Financial planning in Private Practice with Anna Gooch

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'm really excited to be here with Anna Gooch. Anna is a unique individual with a fantastic background in financial planning, and also a counsellor with a lot of passion for supporting people with their mental health. This is a fantastic combination to have, and we're going to talk about Anna's personal story, where her passion comes from, but also about how we might support clients who are going through financial difficulties; we all know that many of our clients go through financial difficulties during their time with us. And then finally, about how we might look after ourselves financially, because most people listening to this will be independent psychologists or therapists, and we often don't have the most robust financial plan in place.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Anna:

LinkedIn: Anna Gooch

Email: anna.l.gooch@sjpp.co.uk

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Anna tells us about her career and how she ended up being a counsellor and financial advisor 1:18
• We discuss the shame and embarrassment people feel when talking about money 10:35
• Anna talks about why her niche is working with counsellors 21:31
• Anna takes us through what she looks at with a client, including insurance and pensions 29:10
• I ask Anna what a first good step is, if you’re feeling overwhelmed 33:00
• Anna explains what a lasting power of attorney is 35:46
• I ask Anna if we should consolidate our NHS pension with other pots 38:05
• Anna explains how how working with a financial advisor works 40:21
• Anna tells us how we can get in touch with her 43:22

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SPEAKERS

Rosie Gilderthorp, Anna Gooch

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today I'm really excited to be here with Anna Gooch. Anna is a unique individual with a fantastic background in financial planning, and also a counsellor with a lot of passion for supporting people with their mental health. So this is a fantastic combination to have, and we're going to talk today about Anna's personal story, where her passion comes from, but also about how we might support clients who are going through financial difficulties, and we all know that many of our clients go through financial difficulties during their time with us. And then finally, also about how we might look after ourselves financially, because most people listening to this will be independent psychologists or therapists, and we often don't have the most robust financial plan in place. So really excited to have you here, welcome to the podcast, Anna.

Oh, thank you so much Rosie. I'm so pleased to be here. I've always been a massive fan of you and what you do, so this is a great opportunity. Thank you.

So could you start by telling us a bit about your career and how you ended up being a counsellor and financial advisor?

Yeah, absolutely. So I was very lucky to, basically, I've always had dream jobs, I've always sort of done the things I want to do. So from a teenager I knew I wanted to get into magazines. So after graduation university I applied to jobs and I got straight into Condé Nast, which they published Vogue and Glamor and GQ and Tatler. And I had 15 years of the most wonderful career. Obviously very secure because I was employed, so I had an incredible, something called defined benefit pension, which is gold plated these days. I had a very generous sick pay. I had private medical care, I had a company car, I was so well looked after. And then when I fell pregnant, my marriage ended, to someone who I felt very safe with, very secure, didn't ever expect it to happen, and I had to sort of almost make a choice, like, could I live in Rye and commute to London with a tiny baby? Could I carry on working how I was working? I went back for a year, and I sort of realised it was hard. And then obviously magazines unfortunately were having a really tough time, and I had the opportunity for voluntary redundancy, which I took. And then I sort of went into the world of self-employment. I did a bit with events. As you can probably gather, my whole passion in life is people, I love working with people. I'm definitely someone that gets my energy from other people. I know we're all saying, let's get it from yourselves, but I get it from other people. And so I went into the self-employed role then. Then we had Covid. Meanwhile I had met someone else. I'd got married, I'd had another baby. So I had two children, and Covid happened and I was made redundant from my events job, even though I was self-employed. and suddenly I thought, well, I'd had incredible counseling when my first husband left, and I found it transformative, and my plan had always been to be trained as a counselor. And somehow Covid became that opportunity because I had the time to find the best sort of college to train at, I went to somewhere called Inter-Psyche, and I did a level six diploma and it was just, it was incredible. It was everything I'd always wanted to do. I loved the training. I met a group of incredible other counsellors, just wonderful. And then basically my now second ex-husband was battling a lot with back pain, ever since I met him and before, had had numerous surgeries, was really suffering from chronic pain, his mental health was really deteriorating, everything was very much on me in terms of sort of running the home, looking after the children, the dogs, and working. And just as I qualified as a counselor and I'm building my private practice, our marriage came to an end. And I was approached by a wealth management company to retrain as a financial planner. And as my marriage came to an end, I realised I was in a very sticky situation because I was slowly building up my private practice. I had a few clients, but also I was self-employed, so I had no sick pay. I hadn't actually contributed to a pension for 10 years because of being self-employed and looking after the children and kind of, or any money that came in I needed and I just suddenly looked around, I was like, I'm really financially vulnerable. I don’t know how I'm going to get through this. The wealth management company saw that I had real experience with people, in marketing, so from my magazine background. So they felt that I would be able to do it. And I just sort of made it my mission from then, after doing all my finance exams, which was intense, I had to do like, they're called RI exams, they’re chartered exams, in three months. It was a lot. Three children. So I got a level four diploma in three months. It was insane. And I have to say like, maths is not my natural subject. And I had a friend say, this is actually A Level math that you are doing. I was like, oh, okay! But it just then sat with me that what I want to do is to combine my two worlds. Because I didn't want other counsellors who are out there looking after people to be as financially vulnerable as I am. And although, you know, I do work for a firm, and I'm still self-employed, but calls themself wealth management, it isn't all just about the wealth, it's actually about getting people future-proof and secure. And that's very much my mission.

