Find your own personal financial ‘life hacks’

We decided to ‘get away from it all’ on our most recent holiday, in a converted smallholding in North Wales.

A mile from the nearest village, barely another car on the road or a soul on the nearby beach for the whole week. It was so relaxing that my dog lost her bark entirely!

As I shut off from the modern world, it was tempting to reminisce about the ‘good old days’. Simpler times like this, with less technology.

But I’ll admit, I struggled when I pulled up at a cash-only car park and didn’t have any loose change (with the nearest cashpoint a mile and half away). I’m so accustomed to using contactless that it slipped my mind.

It made me think about the shortcuts in our lives that make things easier. These ‘life hacks’ might appear small at first, but they make things so convenient that it’s hard to live without them.

Are you digital or analogue?

There’s been a resurgence in popularity of ‘analogue things’ – like listening to albums on vinyl, or getting milk delivered to your doorstep.

But we should remember the old ways aren’t always the best. When I started as an adviser in 1990,  clients used to leave their back doors unlocked for the ‘Man from the Pru’ to come and collect their money and mark up the book. That sort of thing would give town-folk nightmares nowadays.

Perhaps it’s all about finding the right balance and being grateful for having so many options that we’re free to create and curate our own ways of living, whether they’re digital, analogue or a mix of both.

For example, as my parents get older, I’m helping them more at home. Even simple things such as syncing their doctors’ appointments to my calendar, automating bill payments, or setting reminders for must-do tasks makes a massive difference. These small shortcuts can add up to one big saving – for them and me. They’re free of the worry and can get on with what they enjoy doing, and I can look after them as well as everything else, with little disruption.

Let your financial planner be your ‘hack’

Come to think of it, having a financial planner could also be considered a bit of a life hack.

A large part of my job is knowing all the options, so I can use my experience and wisdom to find the best solutions for my clients in their particular circumstances. The idea is to make the complex more straightforward. Filtering out the unnecessary. I do this stuff, so you don’t have to.

It’s like putting your phone on ‘do-not-disturb’ mode, it’s a hack that lets you focus on the important stuff and help you make careful choices.

After all, the aim of financial planning and investing is meeting your goals and not getting distracted from the plan. It’s not just generating millions for the sake of it or chasing fads like cryptocurrency. How’s that going by the way?

That’s why, even with all the uncertainty in the world, I still don’t tend to have clients ringing me panicked about the markets or inflation. They tell me that they’re reassured if there was a problem, then I’d call.

Life. Hacked.

Making it personal

For me, the key is making it personal. Every plan is individual. We look at your personal risk profile, the tax breaks that are available to you, and find the best way of making your money work as hard as it can for you.

It’s actually when that side is taken care of that we find people are more willing to explore things that might have seemed too outlandish if they were doing everything themselves.

For example, clients are able to work from there and test the figures to see what they’d look like if they tried retiring sooner, selling up and moving to the country, or even going abroad.

Without the financial planning ‘hack’ they might have been tempted to trundle along in misery, thinking that what they really wanted to do was too impossible to engineer.

It’s still good to talk

Of course, the digital hacks we’ve spoken about aren’t for everyone. A friend of mine steadfastly refuses to use his non-smartphone for anything other than phone calls.

I think the benefits are that life can be what you make it. Whatever works for you. It would be crazy to wilfully put yourself back in time and making things difficult for yourself when there are so many ways you can use technology to make things better, safer, more secure, and more efficient.

For example I’m proud to announce that we’re launching a new app soon that will be a personalised portal. Smarter Money will let you see all your finances in one place, receive secure messages and store important documents. This will help you to feel even more comfortable and secure, and why not? If the technology is there, I believe making the most of it.

But that doesn’t mean throwing the baby out with the bathwater. For every situation it’s a balance about what works best for you. I’m still always there at the end of a phone to help and speak about your financial plans. And hopefully there’ll never be a replacement for that!