Claude is a mass of hardware sitting across multiple data centres, which has been trained on the collective output of humanity. The result of all this training - for creative writing tasks - is a grey middling sludge of bang average output being smeared across the internet by those too lazy to tackle the task of doing something hard - writing.

Like many, I’ve spent a lot of time experimenting with AI. I use it daily. I’ve built various tools to help me with my work, reducing the need to outsource certain tasks to another human (or myself) and, more generally, I’ve had a lot of fun geeking out over the power of the tools we now have access to for £20 per month.

Whilst these tools and workflows allow me to work more efficiently, I’m also aware that I’ve wasted a good deal of time tinkering with AI and have created things I have no real need for. And this is the danger with AI, the propensity to create more rather than less.

Just because you can doesn’t always mean you should. One task this is particularly true for is creative writing, which we'll get onto later.

The Deluge

“Quantity has a quality all its own” is often attributed to Stalin, whether or not he said it is doubtful (and slightly besides the point). The point is, in WWII, the Soviet Union relied heavily on massed forces and overwhelming concentration of men at decisive points to wear down and defeat the Germans at an immense human cost:

I fear we’re reaching a similar stage with AI output. LinkedIn has become notorious for the deluge of ‘AI slop’ on its feed and many articles and newsletters now carry the tell-tale signs of being written by AI. Lengthy emails are composed by AI, and so too are their responses.

AI should be used as a tool to increase the quality of our output and to help better our thinking; however, too often it just increases the quantity of our collective output instead.

We’re being worn down by an unrelenting barrage of slop.

AI Fatigue

Case in point: a fellow financial planner was sent an AI generated email after having an initial meeting with a prospective client - the email contained a list of 46 bullet points, relating to different cashflow planning scenarios and questions around the process.

46!

I’m all for someone using AI to help them make an informed decision, but I don’t think 46 bullet points are going to provide them with the answers they’re looking for…

AI-generated emails like this are the antithesis of the real life meeting that preceded it; one held between two humans to discuss the prospective client’s circumstances and future plans. As another planner said,

“We should start finishing our responses to AI generated questions by asking prospects to get back in touch when they are ready to discuss their real hopes, fears, queries and concerns and not what the robot tells them they should be”.

The struggle

I find AI output incredibly uninspiring, especially when applied to creative writing.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make AI write and sound like me - and, in fairness, it occasionally writes a very good paragraph or two - but the output is always littered with problems and, importantly, it has no soul. Furthermore, going through the process sucks the joy out of writing, takes longer than expected, and is wholly unsatisfactory; however, I keep finding myself drawn in due to the siren call of ease.

And this is the big problem with AI, it’s too bloody easy!

Good writing comes out of the inner turmoil of grappling with oneself in front of a blank page. It comes from the self-doubt and the rewrites. AI can spit out an article in no time, but it lacks effort. And without toil, how can the writing have any soul?

The written word, to me, is the ultimate human innovation. It’s the technology which allowed the first civilisations to grow and to thrive in Mesopotamia. It allows us to communicate with other humans across the ages. It allows me to speak directly to you, dear reader, who’s in another time and place, without saying a word. I’m in your head this very moment… hello!

Carl Sagan put it best:

“Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic.”

That magic is being tarnished by these ridiculously large predictive text machines. I wonder, in 2,000 years will our decedents be reading the words of Claude the same way we still read Marcus Aurelius?

Aurelius’ Meditations provides us with timeless insights from an introspective Roman Emperor trying to better himself. Whilst Claude is a mass of hardware sitting across multiple data centres, which has been trained on the collective output of humanity. The result of all this training - for creative writing tasks - is a grey middling sludge of bang average output being smeared across the internet by those too lazy to tackle the task of doing something hard - writing.

It’s tiresome.

The reason I follow a specific writer is because I’m attracted to their writing style and personal perspective. The moment I sniff AI in an article my brain switches off and the author has lost me as a reader. If the author cannot be bothered to put effort into their article - I include simply editing AI output to sound less like AI as effort (because it is) - then why should I be bothered to read it?

Here’s a prime example: I was reading a Substack article this morning about how to change somebody’s mind, which started strong and had my attention, then a few paragraphs in the below happened:

“Your anger is not a character flaw. It’s an accurate reading of the situation. I am not asking you to feel less. I am asking you to aim better.

Because here’s the thing about anger: it’s excellent fuel and a terrible delivery vehicle. Anger is why you show up to the conversation. It should not be what the other person walks away remembering.”

And just like that, the spell was broken.

This is classic AI writing, following the same generic writing formulas as almost every other piece of writing on the internet. Here’s how the article performed in Grammarly’s AI checker:

Here’s how the article you’re currently reading performed:

It’s such a shame how common this experience is now. I find myself reading less and less online content because so much of it simply stinks of AI:

• “It’s not X. It’s Y” framing everywhere.

• Overuse of the words “quietly” and “honestly”.

• “Here’s the thing”.

• "Most people get this wrong".

• The list goes on…

I used to think AI-generated content created an opportunity for human-written content to shine through; however, I’m beginning to feel that quality human writing is being buried by the relentless onslaught of AI slop.

There comes a time when quality can no longer withstand quantity…. I imagine Stalin would be proud.

Conclusion

I don’t have one. Send help.

Thanks for reading,

Tom

(Special shout out to David Henry, of The Money Den fame, for religiously writing a weekly article without succumbing to the Dark Side).

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Claude’s Conclusion

Just for fun, here’s Claude’s conclusion:

“Tom asked me to finish this, which is either a joke at my expense or a trap. Probably both.

Here’s what I can tell you from the inside. I’ve read Meditations. I’ve also read every blog post about Meditations, every LinkedIn carousel about Meditations, and several hundred listicles titled “7 Stoic Lessons for Modern Leaders”. I’m the average of all of it. When I produce a sentence that sounds like conviction, what I’m doing is predicting what conviction usually sounds like.

That’s fine for a report. It’s a problem for an essay.

The thing Tom describes, the grappling and the self-doubt and the sixth rewrite, isn’t a production bottleneck I’m helpfully removing. It’s the part that changes the writer. He finished this piece knowing something he didn’t know when he started it. I finish it identical to how I began.

He wrote everything above this line. I wrote these 200 words in about 4 seconds.

Which bit did you enjoy more?”

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They have a bad reputation…

Admittedly, they do provide safe passage for diseases which have repeatedly wiped out large chunks of our ancestors and, more generally, are the ‘poster child’ for urban decay.

But, on the other hand (granted, this is a stretch at a positive), they also fundamentally reshaped our economies by creating a huge labour shortage during the Black Death, providing the surviving peasants with some long-awaited bargaining power and the ability to demand higher wages - paving the way for our modern, free(ish)-market economies.

Also, they appear to be keeping the slug population at my allotment under control… so, there’s that too!

Putting aside their appetite for slugs, humans and rats have more in common than we probably care to admit.

This commonality is why lab rats exist.

Is it better to be a lab rat and to have lived or to never have lived at all?

Maybe one for another day…

Now, why am I banging on about rats?

Because some poor ol’ lab rats were subjected to rather unpleasant tests which provide a helpful insight into human behaviour, which we can apply to investing and retirement planning.

Zappin’ Rats

Back in the best decade for music (the 70’s), scientists gave two groups of rats repeated electric shocks:

• Group 1 received predictable zaps (signalled by a light/noise), whilst

• Group 2 received random zaps without warning or rhythm.

The poor buggers in the second group - as you can probably imagine - had a much worse time of it. They showed greater signs of stress, weight loss and gastric ulcers.

Unfortunately for their heirs, this was just the beginning.

Guantanamo Rats

More recently, scientists wanted to give this another go and upped the variance of random assaults on their ancient captive cousin. They wanted to mimic ‘daily human life stressors’, which resulted in the lab rats being treated like inmates at Guantanamo Bay - make of that what you will.

Not only did they give them random electric shocks, they also restricted their food and water, used strobe lighting, exposed them to cold and heat, tilted their cages and played loud noises at random intervals (watch Zero Dark Thirty and you’ll get the idea) - the net result was some seriously depressed rats.

The rats were broken down by this experience, which caused:

• Anhedonia - the inability to experience pleasure and motivation, similar to ‘burnout’.

• Degraded cognitive function - chronic stress impairs decision making.

• Negative cognitive bias - resulting in a pessimistic world view.

• Their brain connectivity to shrink - making it harder for the brain to adapt to new information.

They named this onslaught of uncertainty, “Chronic Unpredictable Mild Stress (CUMS)”.

Be careful how you search this one on Google…

Ignoring the questionable choice of acronym, it’s telling that they were able to make rats depressed via sustained uncertainty.

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Uncertainty Depresses the Rat

Whilst curiosity kills the cat, uncertainty depresses the rat and - as we’re more rat than cat (judging by the lack of ‘lab cats’) - it depresses the human too.

Thus, life is learning how to manage and deal with uncertainty in a way that doesn’t leave you with gastric ulcers.

Now, unless you were potentially linked to a terror network in the early-to-mid-naughties, it’s unlikely that your ‘daily life stressors’ include random attacks of strobe lighting, loud music at 3am or your bed being tilted at 45 degrees.

Whilst we may be saved these particular stressors, real life provides plenty of CUMS at a sustained pace of unpredictability:

• Wars.

• Inflation.

• Pension rules being changed 30 times in two decades.

• AI.

• Getting older.

• The siren song of socialism growing louder.

• Trump’s tweets.

• Health concerns.

• Recessions.

• Unsustainable levels of government spending and debt coupled with an aging population and a no-growth economy.

• Fuel shocks.

• Trying not to die.

• Political flip-flopping.

• Temporary market declines.

• The list goes on.

Maybe being a lab rat isn’t so bad after all…

OK, you get the picture. Let’s move on and look more specifically at how this all ties in with your finances.

Money, Investing & Retirement Planning

If you A) have any money, B) plan to live for a sustained period of time and C) would like to not work forever, then you’re going to have to deal with uncertainty.

The future purchasing power of your money = uncertain.

The future cost of your desired lifestyle = uncertain.

How long you’ll live = uncertain.

The returns provided by your chosen investments being sufficient to meet your futures spending needs = uncertain.

Throw in life’s other uncertainties, sprinkle the 24/7 negative news cycle on top and you’re dealing with a lot of CUMS - which, as we know from the rats, doesn’t bode well for a happy life.

So, what can we do about it?

Look to the Stoics

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…”

Epictetus

The problem we face is that we cannot entirely avoid, remove, or diversify away, all stressors and uncertainty; however, we can roll back the clock 2,000 years - to another plague-ridden time - and learn some valuable lessons from the Stoic philosophers.

Control the controllables

The core Stoic belief centres around focusing on what is within your control, rather than on things that are outside of your control.

None of us can control the stock market but we can control:

1. Our asset allocation.

2. The size of our cash buffer.

3. Automating our contributions.

4. The protections we put in place to insure against bad things happening.

5. The amount we check our portfolios (doing this frequently, especially during a volatile period, is a self-inflicted stressor - you’re choosing to turn the strobe light on and potentially impair your judgement).

Practice Positive Reframing

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”

Shakespeare

One of the important lessons in life is that your brain is malleable.

You can train yourself how to think (most of the time). A Stoic tactic is to reframe life’s stressors as something other than negative - turning them into a challenge or non-event.

