What do you do?

On paper, I’m a financial planner. In practice, I’m the person my clients call before they make a big decision. If a friend asked, I’d say this: most people don’t actually want more money. They want to know they’ll be fine. They want to stop doing the sums in their head at 2am. My job is to take everything someone has built, the pensions, the business, the house, the bits they’ve forgotten about, and turn it into a straight answer to the question “am I going to be alright?” Then I keep answering it as life changes, because it always does.

WhY do you do IT?

I nearly became an accountant. Business Management degree, good with numbers, and accountancy was the obvious next step. Then I had an off the cuff conversation with someone setting up a new wealth management team in Tunbridge Wells, and that was that. Fast forward ten years and here I am at CP. It turned out to be the right accident. I didn’t want to sit behind the numbers, I wanted to be at the front of the relationship. The variety helps, because no two client situations look the same. But mostly it’s the conversations. Hearing someone’s story and working out what actually matters to them. Where they are now, where they want to be, and how I get them there. The numbers are still there, and I still love them. I just get to do something more useful with them than file them.

WhAT KINDS OF PROJECTS HAVE YOU BEEN INVOLVED IN?

No single project stands out, because they all have a place. A couple who retired at 50 while everyone around them said it was a mistake. A client who came through cancer young and decided he was never going back to work, choosing time with his two kids instead. Parents gifting money to their children so they can get on the ladder while it still counts. The common thread is confidence. A plan has to work logically, in the numbers, and it has to feel right too. Getting both is what lets someone actually enjoy the decision rather than worry about it. Most people can get halfway there on their own. My job is the other half.

WhAT’S ON TOP OF YOUR BUCKET LIST? 

Japan and Hawaii, for completely different reasons. Japan is the food and the culture. I want to eat my way through it properly and see a place where that much care goes into the small things. Hawaii is about looking up. It’s supposed to have some of the best stargazing anywhere in the world, and I suspect it’s one of those things you can’t really appreciate from a photo. You have to stand under it. Neither has a date on it yet, which is a bit rich given what I do for a living.