OPINION: Our investment philosophy

A financial settlement (arising from a divorce, for example) means different things to different people.  Receiving what we in the financial planning world call ‘sudden wealth' might represent security to one person but it can terrify somebody else.  We've seen all sorts of different responses to the sudden responsibility of managing wealth.

The fact is that most people have no idea what return they need on their money to support the rest of their life, so they have no structured investment strategy.  We are all human, which means that without the discipline of a logical investment strategy we sometimes rely on human emotions such as greed and fear to help us to choose and manage investments.  Constantly pursuing the golden goose only to find out its a turkey when we catch it!  That doesn't produce very good results.

The problem is that we're often encouraged to do this.  Most financial advisers, investment advisers and newspaper articles seem to focus solely on financial products and chasing the highest returns.  This encourages people to take unnecessary risks with their money; they often end up with inappropriate investments and very disillusioned. 

We take a different approach.  Our investment philosophy is to work out what long-term returns clients need to enable them to live the lives they want, without the fear of them ever running out of money.  This systematic approach helps to reduce investment risk and preserve wealth, without emotions prompting knee-jerk reactions.  This philosophy of working out a relevant return is central to our investment process and how we help clients to manage and preserve their wealth.  After working through our financial planning process, new clients tell us that they worry less and have more peace of mind than before.

Simon Yates
simon@yatesandcoifa.co.uk