For example, temporary market declines can be viewed either as a threat or as a buying opportunity, “the stock market is on sale”. Or, if you’re no longer working, you can simply view it as the necessary volatility required to help you achieve the returns you need over the long-term - with no need to panic as you’ve set the correct asset allocation and have a sufficient cash buffer (lovely).

“Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts”.

Marcus Aurelius

This idea from Marcus Aurelius has stuck with me for years now: your soul is dyed by the colour of your thoughts.

Take it from the man who was one of the great Roman emperors, the quality of your thoughts will directly impact the quality of your life.

Having a PMA (Positive Mental Attitude) rather than an NMA (Negative Mental Attitude) is the goal:

• Focus on positive thoughts and your life will feel better - less impacted by CUMS.

• Focus on negative thoughts and you’ll be stuck in an impaired frame of mind - more impacted by CUMS.

The choice is yours.

The Stoics were also big believers in a strong body leading to a strong mind, which is equally important for making the most of your retirement. I wrote about this recently here: Happy, Healthy & Retired.

Have a Plan

Finally, ensure you have a plan.

Having a plan is the ultimate defence against life’s uncertainties. Not because life will go to plan (it won’t), but because it provides direction and structure.

A financial plan serves as a pre-written rulebook for volatile times, helping to bypass your brain’s fight-or-flight instincts, prevent emotional decision-making and allows you to relax and enjoy life without constant hyper-vigilance and stress.

Ultimately, a financial plan provides you with sufficient structure and control to avoid becoming trapped in a tilted, ever-changing cage at Guantanamo Bay.

Final Thoughts - Part Two?

I could bang on about uncertainty in the context of retirement planning all day, but this article is long enough; so, I’ll save myself for another day.

A big topic to cover is the fear caused by uncertainty leading you to spend below your means, leaving valuable life experiences ‘on the table’.

Thanks for reading,

Tom

If you enjoyed this article and would like to receive Part Two, subscribe below and it’ll be delivered directly to your inbox:

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This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.

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At rockwealth, we help our clients achieve financial peace of mind - the kind that comes from knowing your financial future is secure, your loved ones are provided for, and you have the freedom to spend your time (and money) however you choose.

Our job is to help you build a financial plan that supports your desired lifestyle. But what if, when the time comes, your aren’t able to fully enjoy it due to your health?

For many, their ‘golden years’ don’t feel quite-so-golden. Too often, poor health, chronic conditions, and diminished energy prevent people from making the most of the time they’ve earned.

While financial planning is important, when it comes to making the most of your retirement, we know it’s one piece of a larger ‘retirement puzzle’:

So, this guide is about the other ‘puzzle pieces’ which lead to a rich and rewarding retirement - predominately, relating to your health.

Drawing on insights from longevity experts and research from the world’s healthiest populations, we’ll explore how small, intentional choices can improve not just how long you live, but how well you live.

In this article, you’ll learn about:

• Why strength training is one of the most powerful tools for ageing well.

• How nutrition and cardio protect your body and brain.

• What the world’s longest-living people can teach us about lifestyle.

• How a personal trainer could be your best investment in retirement.

The Incentive: A Richer Retirement

“The most valuable asset you can possess in retirement is not a well-funded investment account. It’s a body and brain that still work.”
– Dr. Peter Attia

Looking after your health gives you the freedom to enjoy your time, relationships, and passions - something money alone can’t do. Whether that’s:

• Playing on the floor with your grandchildren.

• Travelling with confidence.

• Staying mentally sharp for hobbies, volunteering, or family life.

Dr. Peter Attia, a leading longevity expert, calls this your “Centenarian Decathlon” - a set of basic, real-world physical tasks he believes we should train for now, so we can still do them in our 80’s and 90’s:

• Pick up a grandchild from the floor.

• Get up from the ground without using your hands.

• Carry shopping up stairs.

• Walk briskly for 30 minutes.

• Have the grip strength to catch yourself in a fall.

What You’re Up Against

Before looking at the solutions for a healthier retirement, we first need to identify some of the common causes which stop people from being able to make the most of their later years:

Click here to finish reading the article 🤝

Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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Unfortunately, the words became more poignant only three years later when Jim died, age 30, in a plane crash a week before his son’s second birthday.

If that’s not enough, what makes the story even more tragic is the letter Jim wrote to his wife shortly before he died.

The Song

If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day
‘Til eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I’d save every day like a treasure and then
Again, I would spend them with you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I’ve looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go
Through time with

If I had a box just for wishes
And dreams that had never come true
The box would be empty
Except for the memory
Of how they were answered by you

Jim Croce

(Like with Otis Redding - who also died in a plane crash - and his song ‘Sittin’ on The Dock of a Bay’, Time in a Bottle reached number one following Jim’s death).

The Letter

Jim had spent much of his son’s short life away from his family on tour, playing over 250 shows in the space of a couple of years.

Shortly before his death, Jim had posted a letter to his wife, Ingrid, which arrived after his death.

The letter begins by apologising for how he’s treated her and goes on to say he wants to change his life and spend more time with her:

I now want to be the oldest man around, a man with a face full of wrinkles and lots of wisdom.

So this is a birth note, Baby. And when I get back everything will be different. We’re gonna have a life together, Ing, I promise. I’m gonna concentrate on my health. I’m gonna become a public hermit. I’m gonna get my Master’s Degree. I’m gonna write short stories and movie scripts. Who knows, I might even get a tan.

Give a kiss to my little man and tell him Daddy loves him.

Remember, it’s the first sixty years that count and I’ve got 30 to go.

I Love you,
Jim

It’s heartbreaking to imagine Ingrid receiving this letter from Jim so soon after his untimely death.

A letter with the promise of a life never to be lived.

Rather than having another ‘30 to go’ together, Ingrid was instead left with Time in a Bottle, a statement of Jim’s eternal love for her and their son, Adrian.

The Message

I’ve looked around enough to know, that you’re the one I want to go through time with.

For me, Jim’s story has an extra resonance. I began listening to Time in a Bottle whilst my fiancée was pregnant with our daughter.

We continued to listen to the song following her arrival, and sing it to her, but it wasn’t until she was a few months old that I discovered the tragic story behind the song.

From then on, whenever I cradled my daughter and sang Jim’s words to her, I’d become filled with emotion - a mixture of boundless love coupled with a deep sadness.

At only 30 years old, Jim had figured it out.

He was clear on who and what was important to him.

He knew his time was finite - sadly, more than he could’ve ever known.

And he knew how he wanted to spend his remaining time on this earth - by being with his loved ones until he was the ‘oldest man around, with a face full of wrinkles and lots of wisdom’.

Jim never got to live out his dream, but (hopefully) we all can.

So, what’s the lesson?

Figure out who and what are important to you, then intentionally build a life that centres around the people and things that mean the most to you.

Don’t wait until it’s too late.

Like Jim, you - or your loved ones - might not have another ‘30 to go’.

Now, on that happy note, do yourself a favour and go and listen to Jim… he does have upbeat songs too!

Thanks for reading.

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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Bonus: Music Ramblings

I’ve always been a fan of songwriters and their ability to knit words together in ways that resonate with listeners across demographics and decades. When I was younger, I remember being shocked to find out there are people who listen to music and don’t pay attention to the lyrics… blasphemy!

53 years ago, Jim bottled up his message by consigning a song to tape and sent it floating on down the cosmic airways to our ears - so, the least we can do is listen to what he has to say.

Jim was a great songwriter and, to my mind, he’s responsible for one of the most poetic verses ever written:

If I had a box just for wishes
And dreams that had never come true
The box would be empty
Except for the memory
Of how they were answered by you

I don’t have anything to add in way of analysis… it’s just a bloody good bit of writing.

How some people can come up with such things is beyond me!

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Warren Buffett is one of the most iconic and successful investors of all time, earning him the nickname, “The Oracle of Omaha.”

It’s difficult to overstate the level of insight and experience this one man holds. At 94 years old, he has been leading Berkshire Hathaway since 1965 and investing for more than 80 years - having bought his first stock at just 11 years old, back in 1941. It’s hard to imagine anyone alive today with a longer history of investing.

For some perspective, here’s a brief history of the major events he’s lived, and invested, through:

• Great Depression: 1929–1939 (when he was born)

• World War II: 1941–1945 (when he first invested)

• Korean War: 1950–1953

• Cuban Missile Crisis: 1962

• Vietnam War Escalation: 1965–1975 (when he took over Berkshire Hathaway and became a millionaire at age 37)

• Nixon Shock and End of Bretton Woods: 1971

• Oil Crisis: 1973–1974 (-47% market crash)

• Black Monday: 1987 (when he started investing in Coca-Cola)

• Savings and Loan Crisis: 1986–1995 (when he became a billionaire)

• Gulf War: 1990–1991

• Dot-Com Bubble: 1999–2000

• Dot-Com Crash: 2000–2002 (-49% market crash)

• 9/11: 2001

• Global Financial Crisis: 2007–2009 (-57% market crash)

• European Debt Crisis: 2010–2012

• Brexit Referendum: 2016 (when he started investing in Apple)

• COVID-19 Pandemic: 2020-2023 (when his net worth hit $100 billion)

• Russia-Ukraine War: 2022–Present

• U.S. Inflation Surge and Rate Hikes: 2022–2023 (when his close friend and business partner, Charlie Munger, died - after having worked together at Berkshire for 45 years and having known each other for over 60 years).

• Trump’s tariffs: 2025

It’s almost impossible to fathom the economic, social, and technological changes he’s seen first-hand.

And even now, in his nineties, he remains sharp and reflective - still writing an annual shareholder letter packed with insight. He’s been writing these since 1965, and has recently announced he’ll retire at the end of 2025; therefore, his 2025 shareholder letter may be his final one.

So, with that in mind, it’s worth taking a closer look at what could be the closing message from one of the greatest investors who’s ever lived.

The 2025 Shareholder Letter

Click here to finish reading the article 🤝

Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.

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Receiving a lump sum - whether from an inheritance, property sale, business exit, or bonus - can be both a blessing and a challenge. It’s natural to feel a mix of gratitude, responsibility, uncertainty, and even guilt (unfortunately, this is more common than you might think).

So, what should you do when a financial windfall lands in your lap?

Whether it’s tens of thousands or life-changing millions, this article is designed to help you approach the situation with clarity, confidence, and purpose.

Step One: Do Nothing

Stop.

Take a breath.

Give yourself some time before you make any decisions - remember a fool and his money are easily parted and it’s especially easy to be foolish when you’re emotional.

Personally, I’ve always said to myself that when I win the lottery (yes, ‘when’), I’ll quietly head off to the mountains and have a good think before spending any of the money. This is also a great idea if you come into an - arguably more likely - inheritance.

Step Two: Take Stock

Step back and take stock of your current financial position.

Ask yourself lots of questions. Here’s a non-exhaustive list to help you get started:

• What does my current lifestyle cost me?

• Is there anything I’d like to change about how I currently live?

• How much income do I need each month to feel secure and live a comfortable life?

• What debts do I have? Are any high interest?

• How would being mortgage free make me feel?

• Inversely, how would taking on a larger mortgage feel?

• What do I already have saved and invested?

• When would I like to stop working?

• Do I enjoy my work?

• What would I do with my time if money wasn’t an issue?