And that's so important and I think we're going to talk a lot more about that today. But just to reflect, you know, there were so many opportunities in your story where you could have kind of fallen into that victim mindset of, this has happened to me and I deserved better. And all of that would've been true. But it seems like at every stage there was this kind of voice within you that was looking for how do I make the best out of this? What's the next best thing that I can do to help myself and help my children get through this? I just needed to reflect on that, I think.

Thank you. Do you know one of the biggest compliments I've ever heard is my sister, saying to her children, when she was going through a tough time and they were, you need to look at Auntie Anna because she's not been defined by what happened to her. And that's really the message that I want to sort of take out to people, that these things do make you stronger, you can use it to your advantage. And I've always been very determined and very motivated and very driven, and I haven't ever wanted to be the victim. You're so right. But there are days where I feel like it. They really are. And as I said to you earlier, that I use running to kind of help on those days where I'm feeling angry and I'm feeling sad and frustrated but also it's sort of educating my children that, you know, I'm trying to also think of, I'm a single mum and I want them to see it as a superpower, that it's hard, it's really hard, and my daughter, and I don’t know if this is technically right, but my daughter said to me, you know, mummy, a triangle is stronger than a square. And that is something that I say to a lot of single parents who I'm counseling that actually, you know, you can do this. But yeah, it's not been easy. But I think I'm a very glass-half-full person.

Absolutely. And you know, it's so interesting that you know, you found yourself, and I think people will find this really helpful actually, that you found yourself in a financial mess. You know, you weren't somebody that was always really financially minded, but you saw the mess, probably felt terrified and decided to do something about it rather than, what I think many of us are tempted to do is see the mess and avoid the mess.

Yeah, absolutely. And that is, that's very much the response I'm sort of receiving. One, that people just put their heads in the sand because they can't manage it. Secondly, they're also intimidated to ask for financial advice because they think of this stereotypical person who might be intimidating, who might be judgemental, and my whole goal is to make people feel like they're almost in the therapy room, in that they will feel safe, I will be empathetic, I won't judge them, you know, I help them find those solutions and that's why I do feel that the two worlds combined very, very nicely, and that is very much a, yeah, part of my mission and how I work. But it's interesting because my father was actually a bank manager. So I've always been very sort of mindful of how to work with money but when I was made voluntary redundant, I got a year's salary and it was a lot, and he just sort of was very much, let's just put it in an easy access cash ISA, and actually that was the worst thing I could have done. Because it didn't grow, I frittered it away, to be fair, frittered it away on training, on paying my mortgage on, you know, making sure my children had the things they needed. But if I had actually invested it, I would probably have been in a very different place when my marriage broke down. So I think it's just really interesting, like just to be aware of these things that, you know, we're all slightly terrified of things like investing, but actually, if you can spare that money, the best thing that you can do is let it just sort of go away to grow somewhere whilst you are getting on with the rest of your life. So yeah, that would be an error that I've made, but I would definitely say, you know, I say a lot to, in my talks that. We really need to be mindful of how our past has affected our relationship with money. You know, I have someone I know who was sent to boarding school at a very young age, his parents were actually very, not very well off, it was the grandparents that sent them. So he was almost the poor kid at the boarding school. And to this day, that has made him feel very, he's very extravagant with money, I would say, and really wants to live for the day. And, you know, it's just really interesting just sort of how, as I say, how our past impacts our relationship with money. And that's something again, I like to bring into a lot of conversations.

