understand it all to a level of depth that surpasses the Mariana Trench.
But… the numbers don’t work! They work on paper and on our whizzy little screens we have to show you. But what if the numbers don’t work in your mind?
Money is ostensibly a made-up concept. Humans created it for ease of trade, and it has created the world as we know it. But our brains only fully evolved to current size and structure around 35,000 to 100,000 years ago. And here is a potted guide to the history of money:
9000 BCE:
The concept of money emerged, with early civilizations using commodities like cattle and grain for exchange.
Around 8000 BCE:
In Mesopotamia, objects like "bulla" and tokens were used to keep records of agricultural produce, serving as an early form of "money of account".
Around 3000 BCE:
The Mesopotamian shekel, a unit of weight based on barley, was in use.
1100 BCE:
In China, standardized bronze tokens that replicated cowry shells, known as "Bronze Shells," were created during the Bronze Age.
Money hasn’t been around long and neither have our minds. Our minds evolved for survival and that is ingrained into us. Our brains are not equipped to deal with future financial uncertainty over decades. When our minds evolved, hardly anyone got past the age of 30! Admittedly, my levels of maturity haven’t either. Our minds evolved to think -
“Me hungry, me knock that mammoth on the head with a rock, me have barbeque and stare at fire”
– Early Homo Sapiens in Dogger Land (now flooded)
Wise words indeed and if we are honest with ourselves, wouldn’t we like more of that simplicity?
The plans we devise will only come to fruition if they are implemented correctly. And some of that, we need your help with! We have had some experiences recently where the plan was to sell a rental property to invest some and also live off it. This was more tax efficient and would have likely produced a higher yield, but the opportunity was not taken:
- An offer was received
- The offer was considered too low and rejected. There have been no other offers and in reality, that is what the property was worth. I studied Land Management at university, and I remember writing an essay about the Mallinson Report. This report determined the valuation of a property was
‘What a willing vendor would accept from a willing purchaser’
- Since then, the investment we recommended has gone up around 10% - more than eclipsing the £ difference in the wanted price of the property and the lower offer
- The house remained unsold, and money has become tight
- So, we will have to sell assets elsewhere and pay a bit more in tax. Again, compounding the mistake.
But this is all entirely forgivable! Our minds are tens or thousands of years old and uncertainty over the future, the intangibility of share ownership and our innate need / desire to have ‘shelter’ is all so difficult to overcome.
We must forgive ourselves for worrying about uncertainty, not being fully able to commit to a plan, and dealing with the emotions that come with it are extremely difficult!
‘People aren’t dumb, the world is hard’
- Richard Thaler, Professor of Behavioural Economics
If you’re uncertain about your plan, that’s ok! Tell us and give us the opportunity to help you:
- Trust us – ultimately, everything we do comes down you your faith in us. If you can bring yourself to trust us, we can come up with the answers
- Seek out the evidence – you can ask us, and we can point you in the right direction so you don’t end up on TikTok!
- See our psychologist – We have Jess, available to help with all emotional problems you may be having! It may be around money or the hard parts of life.
- Money Coach – if you have deep ingrained emotional problems with money, we work with some professional money coaches to help you.
We have ways and means… but, if you are stuck, you need to put your hand up to seek help! We are not mind readers.
We are here to help you and will happily have a crack! We may not be able to, but we will take you by the hand and do everything we know how to and are able to make it better. Failure will not be through want of trying! But allow us to help.
Here are the words of Meghaan Lurtz, to help deal with uncertainty.
Forego the Quest for Certainty: Why Living with the Unknown Might Be the Bravest Skill We Have
Most of us crave certainty. We want to know the market will recover, the job will work out, the retirement plan will hold. We want guarantees before we commit. But the truth is, certainty is rarely available—and never guaranteed when it comes to money or life.
What we can do is choose how we respond.
Psychologists point out that anxiety thrives on the unknown. The more unpredictable something feels, the louder our minds demand answers. Our instinct is to reach for more information refresh the market app, check headlines, scroll through financial commentary, ask Google one more question. But information doesn’t always bring peace. Often, it just feeds the cycle.
We can’t escape uncertainty, but we can learn to live differently with it.
Here are a few practices that help:
- Practice patience like a craft. Patience isn’t just waiting. It’s the discipline of staying present even when the outcome is unclear. In financial life, that might mean holding steady in a volatile market instead of rushing to change strategy or giving yourself more than one conversation before making a big decision like downsizing your home. True patience is active it’s noticing, listening, and giving decisions space to breathe.
- Experiment small. Instead of seeking the perfect plan, try safe-to-fail experiments. Adjust your spending for three months and see how it feels. Shift a small portion of savings into something new before making a wholesale change. Test the waters of retirement by taking an extended break from work. These experiments loosen the grip of anxiety because they don’t demand permanent commitment. They let you learn by doing.
- Name what’s hard. Toxic positivity the rush to say “it’ll all be fine” often shuts down honest conversation. Real resilience comes from naming what’s difficult: “This job search feels endless.” “I’m nervous about the market.” “This decision feels overwhelming.” Naming the truth creates space for clarity, even before a solution appears.
- Choose connection over consumption. Studies show that a short, genuine conversation—just eight minutes with someone you trust—can reduce stress and regulate your nervous system. Compare that to the hours we spend consuming more data in search of comfort. Information may feel like control, but connection actually provides it.
Financial planning lives in this tension between wanting certainty and learning to navigate without it. No advisor can promise a guaranteed outcome. But the best planning relationships provide something even more valuable: a place to wrestle with uncertainty without being alone in it.
Think of it this way: every decision we make about money is shaped by forces beyond our control markets, health, family, global events. What matters is not eliminating uncertainty but building a way of living with it. That might mean steadying your emotions when the market swings. It might mean designing a plan that’s resilient enough to handle surprises. It might simply mean having someone alongside you to remind you that not knowing the outcome doesn’t mean you’re unprepared.
The real invitation is not to outrun the unknown but to stand with it with patience, curiosity, and support.
Disclaimer: This article does not constitute financial advice. We recommend that you speak to a qualified financial planner for advice tailored to your individual circumstances and goals. Financial markets may go up or down, and you are not guaranteed a return on your investment. Past performance is not necessarily a guide to future performance.