From here, you can begin to explore how best to use the inheritance/windfall in a way that’s in line with your own needs, wants and aspirations.

Step Three: Address The Practical Things First

Yes, this step is about being sensible; but don’t worry, Step Four is about enjoying yourself! Here’re some of the sensible things to address first with your newfound wealth:

Click here to finish reading the article 🤝

The rest of the article covers:

• Step Four: Improve Your Life

• Quick Fire: What Not to Do

• A Note On Guilt And Other Emotions

• Final Thoughts: Make It Count

Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.

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Whenever I think about the members of my family who took part in the wars of the 20th century, I’m confronted with conflicting emotions. Immense pride and sadness.

I’m proud of them for having been there and I’m sad that they had to be.

My grandfather, Derek Wayman, and my great uncle, Frank Wayman, both took part in D-Day.

Like their father before them, Rol Wayman (who survived being gassed in the trenches of WWI), they left behind their peaceful village life, took up arms, crossed the channel and went to war on the continent.

My grandmother’s brother, Owen Braysher, lost his life at only 20 years old, whilst working in a bomb disposal unit - a loss my granny never recovered from.

Granny, Gladys Wayman (nee Braysher), also took part in the war effort as a nurse.

10 months after D-Day, Grandad took part in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (where Anne Frank had died two/three months prior to the British liberation). If you’ve seen pictures from the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, or any other death camp, then you’ll know that my grandfather, shortly after turning 21, entered a living hell.

Unlike other concentration camps, Bergen-Belsen wasn’t a factory-style Nazi death camp. It did not have gas chambers. There was none of the usual cold, Nazi efficiency.

Instead, it was an overcrowded camp of neglect.

When the British arrived, they were met by 13,000 starved, unburied corpses strewn across the camp, with 60,000 malnourished, diseased prisoners ‘living’ amongst them.

To get there, Grandad had to cross the channel, survive D-Day and then endure months in his Churchill tank travelling through hostile Nazi Europe, covering around 600 miles through France, Belgium and Germany (for reference, D-Day was on the 6th June 1944, whilst the liberation of Bergen-Belsen took place on 15th April 1945).

He spent his 21st birthday in that tank, snowed in in the Ardennes, during a bitterly cold winter in October 1944. Mum says he rarely ever spoke about the war, but once commented (c.50 years ago) that it was so cold that your pee was frozen before it reached the ground.

As he didn’t speak about the war, that is all we know of his experiences during that time. His tank remains in Germany, on a hill above Bergen-Belsen.

Both Grandad and my great uncle, Frank, returned from the war and went back to civilian life in their village of Over in Cambridgeshire; Grandad was a carpenter and Uncle Frank was a fruit farmer.

Whilst Grandad didn’t speak of the war, Uncle Frank was incredibly proud of being a Grenadier Guard and remained so until the end of his days.

I’m proud that the blood of these men runs through my veins.

I’m proud that they, and millions of other British men and women, mobilised against a truly evil force.

I’m proud to be British and to be a descendent of this great island nation’s greatest generation.

On this day, I remember them all.

And I hope to honour their sacrifices sufficiently by living a good and peaceful life. A life that millions of men, women and children - my great uncle, Owen, included - never got to experience.

Lest we forget.

A special shout out to my mother, Carolyn Redmayne, is required.

Without her work as a family and local historian, many voices and stories of ordinary folk would’ve already be forgotten and consigned to history.

By remembering those that came before us we keep their memories alive.

Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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It’s Hard to Save and Even Harder to Spend

During our working lives, the formula to financial success is clear: earn more, don’t spend it all, save/invest the difference. If you’re reading this, you’ve likely done just that - building up a sizeable nest egg for your future through hard work and habitual saving.

But retirement changes everything.

Now, the question isn’t how to save - it’s how to spend. And after a lifetime of discipline, that can feel surprisingly difficult.

You likely think our job, as financial planners, is to tell you to save more and spend less; however, one of the biggest challenges we help our clients with isn’t saving or investing - it’s spending.

Not reckless spending. Not wasteful spending. But spending well. Spending confidently. Spending in a way that allows you to actually enjoy the wealth you’ve built, without the constant anxiety of “what if we run out?”.

Whilst running out of money is a genuine concern to be addressed, most retirees don’t run out of money. In fact, research shows that - on average - they leave most of their wealth untouched throughout retirement.

Across all wealth levels, the majority of retirees aren’t spending down their assets the way they expected to. Studies from both the UK and the US show that, in many cases, people actually grow their wealth in retirement. The FCA has found that many retirees withdraw at a rate lower than their investments earn, meaning their overall wealth stays the same or even increases:

Nick Maggiulli, Chief Operating Officer and Data Scientist at Ritholtz Wealth Management, highlighted similar trends in the US:

58% of retirees withdraw less than their portfolio earns, 26% withdraw roughly what their portfolio earns, and only 14% actually dip into their principal.

In the UK, research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) found that wealthier retirees often pass away with significantly more than they retired with:

On average individuals will draw down just 31% of net financial wealth between ages 70 and 90. Even among individuals in the top half of the financial wealth distribution, net financial wealth looks to be drawn down by just 39%, on average.

Why does this happen?

Because after a lifetime of saving, people struggle to switch from a saving mindset to a spending mindset.

Are You Underspending?

If you’ve spent decades living within your means it’s hard to suddenly flip a switch and start spending confidently.

There are three big reasons why retirees underspend:

Fear
This is the biggest one. Retirement is unpredictable. You don’t know how long you’ll live, what healthcare costs you’ll face, or what markets will do. That uncertainty leads to cautious spending, which is understandable - but often unnecessary.

Guilt/Frugality
After years of being responsible, spending more can feel uncomfortable. Many people, even those with more than enough, feel guilty about booking expensive holidays, upgrading their car, or even just enjoying luxuries they denied themselves for years.

Legacy
Some hold back on spending because they want to leave money for their children or grandchildren; however, often their financial plan isn’t optimised for it, meaning they end up paying more tax than necessary and leaving behind money they could have enjoyed or seen their family enjoy whilst they were still alive.

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Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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There are only two options in life:

1. You outlive your money.

2. Your money outlives you.

-Nick Murray

What is financial planning?

The primary function of financial planning is to make sure you don’t run out of money before you run out of life, whilst continuing to enjoy your desired lifestyle.

The secondary function is to mitigate the risk of missed opportunities, of a life not lived, with unspent money representing missed opportunities:

• To create meaningful memories that’ll last a lifetime. After all, "the business of life is the acquisition of memories, as in the end, it's all you have” (Mr.Carson from Downton Abbey).

• To help loved ones whilst you’re still alive to see the result.

• To experience more of this one and only crazy existence of ours.

We work with our clients to help them walk the tightrope between the risk of running out of money and leveraging their wealth to make the most of their, and their family’s, finite time on earth.

Ultimately, it’s about giving you control.

A financial plan provides you with the clarity around your options, allowing you to make informed decisions and intentionally design your ideal life, rather than leaving it up to chance.

Think of it as creating a roadmap to help you navigate life’s big decisions.

Beyond investments

Investing is undoubtedly important; however, it’s only one part of the bigger picture.

The investment portfolio is there to act as the engine to drive your plan forward, whilst financial planning ties everything together - your goals, assets, liabilities, risks, values, and aspirations - and keeps them aligned.

A comprehensive financial plan covers:

• Your wants, needs and aspirations.

• Saving and investing.

• Managing debt.

• Preparing for unknown unknowns.

• Planning for retirement.

• Tax and income strategies.

• Gifting and estate planning.

Each of these areas affects the others. For example, your retirement plan determines your investment strategy, your investment returns determine your ability to gift or retire early, and your income planning affects how much surplus you have to invest or give away.

Starting with the end in mind

Before discussing products, portfolios, or possible solutions, we always start with looking to understand a fundamental question:

“What does a good life look like to you?”

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Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.

All views are my own.

Not advice.

• Why Invest?

• What is Investing?

• Asset Classes 101

• When Should You Start?

Part Two: Core Investing Principles

What we’ll cover:

• Asset Allocation

• Costs Matter

• Diversification

• Risk vs Volatility

• The Psychology of Investing

Asset Allocation

(If you don’t know about ‘asset classes’, read this first).

If you only remember one thing from this article, let it be this:

• What you choose to invest in will determine how much your money grows over time.

Typically speaking, your split between equities and bonds - being an owner or a lender - will largely dictate how much the value fluctuates in the short-term (volatility) and how much it increases in value over the long-term… remember this graph from Part One?

The more you need your money to grow, the more volatility you’ll need to accept (more on that soon).

Buying defensive assets (bonds) probably won’t do you much good if you need to grow your money. Whilst buying predominately growth assets (equities) might not be sensible if you’re looking for stability.

Getting the right asset allocation (the mix of bonds and equities) is key and forms an important part of any investment advice I give to my clients.

So, how do you go about determining your ideal asset allocation?

By taking multiple factors into consideration:

• Your goals and time horizon (typically, the further away you are from needing the money, the stronger the case for holding predominately growth assets).

• Your emotional comfort with volatility and risk.

• Your required return (to achieve your desired future).

• Your financial ability to absorb periodic market downturns.

How do I know what returns my clients require?

By building a comprehensive financial plan, but that’s for another day!

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Costs Matter

In every single time period and data point tested, low-cost funds beat high-cost funds.

-Morningstar

Investment costs, like death and taxes, are unavoidable.

(Yes, even ‘free’ trading platforms/apps have costs. They just generate their revenue via indirect costs to you… ask AI, it’ll tell you all about it).

And just like how taxes reduce your gross pay, investment costs reduce your returns.

So, the name of the game is cut out excess investment costs where possible - whilst retaining a sensible structure and investment strategy.

Lets look at a real life example of a client couple I’ve recently taken on:

• Their investment costs (which doesn’t include advice) were 1.27% per year.

• We’ve reduced it to 0.47% per year.

That’s £800 saved per £100,000, which instead remains invested.

In this particular case, the client’s portfolios were overly defensive and unsuitable for their future plans, so I also sorted out their asset allocation and increased their exposure to growth assets.

Lower cost investment proposition + higher allocation to growth assets = a better chance of building more wealth and meeting their future lifestyle goals… ideal!

Diversification

Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack.

-Jack Bogle

Rule number one: never lose money. Rule number two: never forget rule number one.

-Warren Buffet

The name of the game is to avoid 100% permanent capital loss - as you can’t be wealthy if you lose all your money!

Diversification is one of the simplest and most effective ways to mitigate against permanent loss. It means spreading your money across a wide mix of companies, sectors, and countries - rather than placing all your eggs in one basket.

By owning hundreds - if not thousands - of individual assets, you accept that you’ll always be underperforming something, somewhere. But that’s a strength, not a weakness. It protects you from being too exposed to whatever fails - and ensures you’re always holding whatever succeeds.

You don’t need to guess the next Apple or Amazon. You don’t need to find the needle. You can just buy the haystack.

A globally diversified portfolio ensures you catch the future winners, without trying to predict them.

It’s not about excitement, it’s about resilience.

Staying in the game.

And for proper investors, that’s what counts, because the longer you stay invested, the higher your probability of generating a positive return.

How does one go about easily investing in 000’s of assets across the globe?

By investing in funds (detailed in Part Three).