Yeah, and I think all, of whatever your relationship is with money, there tends to be shame wrapped up in it. And that's why I think somebody like you is so valuable, because even in the conversations that we've had about money, I notice in myself, I find it so embarrassing to talk about, you know, profit and what I do with it, if there is any profit and all of that stuff because we've got it, we've got stories in our head, and nearly all of them are negative, particularly relating to women and money. You know, you either call yourself tight or you call yourself like an overs spender, a shopaholic. All of these tropes are deeply negative and deeply ingrained within us. I don't think I've met anybody in my life as a business coach who has been comfortable telling me the numbers in their business. I usually make them, because it's really, really important when we're talking about growing a business to know what makes us a profit, what doesn't make us a profit? If we're not making enough profit, what are we, are we investing with that profit? Those are questions you can't kind of get away from if you are in business coaching. But everybody is like bright red shrinking into themselves, like desperately trying to avoid me knowing anything about their financial situation. And so yes, that's all the work that needs to happen for a good financial planning session to go ahead, isn't it? All that shame work's got to come first.

Yeah, absolutely. And as I say, you know, I did, I did a presentation with the counseling director on Friday and what I, and I've been so inundated with the most beautiful stories, and it is all, a lot of it is based around shame. And just sort of all that they've been left, you know, in a vulnerable financial situation, you know, again, part of my mission is to work with divorcees or those about to go through divorce to one, empower them, and two, just to sort of guide them through that process because they're going to, a lot of the time, the stories are that it was always my partner that manages the finances, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I have, I don’t know how to survive. And it's interesting what you say as a business coach, because how I start the conversation is I will say like, here is an Excel sheet. I need to know your income and I need a detailed breakdown of your outgoings. And I say in a really kind way and I sort of say, look, there's no judgment. But also on your outgoings, I might be able to highlight where you can save some money. And you know, I've got some great like, witty case studies of a friend who is spending a fortune on dog food. And I just said to her, I know you love your dog. I love my dogs. But you could be spending probably about 50 pounds less a month on dog food and you could put that money into a stocks and shares ISA. I had another friend who was self-employed and she hadn't contributed to a pension for a long time, so a bit like me, and I looked at how much she was spending on food and I was like, oh, that's not too bad, and she said, oh no, that's my lunch. And so we realised that actually if she just took last night's leftovers over, she could then contribute to a pension. And the next day she sent me a photo of her packed lunch and like she said, great tip. So it's just about being as transparent as possible. And as you say that kind of taking your head out of the sand and being brave and realising that, you know, to have these conversations, there isn't any judgment. You know, you wouldn't judge people. You are only there to help people. But unless you have a clear understanding of the numbers, you haven't got full disclosure. It's a difficult position to be in.

Yeah, and there's all these myths, I think, because of, you know, the world that we live in now with Instagram and the internet, and I shouldn't just blame Instagram, it's the nature of media of any sort, is that you only see the dimension that, not necessarily even that they want you to see, you can only see them in two dimensions. You can't see the full picture. Because I've noticed, in my content, I try really hard to be transparent. I always say to people like, yes, you can probably see, because people are very clever. You can probably see that I make a lot of money from my passive income courses because people can see how many people are, you know, on the Zoom call with them and they know what they paid and so they're in their head, I can see that they're doing that math. But what you don't see is that these are very expensive to run. There are many, many hidden costs, and so my turnover is high. It's higher than I ever dreamed it would be, but the expenses are so high that often I can feel a bit shameful about how little there is left over, and I do try and talk about that. And it's interesting because when I talk about that in a real room with real human beings, what I get back is Oh yeah, me too, me too, me too. And you know, people all have a very similar story of feeling very ashamed of their business expenses and like they should be more profitable than they are. But they've all been looking at each other and me online and imagining that the other person has got it all sewn up, that they've got virtually no expenses, that it's all profit. And this is what our kind of media culture encourages us to do to each other. And it is very hard, unless you're meeting people in person to break that down and see the full three dimensions, I guess.

