We are living in uncertain times. Both globally and locally, our political and financial landscapes are shifting, leaving many people anxious about the returns on their investments. This type of anxiety can affect our emotions. And, making decisions based on how we feel is never a good recipe for financial planning, long term. In the face of fear, many people are tempted to convert their investments into cash. But once you do that, how do you know when to re-enter the market? What if you shouldn’t have got out of it in the first place? A move like that brings a whole set of new...

The holiday season is fast approaching, and already we are bombarded with enticing 50% discount sales and the “buy 2 get 1 free” offers! It is so hard to resist spending a little extra on that special person, especially when faced with beautifully decorated shop windows and last minute holiday deals! Getting into debt is easy, but getting rid of it, not so! It is no wonder that we suffer from January blues! Apart from covering our Christmas debt, we are still faced with school fees, insurances, medical aids, and the list goes on and on… “ Credit buying is much like being drunk....

Money has an important place in our lives, jaguars – and jokes – aside. All we need to do is try to get by without money to realise that it’s absolutely essential for life in the modern world. But can it buy happiness? Well, that’s a whole other story. Of course, we know the answer to this question. Money can’t really “buy” happiness. As human beings, we have a default wiring towards some kind of spirituality. We’re self-aware enough to know that it takes more than money to make the inner workings of our world tick. But no matter who we are or how much money we have, we also have...

She, along with Roberta Taylor, wrote The Couple’s Retirement Puzzle, a book that equips couples in retirement with much of what they need to navigate this new life phase. It was a book that resonated with me and what I do, and when I was in Boston in 2014, I got to meet Dori. I met up with her again in South Africa a couple of weeks ago, when she came to my home for dinner. If you’ve had a life-planning meeting with me – or even read my book – you’ll see similar themes to Dori’s at play. On the front over of The Couple’s Retirement Puzzle, the words “couple” and “conversation” are...

I’ve seen it myself over the years. Whether those specifics are true for every woman and man, I don’t know. But what I do know is that even though people have different needs, we do, in fact, need. Being in relationship – whether with a spouse, children, other family or friends – is what life is all about. Relationships can be safe spaces but they can also be places of pain. Pain is what causes us to pull back to protect ourselves. All of us have opted, at some time or another, for self-protection above vulnerability. And yet the need doesn’t go away, does it? We want to connect, to...

In the spirit of embracing 2017, I came across a blog published by researcher and author, Brené Brown. In it, she asks four thought-provoking questions. When you have a minute, take a look at them and answer them for yourself, in the most real way you know how. I’ve done that below. Here’s what Brené asks: What do I want more of in my life? How do I let go of what’s no longer serving me? What will make me feel more alive? Brave? At the end of every year I need to know that I have contributed more than I have criticized. How have I contributed and what will that look like going...

Reinvention means a planned, positive change to your life, the key to which is awareness of how you are thinking at the time. To successfully reinvent ourselves, we need to move out of the past and create a new perspective that allows us to identify the possibilities that exist now and in the future. Often we feel that nudge … we want to change, but then we focus on the past and seek solutions based on what we know, on bygone experiences.  This backward look can take us as far back as childhood, to an incident or possibly something our parents said, not...

Offspring Obligation?Your financial plan is on track: you have saved and budgeted for a lifetime and are ready to enjoy your retirement, with enough to fund it.  But … there is a snag – your reluctance to relinquish a particular role you have been playing for years: your children’s provider, even if those children are now income-generating adults. As a retiremeant specialist, I have encountered many clients with grown-up children who still rely on their parents financially. Recently, I had to consolidate my thoughts on this issue as I was invited to...

When chatting to clients, I am often surprised at  how few think it is important to spoil themselves.  Many feel doing something they will enjoy just because they want to is somewhat selfish. In the next breath, they describe how they are quite happy to spoil their loved ones with something that is important to them. This they see as loving and kind. My challenge is to love yourself by giving yourself an experience just for the fun of it – not worrying what others will think, but doing it because it adds value to your life. I spoil myself every year by...

Over the years, it has become my custom in Life Planning meetings to assert that no area of the Wheel of Balance is more important than another. And, for many years, I have held this to be true. But, more recently, I have come to realise that the most happiness and unhappiness I have seen has been as a result of healthy or destructive relationships. Each Life Planning meeting commences with an exploration of individual personalities. Very often, we find that couples are comprised of opposites: the ying and yang principle.  Don’t imagine that this is negative – different...