An Independent (financial adviser’s) view

May I be the first to wish you Happy Halloween, as it’s officially autumn. Both of this year and, it seems, my years. I went for my one-in-each shoulder jabs yesterday, convinced as always that I’d be asked for ID as I couldn’t possibly be old enough to qualify. And guess what? Straight in and straight out. Anyway. HS 2 RS 0, I’d say, having heard both him, Rishi and his acolytes finding every possible way not to answer the ‘will it still go to Manchester where you’re having your conference’ questions this week. The best they came up with was that ‘many more use their cars than take buses and trains, and we need to support them, too’. Er, yes, that’s because the trains and buses are rubbish where they live. I despair.

“Scrapping inheritance tax hands ￡1mn to richest 1%”

To say that Inheritance Tax is all in the mind would be an exaggeration, but it is true to say that most who worry about it have no need to. Only 10% of estates (ie people who’ve died) actually pay it, and around 2% actually pay around half of the ￡7bn it currently rakes in. So while abolishing it might be a vote winner, in reality most of the benefits will go to the families of the wealthiest. And of course, it will be replaced by something else, probably a gift tax of some kind, whereby, as in many other countries, the recipients rather than the donors are taxed; which will probably turn out to be a much-bigger money-spinner for Messrs HMRC. Smoke and mirrors, and all that.

“Should Rishi Sunak’s recent net zero pivot be a concern?'”

The answer to the headline question should be, of course, a big, fat ‘Yes!’ Of course you can, and many do, always say ‘Doesn’t matter what we do it’s China/America/Everyone Else who’s causing all the problems and making electric cars and all the electricity they use is just as harmful and even if we recycle stuff it all gets dumped in the sea in Third World countries anyway…’ Or as someone desperately hoping to be elected or reelected might say, ‘helping hard working family motorists in these difficult times is more important than some arbitrary climate change goal…’ Well, sorry, they’re all wrong. If a ship is sinking, saving just one life is a good thing. Even or especially if, to mix two things that were happening at the UN last week, that vessel is full of people who may or may not be refugees trying to get to a better life. I’d say.

“Are Brits too reliant on inheritance for their retirement plans?”

The answer is, in many cases, probably yes, and as less and less of the next generations have or are able to build pensions and other savings, more and more so. And it’s a double-edged sword. The parental generation increasingly worry that they won’t be able to leave enough to their children and worry that the cost of care in their approaching old age will whittle away at any potential inheritance. Many then spend money setting up complicated lifetime trusts, to try to make sure that their house and savings will stay intact and be passed on. If I’m asked, my advice is 'don’t'. The odds are that you won’t need care, or at least not for too long. And if you do, would you really want to be reliant on whatever limited funds your local authority might have left in its limited coffers to pay for your home or carers? Probably not, and neither would your family; whatever the effect on their own retirement plans.?

“Gen Z turn to family and TikTok instead of advisers”

There was an interesting discussion on one of the many online forums for we advisers, on the rights and wrongs of our annual fees. This was prompted by one (not in the group) charging 1.25% of the funds they look after to provide a yearly review and gave rise to further discussion on the rights and wrongs of all sorts of ways of covering costs and making a profit. The conclusion was that much of the stuff we have to do makes what we do unaffordable for smaller and younger clients. That’s not the only reason of course that those younger potential clients will ‘turn to family and TikTok instead of advisers’. But it does mean advisers are less likely to seek them out and make their services GenZ-friendly. And there’s a phrase I would never have written 10 years ago.

His ‘multi-million copy bestseller’ ‘This is Going to Hurt’, based on his diaries while working as an obs and gynae junior doctor, was one of the laugh-out-loud funniest things I’ve ever read (in 2017, sitting by a pool in Greece, I remember it well). It’s also a disturbing tale of burnout and a collapsing NHS, which prompted him and since, sadly, many others, to leave. This next autobiog episode takes his story forward, from giving up medicine to become a comedian and comedy writer and to come out, both described by his mother as ‘going through a phase’. It’s interspersed with flashbacks to his very early med school days, when consultants were all James Robertson-Justice in Carry on Doctor (kids etc). When he becomes an author, he’s asked to speak at a Royal College of Surgeons gathering, and soon finds not much has changed when he’s asked to ‘stick to the funny bits’. It’s the same when both J Hunt and M Hancock as Health Secretaries ask him in for a chat, and he tells them what he thinks in no uncertain terms. Anyway, it’s very funny (especially med school and his Polish cleaner) and very serious, not necessarily in equal measure, not the first book, sweary warning but still recommended.