Well, absolutely, a hundred percent. And also the other thing I would say is that everyone is an individual. Everyone is bespoke in terms of their needs. You know, I, you know, everyone has, you know, there were some people who, you know, they'll send me such heartfelt messages and I will think, actually, I'm not going to start asking you for your income and your expenditure. I'd rather we had a quick chat first so I can see where you are in your journey. And it could be someone that's just starting to divorce and we kind of need to say, okay, well this is what's coming up for you, so let's maybe pause these conversations and wait till you are a bit further along and then I can help you. You know, it's just sort of making sure, because if you're going through a divorce, until that divorce is finalised, you can't really do anything with any of that money. That means you have to be super, you have to almost pause where you are financially in the divorce proceedings. And another, you know, I think we sort of touched on this before, but I also really want people to be aware of what's in the room when they're counselling. Because for so many of the areas that we're counseling for, there is a financial strain, that's the hidden background noise. So if you are seeing a client for grief, that bereavement will result in them feeling financially vulnerable, them feeling financially stressed, them being financially confused. You know, they will have to deal with probate. They may have to deal with inheritance tax. They may have never managed the finances, so they don't actually know how to access their money. They may have to revise their will, because that partner has died, they may need to revise their lasting power of attorneys, they may need to claim on their life insurance. So all of these things when you're dealing with grief, are just the last thing you want to deal with. And sort of, I suppose my way of thinking is just to say you can then pass that over to someone like me who can, okay, I can find you a will writer, and who can do your lasting power of attorney. And because I arranged your life insurance, I can phone the life insurance policy and so all that out for you.

And I think we're just in an age where there isn't that help, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I've heard some really brutal stories, particularly within the Armed Forces community where you would imagine this wouldn't happen, but it does, you know, like bills that need to be paid that are in the partner's name, and there's no compassion in those systems. You are just being harassed and often people cannot work out, how do I release any money to pay this thing, which won't leave me alone, or, and these are all processes that because none of us like to think about mortality until we are forced to be the one that deals with them, we often ignore them. So, for example, I've been lucky enough that I've never had to deal with probate or inheritance tax, that hasn't touched my life in any way. The reason it hasn't is that my dad will always handle those things. He's the one for the entire extended family who understands it and deals with it. If he was not there, I just don't know that any of us know how to deal with it because it's always been, oh, Mike gets it, he'll do it for everyone. And I think that's common, isn't it? That there's somebody that maybe because of their work or something has that knowledge and everyone just relies on them. And actually it's a bit patriarchal anyway, isn't it?

Absolutely. And actually that's one, again, that's the sort of a conversation I'm trying to open very much again, linked to death anxiety, but to just say we need to have more conversations about what happens when that person dies. And actually, you know, my father's wonderful, but the thing my mom says on a daily basis is ‘I don't know how to access our bank accounts, I don’t know where anything is’. And all he will say is, there's enough for you to sort of rent a place and blah, blah, blah. But that doesn't make her feel safe and secure. And what we need is for people to feel safe and secure. So the more conversations we have, and actually that's why I tend to lead nearly all of my meetings with, have you got a will and have you got a lasting power of attorney? Even though those aren't, they're not services I offer, but you know, so many people only arrange lasting power of attorneys when they're in their sort of sixties and seventies, and very sadly, I could get knocked down by a bus tomorrow, and who has the permission to access my bank accounts and to make sure that my life insurance is claimed and if I go into a coma, deciding what to do with that. So anything that we can do to make our loved ones feel safe and secure, the better, because that’s what people want.

And it's one of those building blocks, isn't it? I always, in therapy with me and in coaching actually, I always talk about, get your building blocks of wellbeing sorted first before we start thinking about, you know, what we are going to do about those intrusive thoughts or the, you know, difficult feelings. I'm like, let's get life sorted so that you are living a life that is supportive to your mental wellbeing. And you mentioned when somebody's going through a bereavement, but in loads of other situations too, if the financial building block is sort of crumbling or not there at all, then there's no foundation for the work you're going to do. In therapy together, because if you weren't, if we are not safe and secure, we can't process trauma, we can't grow as people, we can't find our way into that next chapter. I think it's really important.

And that's so true. And that's sort of again, why sort of, my, basically my kind of niche is working with counsellors. That's what I want to do because I'm just very aware that most counsellors, if they're in private practice are self-employed. So they may not be contributing to a pension. So they don’t know when they can retire, if they can retire. You know, the beauty of counseling, as we all know, is it keeps your brain sharp and you can probably work well into your eighties. You know, imagine all that life experience in the therapy room, it's incredible. Also, we've sort of, many of them haven't got something called income protection, which means that if they're sick, they haven't got any kind of insurance that will pay the bills or pay the mortgage. Many of them haven't got things like wills and lasting powers of attorney or any sort of emergency fund. And, you know, the idea of an emergency fund, so I'm saying to people is have three months worth of your expenditure so that you know that if something happens to you and you can't work for three months, your mortgage and your bills and your food is covered and you are safe. And I think, you know, that's sort of, as I say, my mission, because what we don't want is for counsellors to be sitting in that therapy room, not feeling safe and secure because of their financial background noise, but also working maybe with people when they're ready to end because they need the money. So it's sort of very much looking at it from also an ethical position. You know, we want sort of everyone to be able to feel like, confident in where they are in private practice.

