Welcome to May’s missive from Steven Rowe, founder of Lucent Financial Planning.
If I could choose a month to be my life, it would be May.
May is the most wonderful of months; life has reemerged fresh, spiritedly and delicately blinking into the longer luminous days with all the hope and expectation of a glorious summer. Full of bank holidays and excitement over what is to come following some dark months.
So, this month we are going to focus on financial planning. Which obviously we are always doing as it’s part of our company name. As is Lucent, which means:
Glowing with light: LUMINOUS
Marked by clarity or translucence: CLEAR
It was those dual meanings of clarity and luminosity that as an idealistic 31-year-old when I came up with it as a company name, I latched on to it as being how I wanted the financial planning I delivered to demonstrate clarity and glowing with brilliant light of hope.
Ironically as hardly anyone is aware of the meaning, it isn’t that clear!
In the month of May when we have clarity of purpose for the upcoming summer and with the lucent skies, we shall embark on explaining the importance of financial planning and it won’t be what you think it is. Financial planning is LIFE in planning.
I’m chairperson of a study group with other financial planning companies in the area. It’s important to share and glean best ideas from everyone. And in a recent meeting we had a business adviser talking about how company partnerships can break down, and the signs of this potentially happening.
This is important for us as we deal with a lot of business owners and see it fairly often. To wind up, he said that business is just a game and to remove all emotion from it. I completely disagreed! What is the point of life without emotion? What is it for? And this is what I want to dwell upon today.
Discussions with the Father of Life Planning
In our recent podcast episode, I met with George Kinder, who is widely considered to be the father of Life Planning. In our conversation we discussed his 3 questions, lighting the torch and being Fiduciary in all things - 'FIAT'.
If you’ve ever wondered what life is all about for you, and how to get to that meaning you are seeking, why not run through George’s 3 questions now:
- Design Your Life
I want you to imagine that you are financially secure, that you have enough money to take care of your needs, now and in the future. The question is, how would you live your life? What would you do with the money? Would you change anything? Let yourself go. Don’t hold back your dreams. Describe a life that is complete, that is richly yours.
- You have less time
This time, you visit your doctor who tells you that you have five to ten years left to live. The good part is that you won’t ever feel sick. The bad news is that you will have no notice of the moment of your death. What will you do in the time you have remaining to live? Will you change your life, and how will you do it?
- Today’s the day
This time, your doctor shocks you with the news that you have only one day left to live. Notice what feelings arise as you confront your very real mortality. Ask yourself: What dreams will be left unfulfilled? What do I wish I had finished or had been? What do I wish I had done? Did I miss anything?
You may want to take a look at this video - in more pictorial form, it gets to some of the issues that may arise in the above questions: Life in jelly beans
After a period of reflection, once you’ve answered those questions, why not come and tell us, if you haven’t already?
Lucent's Latest
Team achievements
In the podcast, George talks about enjoying the moments of life as they happen, so I would like to share some things about our team.
I would like to let you know how proud i am of all the hard work our team do to ensure you get the best advice available. Of our team of 17, all but six hold the diploma in financial planning, and the others are at various stages of studying towards it. This is the qualification required to be a financial planner and most financial planning firms barely have anyone qualified except the advisers themselves.
Ellie gained Chartered Financial Planner status in April which means all of our advisers carry the Chartered qualification, considered the gold standard in financial advice. Ellie was also invited to appear on a panel at the Women in Finance Collective, illustrating how awesome she is!
Jasmine and Joseph got awarded their diploma in financial planning, with Jamie hot on their heels.
These are the exams required to be a financial adviser and the level of the majority of financial advisers across the country. Jamie is 20!
There’s a significant amount of effort that goes into gaining these qualifications. Working weekends and evenings to revise for the exams around regular working patterns and life in general. We’ve all got funner things to do! But we need this solid base of knowledge to deliver the great stuff we do.