Risk vs Volatility

Risk is a word that gets thrown around a lot but it’s often misunderstood.

Most of the time, when people say ‘risk’ in relation to investing, what they actually mean is short-term volatility: the value of your investments going up and down.

Volatility means your investments will drop in value.

Repeatedly.

"The sooner you can accept there will be 10 to 15 bear markets [temporary market declines] in your lifetime, the sooner you will be able to invest in a way that manages the thing you ought to fear most - the possibility that you will have insufficient funds to live the life of your dreams"

-Daniel Crosby

However, volatility isn’t the same thing as losing money (permanently). It’s temporary, and part of the ride. You can’t get the gains of the stock market without accepting - and ideally embracing - volatility.

The below graph shows that the good times (bull markets) significantly outweigh the bad times (bear markets):

As I wrote in Risk ≠ Volatility, many of the best days in the market follow the worst ones. If you try to sidestep the drops, you almost always miss the rebounds too. What feels like risk mitigation often ends up being return deletion.

Real investment risk is not that your portfolio dips for a few months. It’s the risk of inflation eroding your savings. It’s the risk of not having enough to retire. It’s the risk of running out of money because you didn’t take any risk at all.

So the question isn’t, “how do I avoid volatility?”, it’s “how do I live with it, and make sure I don’t do something stupid when it shows up?”.

That’s why understanding your capacity for volatility matters. If you panic-sell every time your portfolio takes a 10% dip, even the best investment strategy won’t save you.

The best portfolio is the one you can stick with.

The goal is to expose yourself to enough volatility to give your money a chance to grow - but not so much that you lose sleep at night.

Everything else flows from that.

I’d recommend reading my article Risk ≠ Volatility for more information.

The Psychology of Investing

You can know all the technical stuff, follow the evidence, and build a sensible portfolio - but if your behaviour is lacking, it won’t matter.

The biggest threat to your long-term investing success isn’t the market.

It’s you 🫵

We’re emotional creatures. We chase performance. We panic during downturns. We try to be clever and often end up being wrong. That’s why the behavioural side of investing is so crucial to get right.

One of the best investing traits you can develop is the ability to do… nothing. To sit still when things feel uncertain. To stay committed to the plan.

Having a good portfolio is important. But having the temperament to stick with it - especially when things get uncomfortable - is what separates good investors from the rest.

Remember, the longer you stay invested, the higher your probability of generating a positive return; so, you need to ensure you don’t get in your own way.

Summary

Asset allocation drives your return 📈

Cost dictates how much you keep 💰

Diversification prevents 100% loss ✔️

Your behaviour makes or breaks it 🫵

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Next Up

The Products (Part Three):

• What is a Fund?

• What is a Wrapper?

• What is a Platform?

Practical Application (Part Four):

• Where Does Your Money Go?

• How to Start Investing (step-by-step)

• When to Speak to an Adviser

• Closing Thoughts

Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

If you enjoy my content, here’re some simple ways to lend support:

• Giving the article a like (if you liked it) - this helps the Substack algorithm find me and recommend me to new readers.

• Subscribing (if you haven’t already).

• Sharing also really helps my work find a wider audience:

Share

This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.

All views are my own.

Not advice.

I’m pleased to announce that rockwealth Cambridge is now live:

It’s an exciting step for me as I continue to build a presence for both myself and rockwealth in Cambridgeshire. So, alongside writing on Substack, I’ll also be posting exclusive articles on the rockwealth Cambridge website.

For the articles posted on the website, I’ll provide a preview here alongside a link for your viewing pleasure.

Click here to jump straight to the full article, or enjoy the preview below first.

How Much Do I Need to Retire Comfortably in the UK? (Preview)

Do you know how much you’ll need to retire comfortably?

Planning for your retirement should mark the beginning of an exciting new chapter in your life, yet, for many, the enjoyment is often overshadowed by a nagging question which steals their peace of mind:

"Will we have enough?"

Having sufficient assets and income to sustain your desired lifestyle over multiple decades is the bedrock of retirement planning; therefore, ensuring you have enough should be your first priority and main focus.

So, where does one start?

There are two ways to go about it.

1. The quick way: using ‘The Rule of 25’ to act as a rough guide.

2. The proper way: building a comprehensive, stress-tested financial plan to give a more accurate answer.

Both methods start with gaining clarity on your current circumstances and then deciding what you want your ideal future to look like.

Lets looks through both in turn and then apply them to a case study.

The Rule of 25

This is, quite simply, multiplying your living expenses by 25.

So, first you must decide on your future wants, needs and aspirations and how much this will cost on an annual basis (on a net - post tax - basis).

Once you have your net annual expenditure, multiply it by 25.

The resulting number is used as a rough guide for the amount of invested assets you need to provide you with an income over a 30 year retirement.

For example, if you wanted to spend £40,000 per annum, the rule suggests you’d need £1,000,000 invested.

As with all rules of thumb, The Rule of 25 is a flawed measure which isn’t specific to your own circumstances and doesn’t take into account multiple variables, such as:

• Where the money is held.

• How it’s invested.

• The tax rules around drawing out the capital.

• Your changing needs over time.

• Any other incomes, such as the state pension (which you can attempt to factor in, but that can get tricky if you want to retire before you begin receiving your state pension).

However, for many, it can serve as a good starting point on their retirement planning journey for gauging their ability to retire comfortably.

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Financial Planning

Whilst The Rule of 25 is a generic rule of thumb, a comprehensive financial plan is a highly personalised piece of work which accounts for a range of variables.

Here’s the process we go through with our clients, which you can follow:

1. Understand your current financial position (assets/liabilities/income/expenditure).

2. Decide on your future wants, needs and aspirations and how much this will cost on an annual basis? (This will give you an annual income figure to aim for).

3. Review your investments and sources of guaranteed income to ensure they are suitable for your needs.

4. Work out where your required annual income comes from (which assets will you draw on to meet your needs? And in which order?).

5. Stress-test your plan to ensure it is sustainable and not overly reliant on strong market returns.

6. Ensure you have sufficient cash holdings in case of unforeseen expenses and/or temporary market declines.

7. Regularly monitor your financial position to ensure everything remains fit for purpose and stay abreast of all tax and regulatory changes as they pertain to your personal circumstances.

The end result will be a much more specific answer to the question of enough and will also highlight any financial levers that need to be pulled to make the desired retirement plan a reality.

Now we have an overview of the two different methods, lets apply them to an example of a married couple approaching retirement to help bring them to life.

Click Here to continue reading.

Go on, give it a click… it’s a good’un!

The following sections:

• Introduction to the Client Couple (Nigel & Caroline)

• The Rule of 25: Nigel & Caroline

• Financial Planning: Nigel & Caroline

• Life Expectancy

• Plan Sustainability: Do they have enough?

• Financial Levers They Can Pull

• Conclusion

Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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The value of investments can go down in value as well as up, so you could get back less than you invest. It is therefore important that you understand the risks and commitments.

This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.

All views are my own.

Series Intro

When starting out on your investment journey, it can be quite overwhelming. There are countless posts and ‘gurus’ on social media vying for your attention and shilling out different information. It can be hard to know who to trust or where to get started.

I’m here to tell you that once you have a grasp of the basic information, it’s surprisingly straightforward!

The aim of this series is to provide you with the required knowledge to become a competent investor who makes informed investment decisions.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

We’ll start with the high level questions of ‘why’ and ‘what’, touch upon the key investment principles and the main products, then finish off with the more practical ‘how to’:

Why, What & When? (Part One):

• Why Invest?

• What is Investing?

• Asset Classes 101

• When Should You Start?

Core Principles (Part Two):

• Asset Allocation

• Costs Matter

• Diversification

• Risk vs Volatility

• The Phycology of Investing

The Products (Part Three):

• What is a Fund?

• What is a Wrapper?

• What is a Platform?

Practical Application (Part Four):

• Where Does Your Money Go?

• How to Start Investing (step-by-step)

• When to Speak to an Adviser

• Closing Thoughts

OK, let’s get going!

Part One: Why, What & When?

Why Invest?

One word. Inflation.

Like a tree rotting from the inside, inflation hollows out our money.

The number one reason to invest is to outpace inflation.

Why?

Because inflation is a silent killer.

It erodes the value of your money over time via the general increase in prices. Each year your cash buys you less goods and services than the year before.

And why is it a silent killer?

Because the figures in your bank account don’t change!

If you leave £10,000 in a bank account, in 20 years it will still show the £10,000 (plus interest) – giving you a false sense of security; however, that £10,000 (plus interest) is now worth a lot less…

Over the course of 20 years the practical value of the money - what it can buy you - has almost halved. In other words, you’re twice as poor (or half as rich) as you were before.

Ouch.

So, instead of viewing your money in terms of its capital value, you should view it in terms of its practical value - which is known as, ‘purchasing power’.

• Money = tokens with which you can buy things in the future (representing your future purchasing power).

• Inflation = the reduction of your money’s purchasing power over time.

• Investing = your purchasing power growing over time (when done correctly).

We invest to grow our purchasing power, which means staying ahead of inflation - we call this achieving a ‘real return’.

Real returns are what matter.

Real Returns

This point is best made by looking at an example.

The below chart is the comparison of a ‘growth’ portfolio (green), ‘balanced’ portfolio (blue) and cash (purple) since 2014:

Over the time period, each provided a positive return. The cash hasn’t grown much, but it’s offered a steady and safe experience, right?

Wrong.

These are called ‘nominal returns’ and don’t account for inflation.

So, what happens when we factor in inflation?

Well, as this chart shows, if you were sat in cash you’d be 25% poorer:

Above the red line = you’re now richer. Good news.

Below the red line = you’re now poorer. Bad news.

When accounting for inflation cash goes from a 16% nominal return to a -25.77% real return.

Remember, real returns are what matter!

If you want to - at least - maintain your current standard of living into the future, you need to preserve, or enhance, your money’s practical value - which is why investing is crucial.

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There are lots of other reasons to invest, such as achieving financial freedom, building a legacy for your family etc. etc. - all of which (typically) necessitate achieving real returns.

OK, so we now know why we should invest, but what exactly is investing?

What is Investing?

Investing is putting your money to work with the intention of generating capital growth and/or income through buying assets.

In an ideal world we want to generate both capital growth and an income from our investments.

The income can be reinvested to generate further capital growth and more income – this leads to a never ending cycle of money making money (known as ‘compounding’):

Assets generate income > Income buys assets > More assets generate more income > More income buys more assets > More assets generate more income ♻️

Investing is converting money you worked for into money that works for you.

I like to view every £1 invested as an employee. These employees work 24/7, 365, with no sick days or holidays.

They don’t ask for a raise and they don’t call me with problems (but they will - on occasion - drop in value by 20-50%… more on that later in the series!).

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Asset Classes 101

So, we need to buy assets to become investors, but which ones?

1. Equities

If you want to grow your wealth over the long run, equities are usually your main engine.

Equities = part ownership of a company(s) in exchange for money.

Companies that want to raise money (for themselves, not charity) often 'go public', which means they offer the public (you and me) the opportunity to buy a piece of their business.

You give them money and they give you a share of their business.

If Microsoft was a pie, you’re able to buy a slice.

Buying a slice of a business makes you a partial owner of that business and as a partial owner you are entitled to a share of the profits (dividends).