Oh, it's such a good point. I think I often get a bit disturbed actually by how, not just with psychologists, therapists, counsellors, but often with business owners in general, there can be this like grubbiness to talking about money. But if you are feeling not well enough compensated for your work, you're not making enough to be able to take time off for example, you know how many counsellors particularly, have I spoken to that don't want to charge more than about 30 pounds an hour? But I'm like, well, okay, but that means to make the minimum you need to live off, you've got to see a vast number of clients per week. Which leaves you no space for a day where you're not feeling it. So, but you would have no choice but to, on a day where maybe you've got the flu or you are really unable to concentrate because something's happened in your life, you've gotta see those people anyway. How ethical is that? And like you said, you know, you might continue work or not see, you know, I often think people will say, I wouldn't do that. Well, maybe you wouldn't do it consciously, but unconsciously, if you've got that financial pressure, you might not see that the work should be ending now or that you are not the best fit either, because you can't turn the client away because you desperately need that money, or you're not going to pay your mortgage that month. So I kind of think actually it is really a question of ethics and having, making enough money in your practice that you are building that little buffer that gives you that sense of safety and security. Is an ethical imperative. Because when we don't have that, we do behave badly, and that's no shade on anybody, we all, we're human beings and if we don't have security, we seek it at all costs. So.

Yeah. And do you know Rosie, I absolutely, and I have to say that I sometimes struggle with what I charge for therapy. And it's, it's sort of because we think it's a helping area, isn't it? So why should we charge? But then you sort of look at what goes on behind the scenes, the matter of research I do, I often send sort of worksheets post the session. I write my own worksheets, I do all my own research. And then you think, as you say, I need to be in a position where I charge enough as an hourly rate that I'm not seeing too many people a day. Because that's not okay, as you say, because then we, you know, we're diluted. You know, we haven't got that energy to be able to hold them. And I think it's so true. It's really difficult charging for your services and sort of not having shame around it and being brave. And as you say, if we have that sort of financial security behind us, then that's not going to be the case. The other thing I'm coming across quite a lot is that, and it's interesting, like in the counseling profession, I'm really noticing that a lot of counsellors are very supported by their partners. And maybe I'm a little bit cynical because of my history in relationships, but I just sort of want as many people as possible to be financially independent from their partners because we don’t know what's around the corner. You know, I would've said, you know, my first husband, I would never have seen that happening, never have seen it. I had never felt safer in a relationship. And it just so happens I was with someone that struggled to communicate, so I didn't know, you know, he was a very avoidant personality. I didn't know what was going on inside his head. I was just skipping along very happily. And whilst, as I say, I don't want to take that cynical approach, my, I'm very much saying to people, make sure you are independent financially. You know, I think it's so lovely that people just have joint accounts. That's great. How would it feel if you actually had also a separate personal account? How about you had your own personal savings? It's a difficult conversation and obviously it is something that goes back generations because, you know, our parents' generation was always just one pot. But I try to ask people to challenge that. I do tend to challenge that. But also they're very grateful to their partners because they wouldn't have retrained as a counselor had they not had that financial backing. So it's a sticky subject. The other thing I really am passionate about is portfolio careers. And it's interesting when we look at you Rosie, like you think, how many different hats you wear in what you do. And do you find that you have, you know, it's a bit like they talk about this with investing, you have umbrellas and ice creams, so what you really want is to have roles where one's winning and the other's not, the one's winning, so you're okay. We've only got to see things like the summer holidays with counseling, how tough that can be. And then what you have is January is rammed. So it’s just sort of just being mindful, like is there something else you can do, another string you can add to your bow to make you, again, a bit more financially secure. And actually that could just be as simple as making sure you are investing and letting a pot of money grow in the background. It's as simple as that.

Yeah. And these are often roots, which if you don't come from a background where people were doing that around you, you just aren't ever going to consider it. Like, I don't think my parents would mind me saying, nobody in our family ever had any money to invest anywhere. No one's ever had to deal with inheritance or any of that stuff. So now if those things land at my door, I don't know what to do. You know, and it feels stressful. Like, actually I meant to say about this, because when you were talking about bereavement earlier, there's a huge amount of stress that comes when there's no money left or when there's been debt left. And I think we're used as therapists to thinking about that and how stressful that might be. But actually it's really stressful to be given a lump sum as well. You know, I've had clients where the life insurance has paid out. They've now got more money than they've ever known what to do with, and they feel this massive waste of responsibility of, I’ve got to do something sensible with this, but I don't know what that might look like. And they might reach for an easy access account or, or something like that because that's the default. It feels safe. It feels like this is what I should do. But then that money, however much it is, will run out.

