Weekly Thoughts 1st March 2024

Maybe we should say ‘Happy Financial New Year’ to each other on this day. The rush of many varied transactions needing to be finished by yesterday, either made it in time or they didn’t. Either way, we can now relax and breathe because what’s done is done and what’s not is not.

Remember that odometer at year end. If you run a record of travel for your tax return and didn’t make a note of it yesterday, go out to your car and take a photo of your odometer. Note to self….

I thought a while ago about doing this: writing brief points on various things and tasks that I do in my daily activities in this job. Tasks for you or tasks to keep the business going. These are a random sample from anywhere over the past few weeks.

  • Sitting and talking with a client at home living on disability income protection
  • Spending full days researching and preparing technical investment explanations for a couple of clients
  • Phoning a financial service provider in another country regarding a client’s needs
  • Delivering three Death Certificates and original Wills to the Executors I use. Yes, that means…..
  • Getting a senior claims person on the line at an insurance company to argue that another client on disability benefits wasn’t being looked after well enough
  • Spending time with a whole family to plan and enhance their risk benefits
  • An hour on the phone personally with a Fund Manager for questions and debate
  • 17 hours of listening to different investment company presentations
  • A session with my compliance officer
  • Checking that changes in client portfolios reflect correctly a couple of days later
  • Nagging clients for FICA documents
  • Do my VAT return
  • Helping many of you calculate addition contributions into retirement funding for the tax year

A never ending variety of tasks.