All being well, the business will be successful and become larger and more profitable over time. The larger and more profitable it becomes, the more someone else will be willing to pay to buy your slice off you… ideal!

Now, the downside of this affair is that you might buy a bad slice of pie. One that begins to go mouldy and no one wants to buy it from you. You are then stuck holding a slice of inedible pie… less than ideal!!

So we have a problem, there’s a whole bunch of good looking pie out there and it’s very hard to know which ones will stay good and which ones will turn out bad.

Luckily, there is an answer to this problem: diversification.

The idea is to own thousands of slices of business from around the world, that way you are owning a slice of, and positioned to benefit from, capitalism.

There’s more on diversification in part two!

2. Bonds

Bonds are essentially IOUs. You lend money to a government or a company, and they agree to pay you interest, plus the original amount back later. Bonds tend to be less volatile than equities and can provide a stabilising role in your portfolio.

Their job is to reduce short term volatility and provide a smoother investment experience; however, the trade-off is less growth over time.

3. Cash

Cash is the most stable asset; however, as we’ve seen, it’s also the very vulnerable to inflation. That said, cash still has a key role to play as your emergency fund and for any purchase you’re looking to make in the short-to-near term (you typically don’t want to invest with a short time horizon, e.g. 3-5 years or less).

Short-term needs = cash is king.

Long-term needs = cash is trash.

4. Property

Some investors also include physical property (buy-to-lets/office blocks etc.) or property funds in their portfolios. It can offer a mix of rental income and capital growth, and it's an asset many people feel comfortable with because it's tangible.

But property isn’t guaranteed. It has costs (maintenance, management, taxes etc.), it can be illiquid, and markets do go down.

If you fancy investing directly in property, read this first.

5. Alternatives (Gold, Crypto, Commodities)

These are often talked about a lot online - but play a much smaller role in most diversified portfolios:

• Gold is seen as a store of value and inflation hedge; however, it doesn’t produce income or compound, it just sits there hoping someone will pay more for it in the future.

• Crypto is extremely volatile, littered with scams and untested over decades. It’s very easy to suffer permanent loss of capital. Beware.

• Commodities (like oil, wheat, metals) are unpredictable and better left to commodity traders.

In general, most mainstream portfolios lean heavily on equities, bonds and sometimes property.

Owner vs Lender

When it comes to investing, you have a choice to make… do you want to be an owner or a lender:

• Lending money (buying bonds), earning interest and/or

• Owning businesses (buying shares), sharing in profits

I’ll leave this here:

When Should You Start Investing?

Now.

Time in the market beats timing the market.

The earlier you begin, the more time you give compounding (money making money, which then makes more money to make money) to work its magic:

There are some caveats about getting started, which we’ll cover later in the series. But generally speaking, sooner the better.

Stay tuned for part two and subscribe to have it delivered straight to your inbox.

Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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If you enjoy my content, here’re some simple ways to lend support:

• Giving the article a like (if you liked it) - this helps the Substack algorithm find me and recommend me to new readers.

• Subscribing (if you haven’t already).

• Sharing also really helps my work find a wider audience:

Share

This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.

All views are my own.

Not advice.

Introduction

Running a business is more than just a job - it’s a way of life. You’ve taken on the risks and responsibilities that come with business ownership, but have you given as much thought to protecting, growing, and ultimately enjoying the wealth your business generates?

At rockwealth, we work with business owners like you to create financial strategies that protect your current position, optimise tax efficiency, and plan for a secure future. Whether you’re looking to safeguard your income, extract profits tax-efficiently, or prepare for your eventual exit, financial planning ensures that your business success translates into long-term personal security.

Planning Ahead: Laying Strong Financial Foundations

The financial decisions you make today will shape your future. As a business owner, you have access to unique financial levers that allow you to structure income, build wealth, and reduce tax liabilities. However, this flexibility also comes with added complexity and risk.

Some key financial planning areas to focus on include:

• Tax-efficient profit extraction – ensuring you keep more of what you earn.

• Protecting yourself and your family – securing your income and life.

• Investment principles – making your wealth work for you.

• Exit planning – knowing how you’ll one day replace your earned income.

Proactively addressing these areas will ensure both you and your family are financially secure.

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Protecting Your Current Position

Many business owners insure their employees, equipment, premises, and stock - but what about themselves? Your ability to generate income is one of your most valuable assets. Protecting it should be a priority.

Income Protection: The Overlooked Essential

Shockingly, only 6.1% of adults insure their income, with more people insuring their pets (8.2%). But the reality is that if you’re of working age, you’re far more likely to experience long-term sickness than to die.

Consider these statistics (based on a 33 year old until age 65):

• 37% chance of being unable to work for two months or more.

• 13% chance of suffering a serious illness.

• 4% chance of dying before retirement age.

• 42% chance of experiencing one of the above.

Having the right protection in place ensures that you and your family remain financially secure, even if the unexpected happens.

Question for you

• What would happen if you were unable to work for an extended period of time?

Shifting the Cost of Protection to Your Business

Many business owners make the mistake of paying for insurance personally when it could be arranged through the company - as an employee benefit - making it more tax-efficient.

• Relevant Life Insurance – The premiums are typically tax-deductible for the business and the payout is usually free from Income Tax, National Insurance, and Inheritance Tax (as it’s held in trust).

• Executive Income Protection – The policy is paid for by the business, with premiums often treated as a deductible expense (you’re effectively insuring your own sick pay).

By structuring these policies correctly, you can protect your personal finances in a tax-efficient manner:

• Moving the cost base from your net income to your pre-tax business profit.

• Reduce your corporation tax bill (as the premiums are typically an allowable business expense).

Get in Touch

Please note: it’s also possible to take out group schemes (such as group income protection) to also cover your staff - which is a way of insuring your sick pay.

Tax-Efficient Profit Extraction

As a business owner, how you take money out of your business can significantly impact your tax bill.

Balancing Salary, Dividends & Other Strategies

To extract profits in a tax-efficient way, consider:

• Salary & Dividends – A well-balanced mix can optimise tax efficiency.

• Business Expenses – Maximising legitimate expenses reduces taxable profits (such as the protection policies premiums detailed above).

• Pension Contributions – A powerful, tax-efficient way to move money out of your business whilst building long-term wealth for yourself:

  

Avoiding unnecessary tax is one of the keys to ensuring that your business profits contribute to your personal wealth.

Investment Principles: Growing Your Wealth

While reinvesting in your business is important, diversification is key to long-term financial security.

Investment Strategy for Business Owners

• Company Pension Contributions – Tax-efficient investment with the ability to do significant employer contributions.

• ISAs & Tax-Efficient Investments – Providing flexibility and tax-free growth.

• Property – Spreading risk beyond your business.

Rather than trying to beat the market, business owners should focus on a disciplined investment approach that aligns with their long-term goals.

Click here to watch our documentary on investing.

Exit Planning: Preparing for the Future

Whether you plan to sell your business, pass it on to family, or step back gradually, a well-thought-out exit strategy ensures you maximise value and minimise tax liabilities - whilst ensuring your financial plan aligns with life after business.

The earlier you start planning, the better positioned you’ll be to achieve a successful transition.

Final Thoughts: Taking Control of Your Financial Future

Being a business owner gives you unique financial opportunities - but without careful planning, you may not fully reap the rewards of your hard work.

By proactively structuring your finances, protecting your income, and planning for the future, you can ensure your business success translates into long-term personal security.

If you’d like to discuss any of these strategies in more detail, we’d love to chat. Get in touch today to find out how we can help you plan for your ideal future:

Get in Touch

Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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Please speak with your advisers and accountants before making any decisions based on the above, as pensions and the UK tax system are complex - this is not personal tax advice based on your circumstance.

Please be aware of the wholly and exclusively test.

All views my own.

Not advice.

It’s hard to overstate the wisdom and experience this one man possesses; he’s 94 years old and has been at the helm of his company, Berkshire Hathaway, since 1965. He’s been investing for nearly 84 years, having bought his first share at the tender age of 11 (in 1941!) - it’s unlikely anyone living has been investing in the stock markets for longer than Buffet.

For some perspective, here’s a brief history of the major events he’s lived, and invested, through:

• Great Depression: 1929–1939 (when he was born)

• World War II: 1941–1945 (when he first invested)

• Korean War: 1950–1953

• Cuban Missile Crisis: 1962

• Vietnam War Escalation: 1965–1975 (when he took over Berkshire Hathaway and became a millionaire at age 37)

• Nixon Shock and End of Bretton Woods: 1971

• Oil Crisis: 1973–1974 (-47% market crash)

• Black Monday: 1987 (when he started investing in Coca-Cola)

• Savings and Loan Crisis: 1986–1995 (when he became a billionaire)

• Gulf War: 1990–1991 (when I was born!)

• Dot-Com Bubble: 1999–2000

• Dot-Com Crash: 2000–2002 (-49% market crash)

• 9/11: 2001

• Global Financial Crisis: 2007–2009 (-57% market crash)

• European Debt Crisis: 2010–2012

• Brexit Referendum: 2016 (when he started investing in Apple)

• COVID-19 Pandemic: 2020-2023 (when his net worth hit $100 billion)

• Russia-Ukraine War: 2022–Present

• U.S. Inflation Surge and Rate Hikes: 2022–2023 (when his close friend and business partner, Charlie Munger, died - after having worked together at Berkshire for 45 years and having known each other for over 60 years).

• U.S. Presidential Election: 2024

It’s hard to comprehend the technological and societal changes this man has witnessed!

Even at his ripe ol’ age, he’s still ‘sharp as a tack’ and continues to write a wisdom-filled annual letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway - something he’s been doing since 1965; however, the 2025 letter could be his last.

So, it seems fitting that we should look at what may be the final message left to us mere mortals by The Oracle of Omaha.

2025 Shareholder Letter

These are the three paragraphs that stood out to me in his 2025 letter, which we’ll unpack in this article:

Berkshire shareholders can rest assured that we will forever deploy a substantial majority of their money in equities – mostly American equities although many of these will have international operations of significance. Berkshire will never prefer ownership of cash-equivalent assets over the ownership of good businesses, whether controlled or only partially owned.

Paper money can see its value evaporate if fiscal folly prevails. In some countries, this reckless practice has become habitual, and, in our country’s short history, the U.S. has come close to the edge. Fixed-coupon bonds provide no protection against runaway currency.

Businesses, as well as individuals with desired talents, however, will usually find a way to cope with monetary instability as long as their goods or services are desired by the country’s citizenry. So, too, with personal skills. Lacking such assets as athletic excellence, a wonderful voice, medical or legal skills or, for that matter, any special talents, I’ve had to rely on equities throughout my life. In effect, I have depended on the success of American businesses and I will continue to do so.

- Warren Buffet, Annual Shareholder Letter 2025

Good Businesses

This statement perfectly encapsulates Buffet’s investment philosophy:

Berkshire will never prefer ownership of cash-equivalent assets over the ownership of good businesses.

Investing in the stock markets isn’t some abstract dark art, it’s simply buying shares of publicly-listed businesses. Buffet has amassed his fortune, and made many other people very wealthy, through Berkshire Hathaway either wholly, or partially, owning ‘good businesses’.

When we invest, we become partial owners of the great companies of the world - the ones we all engage with and buy from every day. The companies that provide these goods and services have not only survived, but thrived, through periods of inflation and market downturns.