And that's sort of almost how I see it. So when I sort of first meet with the client, I sort of mentioned the first start, the first questions are, will and lasting power of attorney. The next question is insurance because we, you know, we all spend a fortune on pet insurance, but we, we don't insure ourselves, you know, in terms of, I don’t know the stats, but we're the most uninsured country, I think in Europe. You know, obviously America, they’re super into insurance, but we just need to be, we need to be questioning why is that? And there's misconceptions that people think that insurances don't pay out. They have to, you know, it's, it's only if you haven't given an ultimate sort of self-disclosure and you've given misinformation that they don't. So, that's sort of the route it goes. It will go in terms of I’ll sort wills, powers of attorney, insurance. Then I'll come to the pension and I'll talk about, you know, what have you got, you know, you sort of need to think about if you want sort of an income of 20,000 a year as a pension, you need to times that by 25 in terms of how that pension's going to last you. You know, we think of the state pension, how many people can actually afford to live on a state pension now?

Oh yeah. Isn't it something crazy like 12,000 pounds a year?

Yeah, it’s under 12,000 pounds a year. And, and if it will be that, and you know, we'll probably be looking at a retirement age for you and I have about 68. And as I say, luckily because of what we do for a living, we can continue to work, because it's not too physical, our job, although obviously very emotional. But it's just people tend to want to, and we want, as counsellors, we want people to live in the moment, don't we? So it's a hard thing to be able to say to people, let's just look at the future because we need to future proof you. And you know, we've got people living to, quite regularly now. So we've also got to realise that we've got to think about, we could live a very, very long time. Or we might have to go into some sort of long-term care, which again, is something that people don't want to consider or think about. And again, part of my remit, and again, I make sure I work with people who are experts in this area, we can then have those conversations about long-term care. Another thing we work on is basically almost like cash modeling. So what we would do is we would take everyone's assets that they've got, we'd plan their retirement age, and then we'd also, it would run to age a hundred, and we would show how much money they will have when they need to retire and to live to a hundred, and sometimes it's great news and we'll say, oh, you can retire early. Sometimes we say, okay, well we need to find some more money because we don't want you feeling stressed about retiring or stressed about how long you're going to live. We want people to live long and live well.

Yeah. And I think, you know, as you're talking this, this raises anxiety, doesn't it? And I imagine that people listening will be thinking, oh my God, I don't wanna think about this, this is so horrible. But actually, I imagine, not that I'm there yet, but I imagine it feels really good when you know that you do have that safe and secure plan and that actually when you sit down with somebody like you and you work out, what do I need to do now to make this happen in the future? It probably isn't as ginormous and unreachable as it sounds when we are doing that kind of flash forward.

It isn't, it's just sort of a case of just being mindful with, you know, a little bit each month, putting it away thinking that you've got those right insurances in place, thinking that you've had the right conversations with your loved ones. You know, one of the, I work with a really lovely will writer and she just said to me, all you need is a locked red box under your bed with your will in, and just tell someone where it is. And just silly things like that, that, you know, that actually I've had these conversations, you know, my mom was very upset when I said look for the red books under my bed. But you know, there are just things that we can do to just make things easier for our loved ones. And as I say, that's very much part of my mission on how I want to work.

So, you know, if somebody is listening to this and feeling like, okay, I know I need to take action, but I'm feeling really overwhelmed, what's a good first step for them to take?

