People assume financial planning is about money. Fair enough, it’s in the name. But after a while in this you start to notice it almost never is, underneath.
Ask someone what they want the money for and the first answers are the obvious ones. Pay less tax. Get a good return. Retire at a decent age. All true, all fine. But none of it is the actual thing. Push a little further and what comes out is about their life. Time with people. Not working themselves into the ground. Knowing the children will be alright. The money is just how they get at it.
The best description of the job I’ve heard is this: it’s about minimising future regret. That’s it. Setting things up now so that when you look back, there’s less of the “I wish I had” and “I wish I hadn’t.”
And the odd thing is, that’s easier to work with from the other end. Not “what do you want,” which can be a hard question to answer honestly, but “what would you regret.” People know that one straight away. The thing they’d hate to have missed. The risk they’d never forgive themselves for taking, or not taking.
Start there and the rest of the plan tends to sort itself out. Or at least it points somewhere true.
That’s most of what I’m doing when it looks like I’m talking about pensions.