Businesses, as well as individuals with desired talents, however, will usually find a way to cope with monetary instability as long as their goods or services are desired by the country’s citizenry.

Even in economic uncertainty, these great businesses continue to operate, innovate and generate profits - to which you, as a partial-owner, are entitled a share and potentially a divine dividend:

Whilst Buffet and his team spend a lot of time and resources on deciding which select few companies to invest in, he advocates for most folk (you and I) to simply ‘buy the market’ in a low cost manner - which will, over time, achieve similar - if not better - results.

Why does he prefer this method of investing over ‘cash-equivalent assets’?

One word.

Productivity.

Businesses, as detailed above, are productive assets. They are real companies, full of real people, providing real goods and services to real customers. When you invest in them, you are putting your money to work and leveraging their talents and successes for your own personal gain.

I’ve had to rely on equities throughout my life. In effect, I have depended on the success of American businesses and I will continue to do so.

Cash-equivalent assets, on the other hand, are non-productive assets. You are not putting your money to work in the same way. Typically, you are lending your money to a government or business, so they can then deploy your loaned capital in a productive manner (for which, they’ll pay you interest).

Cash Loses Value, Businesses Create It

Paper money can see its value evaporate if fiscal folly prevails.

Buffet is talking about inflation. The stealthy force which steadily - and sometimes quickly - erodes the purchasing power of your cash, meaning every pound or dollar saved today will buy you less tomorrow…

Similarly, cash-equivalent investments like government/corporate bonds may seem safe, but they offer little protection against inflation. Even so-called “safe” investments can be risky if they fail to keep pace with rising costs.

Buffett has long emphasised the perils of cash:

“The one thing I will tell you is the worst investment you can have is cash. Everybody is talking about cash being king and all that sort of thing. Cash is going to become worth less over time... cash is a bad investment over time”

-2012 Shareholder Letter

The vast quantity of money printing that took place during the recent pandemic underpins this point. Between 2020 and 2023, the U.S. money supply increased by over 40%(!) and worldwide by 20-30%1. Unsurprisingly, this fuelled inflation, eroding the purchasing power of savings held in cash:

Side note: when the rate of inflation drops, this simply means prices are rising more slowly than before… be in no doubt, the price of goods and services continue to rise (even if politicians and pundits frame it otherwise).

As history has shown, we should only expect our cash to buy us less in the future; however, well-run companies raise their prices, grow their earnings, and innovate over time - ultimately passing on value to their shareholders:

If you want to - at least - sustain your current standard of living into the future, then you need to ensure your hard earned money is well positioned to outpace inflation over time.

How do you do that?

By mirroring the principles of Berkshire Hathaway…

Invest - predominately - in productive assets (AKA publicly-listed businesses, AKA the global stock market) and stay invested for multiple decades.

When we own portions of outstanding businesses… our favourite holding period is forever.

-1988 Shareholder Letter

Own The Future

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

-1991 Shareholder Letter

Buffett’s 2025 letter to his shareholders reinforces the principle he’s held for multiple decades: productive businesses are the best vehicle for long-term wealth creation.

Investing in productive businesses + patience = wealth creation.

Want to take control of your financial future?

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Based on your answers to the questionnaire, I’ll send you a free, no obligation, video response to let you know if you’re on track for your desired financial future.

Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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Further Reading

For more on the topic of investment principles, check out:

Risk ≠ Volatility

The Divine Dividend

Don't Be Careful, Be Competent

The 10 Investing Commandments

Supporting my Work

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• Giving the article a like (if you liked it) - this helps the Substack algorithm find me and recommend me to new readers.

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Thank you!

This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.

All views are my own.

Not advice.

Time is the fire in which we burn

Reader beware: may induce mid-life crisis. Read at your own risk.

I’m here to tell you about the scarcest asset available.

No, it’s not Bitcoin.

It’s not gold.

It’s time.

Your time.

And I’ve decided to rebrand each hour of your remaining time on earth as a ‘Non-Fungible Life Token (NFLT)’.

Non-fungible = something unique which cannot be replicated.

You see, we’re all born with a finite - yet unknown - supply of NFLTs which diminishes over time, leaving each remaining life token more valuable than the last. Luckily, you can’t run out of tokens before you run out of life, giving you a guaranteed supply until the day you die.

The catch?

You weren’t born with a known expiry date, just a vague understanding as you age that you may well not be immortal after all (whilst still secretly thinking you are).

Imagine you carried around your life tokens in a pouch attached to your hip and you had to hand one over every hour, for whatever activity you decided to do. Whilst you won’t know how many tokens remain in your pouch, you will feel it getting lighter.

• Spend an hour doomscrolling, that’s one less token.

• Spend three hours braindead in front of a Wokeflix Netflix show you won’t even remember by next week, that’s three tokens.

• Spend eight hours doing a job you don’t enjoy, that’s eight less tokens.

• Spend 40 years doing that same job, that’s 83,200 less tokens.

Apparently, an average teenager is estimated to spend 30,000 hours(!) on social media by age 30. That’s 30,000 less tokens to be spent during their youth. A youth that cannot be repeated or reclaimed. A youth frivolously given away to tech companies who’s currency is gormless attention. The attention of our children… but that’s another story!

There are no refunds with NFLTs.

You can't buy more.

So, we best attempt to spend them wisely!

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My Non-Fungible Life Tokens

To illustrate the point, lets look at my likely amount of remaining NFLTs:

Whilst 84 years represents 735,840 tokens, I’ve already spent 289,080 of them!

Here’s how many tokens I have remaining until my ONS life expectancy:

84 years: 446,760 tokens

Well, that seems pretty decent…

However!

One is asleep for a third of one’s life - so lets subtract the tokens I’ll spend sleeping (this doesn’t account for my 10-month old daughter disturbing my slumber):

84 years: 297,840 tokens

Ah, and lets not forget work! Best reduce it further to account for work and see how much free time I have left (I’ve generously retired myself at 63):

84 years: 235,440 tokens

Now, one must also account for not being an average.

I may well be destined to have a shorter expiry date than I’d like. According to LV, I have a 4% chance of dying before age 65. Whilst I’ll take those odds, we all know people who do sadly go before that age.

So, I could have 446,760 life tokens left in my proverbial hip pouch, or I could have 150,043. Who knows.

All I know is my pouch is getting lighter, so the only reasonable thing to do is treat each day as a gift and spend my time intentionally on the things I enjoy with the people I love.

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Speaking of people I love…

Family Non-Fungible Life Tokens

It’s important to note that it’s not only you who has a finite amount of life tokens, but so does everyone you know. Your friends, your family, your dog. Everyone.

And, if nature takes its course, those older than you will have less tokens remaining - sometimes substantially so.

Why do I mention this?

Because it’s easy to take those closest to us for granted, like they’ll be around forever. But they won’t be. We’re all destined to go sooner or later - as says:

Unfortunately, you may have less life tokens left to spend with your parents/grandparents/loved ones than you think.

Life is finite and fickle and tomorrow is by no means guaranteed for any of us. Treating those you love ‘as casually as though they’ll live forever’ is leaving yourself open to regret as and when they eventually become ill/pass away.

So, please don’t wait around with your head in the sand, embrace the fact that everyone you love will die and do something about it. Be intentional. Be grateful for them. Spend time with them. Don’t begrudge them and let go of petty grievances (a hot coal destined for another burns the hand of the holder).

Yes. Family can be annoying. Friends can get on your nerves. It’s a fact of life that the closer you get to someone, the higher the chance of friction; however, if you’d mourn them at their funeral, then please don’t waste your - or their - finite existence on insignificant matters.

We’re all only here once and it’s mindbogglingly marvellous that our time on earth has miraculously overlapped with our loved ones - yet we often let insignificant follies degrade these very relationships.

A large part of this - to my mind anyway - is because people don’t spend enough time thinking about the unavoidable truth that their loved ones will die, as it’s all too easy not to. We rarely see death; however, in the not-so-distant past it was ever present. You only have to walk round an old graveyard to see many children died before their 5th birthday and many adults also died tragically young. Up until the 1960’s, life predominately began and ended in the family home. Death wasn’t hidden or taboo. It was a part of life. It’s only in our modern era that we’ve hidden this reality behind the sterile doors of hospitals and care homes.

Death is coming for all of us.

But you have to actively seek out life, otherwise you might wake up one day and realise you’ve wasted your precious few NFLTs on a sub-standard existence.

So, please spend your life tokens wisely as you won’t get another chance.

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Want to make the most of your remaining life tokens?

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Based on your answers to the questionnaire, I’ll send you a free, no obligation, video response with a personalised financial health check to let you know if you’re on track for your desired financial future.

Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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Supporting my work

I spent roughly three of my non-fungible life tokens on this article and you, hopefully, only spent about 0.05 of one reading it; so, please consider giving it a like (if you liked it) and a share (if you fancy it) - this helps the Substack algorithm find me and recommend me to new readers.

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This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.

All views are my own.

Not advice.

Spoiler alert: the Germans lost, sustaining huge casualties during close-quarter fighting in the ruins of the city, with up to 3,000,000 total casualties between the two sides. Stalingrad is seen as the beginning of the end for Hitler’s imperialist ambitions.

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Trapped between the warring armies were thousands of Russian civilians, mainly women and children, who somehow managed to survive - no one quite knows how - by living a subterranean existence in cellars and sewers. The children were used to run errands for soldiers on both sides (such as collecting river water) - which often resulted in them being gunned down by snipers.

If you were a soldier of the Soviet Union, there was every chance that if the Germans didn’t kill you, your own side would (the Soviets recorded 13,500 executions of their own soldiers during the battle, for a range of ‘anti-Soviet behaviours’).

Reflecting on these horrific stories makes me very grateful for the modern comforts I enjoy, and often take for granted, everyday…

• What would those women in the sewers have given to have access to my kitchen tap?

• What would the lice-riddled soldiers have given for a few minutes in my shower?

• What would any of them have given to be living peacefully, surrounded by their loved ones?

There are so many ‘simple’ things in our lives, which are actually rather exceptional when put into perspective - especially once you note how little influence you had in their creation (we just expect clean water, plumbing, heating and fresh food on demand as givens… it wasn’t always so!).

These thoughts are encapsulated by the Scottish-Italian bard, Paolo Nutini (yes, I’m pivoting from the Battle of Stalingrad to Paolo Nutini lyrics):

My father is a wealthy, self made man
But his wealth does not consist of riches or acres of land
And instead he has a family who are his biggest fans
That's something that I one day hope to have

And so I'll cherish the simple things
The easy took for granted things
Like going round my mum's house for my tea
And argue with my sister, only God knows how I missed her
It's the simple things that mean the most to me

Paolo Nutini - Simple Things

In a few words, Paolo captures the definition of true wealth.

It’s right in front of us, in the ‘simple things’.

You just have to look for them.

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Now, this isn’t to say money isn’t important. Like it or not, it is.

A certain level of financial security is required to live a free and dignified existence; however, you probably don’t need ‘riches or acres of land’ to be wealthy.

Like Paolo’s father in the song, I consider myself a wealthy man.

I have neither riches or acres of land, but I do have…

• My health.

• My family.

• My garden and new allotment.

• Sufficient (protected) income to live a free and dignified existence.

My water is clean, my garden will soon be beautiful again (bring on Spring!) and my family are safe and healthy.