A good first step would be to see what they have. So to have a look, to check that they have got their will, their lasting power of attorney, their insurances, and what pensions they have. Because one of the things that's pretty exciting now is that we've all had multiple careers. So we often have lots of pension pots all in the ether, and what you can do is obviously merge all those pension pots, put it into say a private pension, and then start contributing to that private pension. So you've already got a nice pot to start with because you've, and then you start to increase it. I would, the next step I would do is to be brave and to put your income in and then to put all of your outgoings and look at those outgoings and think can I save a little bit there? Do I need that? I don't want to be there saying people don't have that coffee, I want people to enjoy their lives, but it's looking at, oh, am I actually paying a bit too much for my gas and electricity? Because what we all do is we kind of just sort of sit in the system. We don't sort of challenge how much our car insurance is, how much our gas and electricity is, you know, because I've had to do all of that recently because of divorcing, I've been able to sort of save myself a lot of money just by going on compare the market or confused, and basically making sure I find the cheapest options out there. I have so many clients who do have debt and credit cards, but they've not moved their credit cards onto a nought percent. And first thing to do, you know, take, there are things out there that can help you with that, but I think the more honest we can be about where we are, and brave, I'm asking you to be brave, the better shape we will be in, in the end. And I also think we just need to be a little bit kinder to ourselves because, I don’t know how many years ago, we could have a meeting with a bank manager, you know, we could speak to our bank manager on the phone. We can't do any of that now, which is why financial advice has become so important. So how I work is that once I've worked with that client, I would then meet with them once, twice a year and review their circumstances each time, because obviously things change, life events happen. I plot a plan for them that's based on two years, five years, 10 years retirement. So we can make sure that if they want to move house in the next two years, we're maybe not going to put their money into a stocks and shares ISA. We are going to say, let's put that in a cash ISA so you are building up a nice deposit. You know, it is all about sort of making sure that the financial, the financials, suit your plan and suit your budget.

Oh, that sounds like such a good service. So I'm hearing that sorting out lasting power of attorney is important. I don’t know what that is. So I need to pick up on that first. What is that?

So what it is, so what it is, it's a document that you can either get through a will writer when you do your will and they'll arrange it for you, or you can get it from the government website and it is, you download it, I think at the moment it's £82 for the financial one and £82 for the sort of health one. And what you need to do, is you need to nominate someone that you feel comfortable making the decisions should something happen to you. Because if, for example, you may, you're married, but you have a personal bank account, your husband, unless you've got him down as lasting power of attorney, cannot access your personal bank account.

Okay. Understood. So a lot of people would think that was default, but it's not.

Because it's a personal account. You also need to sort of, and then with that, so you'll get him or your husband, or my sister's my last power of attorney. You then ask someone else to witness it so that they know that I'm in good, you know, good sound mind whilst I'm deciding who my last power of attorney is. And then it's the same option in terms of the sort of the health side of things. But it is, as I say it's something that people get round to in their sixties and seventies, and I would just encourage people to almost treat it like a will and get it done as soon as possible.

So would that kick in, so say you lost capacity, would that kick in then as well? So it's the same document? Okay. Understood.

You'll have two documents. If you lost capacity, the health one would kick in. And also the finance bunch actually, because you can't, you're not mentally able to sort of find your finances. But as I say, it's something that is just, people don't really think about it or they think about it when they're much, much older. And it is funny because I'd recently signed my parents who were sort of in the early eighties, and then I was sitting next to my colleague, Amy in the office, and she said, have you done yours? I said, no. She says, well, you can get run over by bus tomorrow. I was like, ah, thank you. Nice cheery conversation. And then straight away I did it. But we just don't think like that do we unfortunately. We, you know, we think we're invincible, which is wonderful, but we're not.

Yes. So, okay. So we need to sort that out. Sort out insurances, get the spreadsheet out. Take a good hard look at what we've got. I always say to people, at this stage when people are looking at what they've got, people often ask me about whether they should consolidate their NHS pension in with maybe some other pots that they've got. And I always say, see a financial advisor to make that choice, because I think it can depend, can't it? Because some of us have got older pensions that have particular, usually really good terms. Newer ones are not so much. Yeah. At that point is that when we should be bringing somebody like you in?

Yes. And you are right. So very, so how we have to work, because obviously everything I do is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, we need to make, we have to basically make a calculation that shows whether it's worth you moving your pension when you take into account the funds it's invested in, the charges, the growth. So that has to be done. It has to be safe and the right thing to do. So often what you will find, so I have a defined benefit pension from my magazine days, we would not touch that because it's gold plated. The NHS pension, we would not touch that, leave it to grow where it. It’s the same with many teachers' pensions, so, and I'm sure the same with sort of the Armed Forces pensions. Those pensions, just keep them where they are and don't touch them, and they're, they're very good pensions. What we are looking at are probably the quite newly introduced workplace pensions. Those are the ones that don't tend to be particularly good or working very hard. With those, if you're still working at that place, you can leave say, a thousand pounds in that workplace pension and every year move that to a harder working private pension. So again, that's the sort of conversations we should have. But absolutely there are rules. We have to work with integrity and we have to make sure that there are certain things that we wouldn't touch. And so what we do is we, as I say, we, part of the service is we research your pensions. So we would present it to you and we would say, these are the funds, it doesn't come with advice, it's not actively managed, these are the charges, and then you'd be able to compare it to another pension.

