Most people think financial planning is about excelling in one area - investments, pensions or tax. But just like the decathlon, you only win by being consistently strong across many disciplines.
If you wanted to win multiple gold medals at an Olympics, you’d pick the best in class at different events.
For example (first name that came to me, except for discus, which I had to look up):
- 100 metres – Usain Bolt
- Long jump – Heike Dreschler
- Shot put – Geoff Capes
- High jump – Javier Sotomayor
- 400 metres – Michael Johnson
- 110 metres hurdles – Colin Jackson
- Discus throw – Lars Riedel
- Pole vault – Sergei Bubka
- Javelin throw – Fatima Whitbread
- 1500 metres – Seb Coe
All world class with lots of medals and/or records to their names.
The eagle-eyed will have clocked that the list above is 10 events that make up the decathlon.
What if you asked each of them to do all 10 events? How would they fare?
Better than me or you to be sure, but not good enough to beat Daley Thompson.
Personal finance / financial planning / financial advice – call it what you will – is like a decathlon.
There are a bunch of disciplines you need to master.
You don’t need to be world class in all of them, but if you’re below average in more than two or three, then you won’t get the results you should.
And this is where we set ourselves apart. Most financial planners have one or two events they shine in, and they lean heavily on those. We’ve built a team and an approach designed to cover the whole field - investments, pensions, tax planning, cashflow, protection, estate planning and the human side of money too.
Like a great decathlete, we’re not trying to be the very best in the world at one event - we’re making sure you have a consistently high level across them all. That’s what wins.