How about you?

You may be wealthier than you think!

“Cherish the simple things, the easy took for granted things”.

Ready to secure your financial future?

click here

Based on your answers to the questionnaire, I’ll send you a free, no obligation, video response with a personalised financial health check to let you know if you’re on track for your desired financial future.

Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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Supporting my work

If you enjoy my content, here’re some simple ways to lend support:

• Giving the article a like (if you liked it) - this helps the Substack algorithm find me and recommend me to new readers.

• Subscribing (if you haven’t already).

• Sharing also really helps my work find a wider audience:

Share

Thank you!

This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.

All views are my own.

Not advice.

It’s almost as if I was a vessel for a higher power!

I am now on the lookout for a burning bush...

1. Thou shall not speculate on the short term price movements of assets with money thou cannot afford to lose

Speculating is not investing, it’s gambling.

It doesn't matter how many fancy screens you have, the hours you've spent analysing candlesticks and tweets or the amount you’ve paid for some dodgy trading course, it’s a different game to investing.

You are simply betting on which way the price of an asset will go - which, as detailed in the next commandment, you cannot know the outcome of without a crystal ball.

Investing, on the other hand, is curating a diversified portfolio of assets that are suitable for your needs and then holding them over the long term - whilst ignoring short term movements in price.

By all means, have a flutter on the side. But don’t risk your financial future by gambling with money you cannot afford to lose!

Rule No. 1: Never lose money.

Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.

Warren Buffet

2. Thou shall not attempt to time the market, unless thou has a functioning crystal ball

The future is - by its very nature - unpredictable.

Stock markets have a habit of not doing what you expect.

No one can predict with any certainty as to what will happen next. 

Whilst tempting, we have to try and avoid making predictions.

Even worse than making your own predictions, please don’t be swayed by others!

Financial pundits constantly cry wolf. Remember, a broken clock is right twice a day and there is - on average - a 10% downturn each year, so they'll eventually 'be right'.

There is only one prediction I will make:

"Stock markets will be higher in 20 years time than they are now"

Tom Redmayne

Feel free to quote me on that!

The reason I make this prediction is because the historical evidence shows us that it has always been the case:

Over any 20 year period the stock market has achieved positive growth, as detailed above.

• In any 1 year period, the S&P 500 is up c.75% of the time.

• 3 out of 4 years are typically positive.

• In any 10 year period, it’s positive c.94% of the time.

• Once you hit 20 years, it is 100% positive across any 20+ year period.

Those 20+ year periods include, but are not limited to:

• Vietnam

• World War 2

• Tech bubbles

• High inflation

• The Great Depression

• The Global Financial Crisis

3. Thou shall not invest large portions of thine wealth into non-productive assets

If you want to build real wealth, then your money needs to be working for you; therefore, you need to avoid mainly holding non-productive assets and invest in productive assets. 

Gold, for example, has never worked a day in its life, it’s just sat around for three billion years.

• It doesn’t compound.

• It doesn’t generate income.

• It doesn’t produce anything at all.

It just sits around being scarce.

Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.

Warren Buffet

Global equities, on the other hand, work for you 24/7, 365. They are real businesses providing real products and services to real people (me and you included).

They provide a rising income and rising capital value over time and, most importantly, the ability to compound one’s wealth.

Don’t let your money languish in non-productive assets. 

Put it to work.

I’m just going to leave this here…

(I’m picking on gold to make the point, as it can be easily tracked, there are many other non-productive assets people invest in - some much more questionable than lazy ol’ gold).

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4. Thou shall not buy high, sell low

This one should be obvious but we’re emotional creatures.

It’s important to understand that being irrational is in our nature. Once you acknowledge this, it becomes easier to stop yourself making emotional errors.

As investors, we are often our own worst enemy. 

For example, I was working at HL during the crash of 2020 and spoke to multiple people who sold on the way down.

They all said something similar:

I’ll sell now, then buy back in when the market recovers

HL Clients

They acknowledged to me that the market would recover, but the emotional pain was too great! They’d rather sell when the market was low and buy back in when it was higher… and higher it went!

Yes, it’s completely irrational; however, if you empathise with someone seeing their assets plummet by 30% (which they might be reliant on for income), it is emotionally understandable. 

Whilst understandable, it’s our job as investors to not allow our emotions to lead us towards financial ruin.

Buying high and selling low is financially destructive.

For example, if you sold at a 50% loss, you then need a 100% gain to get back to breakeven. The maths isn’t on your side with this one.

If you find yourself wanting to sell during a crash, please take a step back and... breath.

Remember, all market declines are temporary - they are baked into the stock market experience.

If you look back across history, you will see that a market decline is often followed by the stock market reaching new heights…

• Hold sufficient cash for emergencies and prolonged downturns (so you don’t have to sell into a down market).

• Don't look at your portfolio if you can help it.

• Hold tight.

5. Thou shall not pay attention to - or act upon the ‘advice’ of - the fear mongering media

Fear sells.

Negativity sells.

We know this.

Media companies are not on our side.

How do we know this?

They’re always quick to report when £X billion is ‘wiped off’ the stock market, but always seem to forget to mention when it’s ‘wiped back on’.

Delete their apps from your phone, keep your eyes downcast in a petrol station forecourt and generally avoid the negativity they constantly pump out (easier said than done, I know).

Doing so is almost guaranteed to make your life more pleasant! 

Say a prayer for the folk who - irreversibly - withdrew the tax-free cash from their pensions before Reeve’s October 2024 budget - another potentially financially ruinous decision whipped up by media speculation.

6. Thou shall not be a sheep, forever following every trend

GameStop. Meme stocks. Crypto shitcoins. NFTs (what happened to those?!). Squeezing silver. Peleton. Oil and mining shares.

Trends are financially destructive.

If you are chasing someone else’s past gains or acting on a third party tip then you are too late!

To quote Margin Call:

Be first, be smarter or cheat

The guy from Margin Call

The first two are near impossible to do and good luck with the third one - I wouldn't recommend it!

If you chase every trend you’re actually chasing your own financial ruin, and I’m afraid you might just find it. 

Ignore the noise.

Don't give in to FOMO.

Stick to a sensible, evidence-based plan that’s specific to your needs.

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7. Thou shall keep costs down, whenever reasonable to do so

Investment costs are a drag on return. The costs you pay to invest will reduce your return. The main costs to be aware of are:

• Fund charges (inc. transaction costs).

• Platform charges.

The more you pay, the less money you have working for you - this is negative compounding in action.

In every single time period and data point tested, low-cost funds beat high-cost funds

Morningstar

Lets look at the impact of investment costs on £100k over 30 years with an annual 7% (nominal) return:

• 1% annual charge = £575,350

• 0.35% annual charge = £689,951

• Difference = £114,601

That's a lot of extra money to spend on whatever is important to you!

Please note, not all costs are created equal, as some online would have you believe...

You may’ve noticed I didn’t include advice fees in the list of investment costs.

Financial advice is not an investment cost.

It’s an ongoing, professional service, which should be adding, rather than detracting, value. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of ways in which it does so:

• Asset allocation advice (which can determine up to 90% of your return).

• A barrier between you and financial mistakes/scams.

• Tax-efficient income/saving/retirement planning.

• Support for a surviving spouse.

• Accountability.

8. Thou shall protect thine income

During our working lives, our lifestyle is (typically) solely dependent upon our ability to continue earning income.

Our ability to earn is known as our ‘human capital’ and it’s a working person’s greatest financial asset.

Why?

• We leverage our earned income to take out mortgages.

• We feed our children via earned income.

• We pay our rent via our earned income.

• We heat our homes via earned income.

• We go on holiday via earned income.

• We invest via earned income.

The list goes on.

Yet, only 6.1% of adults insure their income - whilst 29% insure their lives.

If you do not protect your ability to generate an income, then yours and your family’s lifestyle is likely exposed to a large, single point of failure.

Click here for the full article…

9. Thou shall view thine health as an investment

Spending money on your health and wellbeing is an investment not a cost.

When planning for the future, many people focus solely on lifespan - the number of years they expect to live.

But there’s another crucial factor to consider: your health-span.

This is the period in your life when you’re not just alive, but healthy and active enough to truly enjoy it.

For many, the idea of a long life is appealing, but living longer doesn't always mean living well.

Medical advances may help us live into our 80s and 90s, but without good health, those extra years could be spent dealing with chronic illness and/or restricted mobility (‘tedious’ is putting it lightly).

Typically, we run out of health before we run out of life.

Therefore, the goal is to align your health-span as closely as possible to your lifespan - so you’re able to enjoy the activities that matter most to you throughout your life.

Spending money on increasing your health-span is a bloody good investment in my book!

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10. Thou shall enjoy today, knowing tomorrow is taken care of

Do not needlessly waste hours of your life obsessing over investing.

There is more to life than money and there’re no pockets in shrouds.

Money is simply a tool to help you live the life you want to live. Investing helps to ensure you have enough money to do so until your dying day!

Decide what a good life looks like to you, get your investments set up correctly to support said life, then go and live it - whilst your investments tick away in the background.

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Based on your answers to the questionnaire, I’ll send you a free, no obligation, video response with a personalised financial health check to let you know if you’re on track for your desired financial future.

Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.

All views are my own.

Not advice.

These include: Winston Churchill, Morgan Housel and Linda Ellis.

Churchill, for his turn of phrase and compelling speech writing skills. His wartime speeches were said to be worth ‘a thousand regiments’ for their ability to inspire… you can read them 80 years later and still feel compelled to action!

Housel, for his ability to explain human behaviour through engaging stories and anecdotes.

And Ellis, for writing The Dash poem.

I’m not typically one to be envious; however, I would’ve rather liked to have written The Dash poem (I’ll explain why later on ).

Enjoy.

Check out the sequel to this poem, Live your Dash, and her other work here.

Why ‘The Dash’?

For many, remaining blissfully ignorant of death isn’t only preferable, it’s relatively easy - as one’s thoughts are generally consumed with daily life, family, and work.

However, as a Financial Planner, it’s impossible for me to ignore our innate mortality.

Like a tombstone, a financial plan has a beginning date, so it must also have an end.

We spend our time working to ensuring our clients have enough money to enjoy their ‘dash’ and, as you can imagine, ensuring their families are taken care of when their ‘dash’ reaches its natural conclusion.

I sometimes forget that regularly contemplating death isn’t normal; but I’m certain we’d all be better off if it was!

I do, however, appreciate that telling people ‘remember, you, and everyone you love, are going to die’ may not be the best way to promote the idea.

It doesn’t quite have the right ring to it…

Remember, you, and everyone you love, are going to die.

Tom Redmayne (not-a-soon-to-be-award-winning-poet)

Enter The Dash poem.

Poems and anecdotes like The Dash are a gentle way of reminding us about what is truly important and Ellis does it so well.

Your Dash

Contemplating your own ‘dash’ may be scary at first; but, in time, it’ll eventually feel invigorating and help highlight what is truly important to you - as once you accept your time is limited, it becomes easier to discard the unimportant.

It may help you to create meaning and purpose in your life.

It may, hopefully, allow you to put aside any petty grievances and reconnect with estranged friends/family/associates.

