Financial Life Planning

I’m passionate that my clients achieve their goals and dreams, do not run out of money before they die or die with too much money and unfulfilled aspirations.

It’s not all about the money – it’s also about living long enough to enjoy it! Let me give you an example:

Jim was a teacher – a bricklayer by trade – who got into teaching much later in life and hadn’t built up much by way of a pension before he started teaching.  He was extremely pleased to join the Teacher ‘Final Salary’ scheme.

It was a very stressful job as he worked at a school for what can only be described as ‘naughty boys’ – one step away from prison.

But he stuck at it in order to build up his pension entitlement, so he could enjoy his future retirement with his wife – ‘just one more year’s pension’ he used to say every year to her.

Jim wasn’t in very good health and was being treated with medication for high blood pressure. One side effect of this was that it increased the chances of having a heart attack.

Unfortunately towards the end of his career he went off sick, but luckily the school’s employment conditions were very generous – six months at full pay and six months half pay. He then retired not long after turning 61 on 1st August 1992 – also his wife’s birthday.

That day they went on holiday to Devon, looking forward to a many such trips during his long and happy retirement.

Sadly he had a fatal heart attack two days later – the widow maker I think they call it, and he did not have the retirement he had dreamed of for so long.

If only he had spoken to a Financial Life Planner like myself, who could have shown him the minimal effect five years’ less pension entitlement after tax would have had on his lifestyle. He could have maybe then enjoyed a longer retirement rather than pushing himself to an early grave.

Jim was my father and my mother remained a widow until her own death 23 years later.