To put in context, in 2023 (according to the Next Wealth Financial adviser benchmark report) only 20% of firms held ‘chartered’ status. To do this, you need to meet certain ethical requirements, but also 50% of advisers need to hold the Chartered Qualifications as individuals. Across the UK 15-20% (don’t worry! I can work percentages out, but data of those holding the qualification against those that are actually financial advisers and not on support role is a bit sketchy) of advisers hold the chartered qualification.
Why is this important
Hopefully, you’ve got a long life of being our client, and that may be longer than my life of working at least. Certainly, your patience will wear thin more quickly than I can come up with new gags!
We need strength in depth. Driving towards employee ownership ensures the company sticks around so we can continue to serve you, and we continue to train new advisers to be "Lucently brilliant"!
That is to say:
- Human - we aren’t number robots. We get that you’ve got feelings! And we need to shape money around those as well as tax law!
- Evidentially based - find the right sources or data, use it to make firm decisions on your money to give the best possible chance.
- Creative - we need to envision the future you might want… often before you even have, to build flexibility into your plans for when you decide.
Building advice that lasts longer than any one adviser
It’s no good for you to have an adviser that hits peak skill at 54! They may not be around long enough to support you. You deserve long term, stable strategies and a set of advisers that can stick around for the long term. That’s why I want employee ownership and that why we train our own advisers.
The average financial adviser in the UK is 57.
I’m 48 and 1/3! Our other advisers are 25, 30, 33 and 37. They’re all more qualified than the average financial adviser and younger. Why? They’re more intelligent! (this is obviously opinion-based, but since I’ve met loads of the ‘average advisers’, I feel I’m in a good place to give my opinion!). People think age and experience denote excellence. These stats tell otherwise. Experience in not being bothered to learn, is not the experience you want!
As we work so hard to obtain these qualifications, we can then do everything more quickly as we are not getting in a state about working out a simple pension tax relief question, which means we have more time to improve how we deal with our clients. And, we believe we’re pretty good at it!
Proud to be recognised
We are in the final of the VouchedFor ‘Small Firm of the Year’ in their ’Client Experience Awards’., as well as the 'Client Trust' category.
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These are great awards to be shortlisted for because they are based solely on client reviews! People that have experienced our experience! Watch this space for the results...
Leaves & Legacy 🍃
One of the reasons we get recognised nationally amongst financial planning circles is because of our fun and innovative events that many other firms just don’t do! Leaves and Legacy is our next one, later this month:
We spend years growing our lives, shaping what matters and caring for the people around us.
But how much are you thinking about the legacy you’re planting?
On 21st May, we’re hosting an evening exploring inheritance tax, estate planning and the human side of legacy - with space to reflect, ask questions and think about what you want to pass on and how.
🕖 7.00pm
🌱 We’d love you to join us - sign up here!
B-Corp
As well as having to uphold a minimum standard of ethics to be a Chartered Financial Planning Firm, we want to aspire to more than that. And we’re not doing it for badges, we are doing it because we believe you can help others as well as helping yourself.
We have recently started our application for B-Corp status (read more about it here). I don’t think we will need to do much more than we already are, but we want to make sure we are doing it right! When we obtain it, we will talk about it more…
Finally…
On our podcast George Kinder spoke about how the only life you can truly experience is now, and these moments are yours. Thinking about the past and future constantly are things you cannot truly experience. In a world where blowing stuff up and hate continues to fill the headlines, and being emotionless is applauded in business, I say:
Embrace your emotions! Feeling is all you have to experience in this life, all you can give and all you will leave behind.
Enjoy it. Help others enjoy their moments.
In the words of Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics
Take care of yourself and if you can, someone else
Disclaimer: This article does not constitutefinancial advice. We recommend that you speak to a qualified financial plannerfor advice tailored to your individual circumstances and goals. Financialmarkets may go up or down, and you are not guaranteed a return on yourinvestment. Past performance is not necessarily a guide to future performance.Financial details including benefits to the treatment of tax will depend onyour individual circumstances and, while checked at the time of publication,may be subject to change in future.
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