I had a great conversation the other day with a chartered accountant contact of mine who also went solo during the spring of 2020.  He had become frustrated that his fellow partners within his tax advisory firm were not seeking for new solutions for clients and had simply become reactionary when it came to client planning at the year end.  Something I did have an affiliation with. 

We established WKM Wealth to be a forerunner in financial planning for our clients ensuring that we had the time to leave ‘no stone unturned’ in the planning process.  Over time, by revisiting and retesting our planning for clients, we get to hone the very best advice for them which leads to some exciting places.  As an aside, I retired another client last month who were at the peak of their professional career but realised the only asset they could not replicate in their planning was more time.  So, this is what we created for them by showing them how they can live off their accumulated capital during retirement.  We modelled this through simulated market crashes, bounced the planning against their tax advisor, finessed, with the result being a robust thirty-year income plan.  Primarily we used a Self-Invested Personal Pension alongside an ISA (I find these work very efficiently together.)

I was asked on LinkedIn to summarise what I do for a living but in a badly written context.  I came up with:

“I take highly productive clients at the peak of their careers and retire them”

What was an almost glib comment on social media, is now a line I say to my clients. 

If they want to know why they receive financial advice from me it is to understand that at one day I will turn around to them and tell them they are wealthy enough to stop paid employment, should they wish to.  I’ll never tire of those moments of realisation in a client’s eyes that they have now achieved what most strive for ahead of their State Pension age. 

While there are other objectives to work towards for clients; maximising income, passing capital to the next generation, building wealth, for me the biggest is always creating choice.  If you can choose to do something or not, that is quite empowering and should, in my view, be the basis of why you would create a financial plan for your future.

Enjoy the journey pension fans!

Thanks for reading.