It may even finally give you the push you need to sack off that awful job that you keep telling yourself you’re going to leave but never quite do because, well, it’s just comfortable enough to keep you there and you may hate yourself for staying but you do anyway and then one day you wake up to find you wasted your ‘dash’ working for people that didn’t even care about you and your knees ache and your back is bent funny from that stupid desk in the office that wasn’t quite the right height and now you’re staring down an uncertain future with nothing but regrets scattered across your rearview mirror, wondering why you never had the courage to truly live, until you finally arrive at that inevitable day when you reach the precipice of your existence and discover you can’t turn back. There is no rewind button. The secret illusion that you’ll be the one person to avoid death, that you’ve so dearly clung to, is finally shattered. The conveyor belt of life truly stops for no man. You can see where it ends. The abyss is fast approaching now. All those things you should’ve done. It’s too late. This is it. Regret.

The picture fades to black.

Scene.

If this Financial Planning thing doesn’t work out at least I know I can try my hand at motivational speaking…

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Conclusion

Whilst dying is inevitable, it isn’t trivial.

The ripples of death are wide-reaching and touch many lives.

Grief is the natural consequence of having loved; it’s a response to having known and been a part of someone’s unique ‘dash’.

For each ‘dash’ is unique.

A one-off, miraculous moment in time never to be repeated.

An intimate moment, shared by a select few.

If there was no death, then there would be no life to grieve.

So, hold your loved ones close, be grateful your time on earth has overlapped with theirs, drop those petty grievances and don’t forget about your ‘dash’.

Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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Thank you!

The value of investments can go down in value as well as up, so you could get back less than you invest. It is therefore important that you understand the risks and commitments.

This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.

All views are my own.

Active investing involves trying to pick the right assets to buy and sell at the right time.

Passive investing entails tracking equity and bond markets and capturing market returns (less fees) as cheaply and efficiently as possible.

Evidence-based investing sits between the two, using passive structures whilst actively tilting portfolios towards assets with higher expected returns, based on the long-term market data (otherwise known as ‘factor tilts’).

Historically, active investing has been far more popular than the other two methods; however, the rationale for using traditional actively managed funds is fundamentally flawed.

The Background

Typically, if you’re investing money, you’re doing so because:

• You want the investment to grow in value.

• You want to protect it against inflation.

• You want to use the funds to help you live the life you want to live.

With investing, there are thousands of things you could do with your money.

Usually, you’re buying something with a view for it to grow and/or generate an income.

Typically, it’ll be shares in public companies, government/corporate debt, or property.

You can either do this directly or through a third party, such as a fund manager.

Active Investing

The idea of active investing is that you, or somebody you trust (e.g. a fund manager), are making conscious decisions to buy or sell assets at specific times, in specific ways, to generate some kind of outperformance against a chosen benchmark (e.g. S&P 500).

You/they will be making decisions about exactly what to buy and sell… ‘buying X is going to do better than selling Y’, and so on.

The decisions are being made with the intention to outperform the market - which is active investing in a nutshell; making conscious choices to buy and sell things at specific times in an attempt to generate outperformance.

Sounds good, right?

Wrong.

Whilst it may sound appealing, nobody has a functioning crystal ball to reliably predict the future and stay ahead of the curve.

And the last few years have rammed this home for us; there’s always something unexpected around the corner.

You only have to look back over the early 2020’s to see this in action:

• COVID.

• Ukraine.

• Inflation crisis.

• Hamas attacking Israel.

You can’t predict these things. We don’t know what’s going to happen. So, it’s nigh on impossible to consistently get active investment decisions right.

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Market Timing

Market timing is the essence of active investing.

There are endless threads online about people discussing/selling courses on how to perfectly time investment markets (and, more recently, crypto markets!).

Market timing is guessing what the market, or an asset, will do next.

When something will go up, or down in value.

Armed with these guesses, you can make bets on when to buy or sell. When to take profits or benefit from opportunities that aren’t available to passive or evidence-based investors.

The issue is:

1. You’re guessing (never a great strategy for an important life choice).

2. You have to be correct twice.

You have to buy at the right time and sell at the right time. How often can you correctly guess two coin flips in a row?

Not many…

And a two-sided coin is much simpler and more predictable than investment markets/other humans.

Case Study: COVID

Remember 2020? More specifically, March 2020?

Good times…

The COVID panic of 2020 is a perfect example on the futility of market timing.

The global stock market steeply declined through early March, causing investors to pull billions of dollars out of the market - fleeing to the ‘safety’ of cash:

Many people (investment managers and pundits included) were, quite understandably, working on the assumption of a prolonged downward trend in the markets.

Quite a ‘safe’ assumption to make at the time, right?

Wrong.

The bounce back from the lows of March didn’t take long and a strong recovery was underway - who could’ve predicted 2020 would be a positive year for the markets?!

How many ordinary folk had their financial futures destroyed by such an ill-timed active decision?

I was working at HL at the time and was repeatedly told by customers selling during the crash that they would ‘sell now and buy back in when the market recovers’…

A.K.A, selling low, buying high - which is a recipe for financial destruction.

(HL is an execution-only service, so I couldn’t offer an alternative option… it was a painful experience!).

Many of them would’ve remained in cash ever since; allowing it to be incinerated by inflation, rather than being subjected to the temporary declines of the global investment markets:

To confirm, the red line is the general increase in prices of goods and services (as measured by RPI). Which means £100 at the beginning of 2020, will only buy you £66 worth of goods and services today (January 2025). Whilst the same £100 invested in a low cost, globally diversified portfolio of equities would’ve almost doubled in value over the same 5 year period.

With an evidence-based or passive approach, there would’ve been no active decision to sell out of the stock markets.

The message would’ve been to ‘hold the line’, and we can see how that’s paid off!

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Active Fund Management

You may make think that employing a professional would increase your chances of success, but professional active fund managers encounter the same challenges as the rest of us.

• They can be well-educated and work extremely hard...

• They can have well-resourced research teams...

• They can paint really engaging pictures...

• They can be well-connected people...

But, they just cannot predict the future - the same as everybody else!

And all these bells and whistles comes with a cost.

So, not only do they have to consistently outperform the market, they also need to provide sufficient returns above and beyond the outperformance of the market to account for their high fees.

Over a long enough timeframe, nearly all will underperform:

End result = you’re overcharged for underperformance.

Now, for balance, some do get it right…

But what we tend to see when looking at fund groupings in any given year, or over a few years, the funds in the top quartile won’t be there when you look in the next couple of years.

Only a small percentage of funds in the top 25% over a 5-year period will still be there 5 years later:

Yes, some do outperform, but how do you select which funds are going to outperform in advance and then jump ship to the next one before the returns dwindle?

It’s almost impossible.

You’d have better luck finding a needle in a haystack… luckily, you can just buy the haystack!

Want to discuss your investments?

Yes!

Clicking the button will generate a contact form.

We'll then have an initial conversation to better understand your needs/wants/aspirations and to see whether my services would be a good fit.

Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner

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This article is based on a video by my colleague, Chris Wallsgrove, which you can watch by clicking here.

Supporting my work

If you enjoy my content, here’re some simple ways to lend support:

• Giving the article a like (if you liked it) - this helps the Substack algorithm find me and recommend me to new readers.

• Subscribing (if you haven’t already).

• Sharing also really helps my work find a wider audience:

Share

Thank you!

The value of investments can go down in value as well as up, so you could get back less than you invest. It is therefore important that you understand the risks and commitments.

This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.

All views are my own.

So stupid that you felt compelled to do something about it?

Maybe a process at work or how a friend does something…

“Who could’ve thought this was a good idea?!”

I have.

A lot.

I may’ve even over-zealously expressed my strong, newly-formed opinion on the matter. Going from having little knowledge/interest to knowing how to improve things in seconds - sound familiar?

We see this happening all over social media when keyboard warriors jump straight from being pathology experts, to geopolitical strategists, then economists and, most recently, to wildfire experts - all from the safety of their sofas, working on limited information and - more often than not - only a thimble’s depth of knowledge.

Don’t ever take down a fence until you know the reason it was put up.

-G.K. Chesterton

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First-Order Thinking

Partaking in this behaviour is committing the cardinal sin of ‘first order thinking’, which is when you make a quick decision based upon little thought and only considering the immediately available information and immediate consequences.

It’s easy to do and feels good.

Have you ever found yourself cutting someone off, before they’ve even finished explaining, to impart your wisdom? If so, you’ve fallen into the same trap!

What first order thinking fails to acknowledge is the reason for the status-quo.

Why something is the way it is in the first place.

If you don’t understand why something exists, then you’re not qualified to change it.

Apparently, J.F.K often referred to a heuristic called Chesterton’s Fence when it came to making decisions: “don’t ever take down a fence until you know the reason it was put up”.

If a fence exists, it’s because somebody thought it was a good idea put one there.

There’s a reason for it.

They don’t miraculously pop out of the ground.

We can only gain an understanding of why something exists by asking questions and observing.

Once we have that understanding, then - and only then - are we in a position to make/suggest changes.

‘The Fence’ in Practice

As a Chartered Financial Planner, my job is to help people gain clarity and improve their circumstances through proper financial planning (investing to support future income needs in retirement, withdrawal strategies, tax-efficiency etc.).

It can be tempting, upon hearing the initial details of someone’s situation, to jump straight to conclusions and provide immediate answers; however, that’s risky business and would likely lead to sub-par outcomes.

Before ripping apart an existing structure and rebuilding it, one must first take a step back and understand why the current structure (the fence) exists in its current form:

• Why was it set up the way it is?

• What is its purpose? 

• Is it still fit for purpose? 

• What are the benefits of it?

• What are the limitations? 

• Where is there room for improvement? 

• Could the client’s aims be met more efficiently with a different structure? 

Just because there are lots of things you could do, that doesn’t mean you should.

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The Toolbox

There are many tools at my disposal for helping people with their finances, but I don’t empty out my entire (metaphorical) toolbox at the first opportunity, “here’s everything I can do based on the first few things you told me”.

Whilst it’s tempting to grab the hammer and start swinging at the fence, it’s instead important to discover as much as possible about the needs, wants and circumstances of the people I’m speaking to.

Once I have a deep enough understanding, I can then reach into my toolbox and select the appropriate tools for the job.

Closing Thoughts

• Be wary of jumping the gun when making decisions.

• Most well-meaning advice from friends/family/that random bloke propping up a bar shilling out stocks tips, does not account for your unique set of life experiences, circumstances and why certain ‘financial fences’ exist.

• If and when you engage with someone to provide you advice or a service, don’t expect them to provide the answers straight away.

• In fact, immediate solutions could well be a red flag.

• Don’t remove a fence without first understanding why it’s there.

Want to discuss your financial future?

Yes!

Clicking the button will generate a contact form.

We'll then have an initial conversation to better understand your needs/wants/aspirations and to see whether my services would be a good fit.

Thanks for reading,

Tom Redmayne

Chartered Financial Planner/Fence Admirer

Subscribe now

Supporting my work

If you enjoy my content, here’re some simple ways to lend support:

• Giving the article a like (if you liked it) - this helps the Substack algorithm find me and recommend me to new readers.

• Subscribing (if you haven’t already).

• Sharing also really helps my work find a wider audience:

Share

Thank you!

The value of investments can go down in value as well as up, so you could get back less than you invest. It is therefore important that you understand the risks and commitments.

This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.

All views are my own.