Great. So you know, if somebody wants to work with someone like you, how does it work? I guess I've always imagined that this is something that really wealthy people do and that, you know, I don’t know, maybe financial advisors take a percentage of the wealth and so they wouldn't want to work with somebody like me because that would be a small amount of money that might not be worth the service. So how does it work really?

Yeah. So in terms of how I work, yeah, you are right. So what would happen is if you had a pension, my advice charge is the charges, so we have an investment management committee because I don't have, you know, a doctorate in, in economics, so who will sort of manage the funds and manage the fund managers and always make sure they're mindful of your attitude to risk your capacity for loss, et cetera. So what would happen is if you say, invested your pension with me, ultimately there would be a percentage of that investment taken out, and that's how it works. For things like the insurances, I work with the whole of market for the insurances, so that would be paid by the provider. So for example, if you took insurance out from Aviva or Vitality, I would be paid by the provider. Obviously, bearing in mind you then have access to my advice and my support, I probably get discounted rates as well because obviously I work as a financial advisor. So that's how I tend, that's how I tend to work. In terms of things like stocks and shares ISAs, what I would often say to people is try and build up a fund in a cash ISA to see if you can do without it. Make sure you have your emergency fund first and then any excess, we would sweep it into a stocks and shares ISA, because we know that you can do without that money, if that makes sense. Because if you're going to be doing investing, what we want to do is to have it put away for about five years so that you can work with the market. And with investing what you tend to think, you know, obviously at the moment things aren't good, but this is a moment to invest because they're not that good. And what you often have in like a 10 year period, you'll have two years of dips. And then the rest of the time will be up, and where we want you to be is not want to take your money out in the dip. So we need to be financially resilient enough that you don't need to take that money out. Another way of doing things, I think, so with investment, it's all about time. That is our biggest asset in life. I mean, wouldn't we all like another hour in the day? It's all about time. And one of the loveliest stories I heard actually was someone I trained with when I was a financial planner. Her mum put her child benefit away, from the moment she was born and at the age of 24, she put down a rather hefty deposit on a four bedroom house in Surrey because her mum had got by without using that money. And because it had obviously been invested for 24 years, it was extraordinary what she had at the end of it. So it's just those little things where you're putting a bit of money away each month that make the difference.

Okay. I think that's a nice positive and hopeful message to wrap up with. I'm thinking a lot of people are probably going to want to get in touch with you and get to grips with their own financial lives. So where's the best place for people to connect with you?

Absolutely. I often say LinkedIn. So find me on LinkedIn, Anna Gooch. Also, I have a very complicated email address, so that's why I tend to direct people to LinkedIn. But my work email address is anna.l.gooch@sjpp.co.uk. But it's very complicated, so hopefully that'll be in your notes if you need it.

I will make sure it's in the show notes. Don't worry guys, it'll be there.

Yes. I guess it's just reassuring people that it’s a safe non-judgmental space. We have a conversation, we see where you are at, we see what we can do, and we get you future proofed.

And I think that's really come across today. So I hope that although we've maybe made you think about some stuff which is less comfortable, that actually you can see that there's a space for you to go and think about your finances and get that safety and security without all the shame and ickiness that can come up around this stuff. So thank you so much Anna, I think that's been really, really valuable and I'm sure we all have action we need to take now.

Absolutely. Thank you. And just something else to sort of add that when we're in the therapy room with these clients who are going through divorce or through bereavement, just being aware of that financial noise and just being aware of signposting them, you know, signpost them to a good will writer, to a good accountant, to a financial advisor, signposting, that's all we need to do. And the same with if they're in debt, we can signpost to the Citizens Advice, we can sign post them to Step Change. Just be aware of signposting.

Yeah, and that's another thing actually. Maybe at your next networking event, if you're listening to this and you struggle sometimes with networking, I always say, go and fill up your little black book of the people you need to refer to. And these are all people that you will meet at business networking events local to you. So go and suss them out, you know, are they nice and compassionate? And they're not going to elicit a huge shame response? Brilliant. They can go in your black book. If there's somebody that is going to talk down to your clients, maybe, you know, use a lot of jargon, make them feel small, they're not going in the black book. So that's how I approach networking. Go and have real conversations and think, would I refer my clients to you, or not? And let them know, actually this has been a really valuable conversation, I will refer to you now. That's how you get that reciprocity and meaningful networking. So thank you, that's a brilliant tip, thank you very much for that, Anna. Alright. Thank you so much for coming on. It's been brilliant.

Thank you so much. I've loved it. I've really enjoyed it. So thank you for this opportunity.