Seeing as it’s the start of the rutting season, we try to avoid the deer. After dropping the dog at home I head to the office and get myself ready for a meeting with our first-choice platform provider, which involves a lengthy discussion about compliance issues and processes in moving platforms.
I then head for a progress meeting with a long-standing client. We are working on clearing the mortgage on his holiday home, but he and his wife are keen to make some significant architectural changes, so we need to update cashflow analysis to figure out what is possible and what the impact would be of delaying the debt repayment. It all looks good.
I return to the office for lunch and thankfully BT engineers have turned up to reinstate our infinity, package which they inexplicably turned off before my summer break. Debbie, my PA, advises that my other appointment of the day has been rescheduled, so I begin to review files for the rest of the week’s meetings and respond to a few client emails. I lose my patience with one platform provider as I am unable to implement an agreed rebalance on an Isa portfolio.
Tuesday
After a close encounter with a stag, in the park, I arrive at the office to work on tidying my online CPD records with IFP – there are some missing certificates and their system cannot handle files of more than 2MB. The navigation is frustrating – I have counted 141 hours in the cycle, which does not include any unstructured stuff, like reading compliance and techy things. I chase up a few CPD certs that I cannot find, with some success.
I gather the troops for our weekly team meeting, then have lunch with my wife. It is my PI renewal time and I have all the quotes in. I fail to understand how different brokers come up with vastly different prices when supposedly going to the same market. My costs have risen 10 per cent after negotiation (one was asking almost 30 per cent more).
After that, I ask a social media expert about a recent trolling experience, then check out the ThreeSixty document about capital adequacy rules. I can’t help but bemoan the unfairness generated towards firms like mine that actually employ staff and have a solid service proposition.
Wednesday
I have a morning meeting with a professional couple who I have advised since they began their medical careers. They are thinking of moving up the property ladder, requiring a bigger mortgage but concerned about juggling family life, careers and school fees. I had prepared a cashflow model, which we discuss, and reveal the pressure points, which opens up the conversation further.
Afterwards, I post a couple of blog entries online, then give Arthur, my paraplanner, some input on a pension analysis.
At the end of the day my eldest daughter lets me know that she has arrived safely at her university, where she is starting her second year, and Debbie provides me with the completed work for next week’s client meetings.
Thursday
I have a long drive through the drizzle listening to 5live. We are due to discuss inheritance tax planning and I have enlisted the assistance of an expert, Peter Legg. On the radio pension charges are back in the news again. The discussion is worrying, making all sorts of assertions that are not contextualised and I do not think I have heard a DC pension explained so badly before by anyone.
It’s a great meeting with the clients with lots to mull over and a real benefit to the family.
The journey home is tedious, but I get home to cook a half-decent curry, chat with my other daughter who is on her gap year, and watch some TV.
Friday: The usual dog walk on a grey morning.
My first meeting of the day is online with a client who’s house hunting. The mortgage broker I put him in touch with has done a great job. I do some live Voyant modelling of the new mortgage and we agree a plan to clear a rather large mortgage over 10 years with overpayments from surplus income.
Then it is straight into final prep for clients at midday, which involves the usual lifestyle planning and a decision to use funds to clear a mortgage – all part of the statistically unmeasured work advisers do (net worth improvement). The client adds that one of the most valuable aspects of our meetings is gaining a better understanding of how they both view money rather differently, which reminds me of a Carl Richards diagram. I update the blog with my thoughts.
Dominic Thomas is a prinicpal of London-based Solomons
