Clients come via different routes, some of the most interesting are the ones who don’t quite make it. Often friends of existing clients they consider the option but you know they are busy looking for reasons not to proceed. ‘I haven’t got time’, ‘I don’t need help’ or ‘this is something my employer should be paying’. Ironically these are the people who could benefit most!

Let me be clear I don’t offer financial advice – if that is what is needed I will point them in the right direction, but in doing so we will clarify exactly why they need the advice by first working out their life goals.

One such person was so stuck in his rut that he simply had no idea why he was turning up to work each day having struggled through a tortuous commute to do a job he job he hated. Money wasn’t the issue, he had already saved more than he could ever spend. There were no dependents relying on him, no one needing support. There was a step-daughter, but she was already independent. Health was an issue, but the stress that caused his first heart attached came from the job and the commute he hated.

So why? His motivation to ‘keep going’ seems to have been inherited. It was his role ‘to provide’ for the long term but with no idea what that involved. He has never considered ‘how much is enough’ or what he would do when he got there. He simply knows that having ‘a lot’ is a good thing and having more is better.

What can you do about it? In truth, very little. Helping someone who is determined not to be helped is hard. There is so much that could be done but they need to take that first step. Ultimately, if they don’t that is their decision. Once your primary career comes to an end we all know there is a finite time remaining, how long that is and what you do with that time is down to you.

In this case I feel sorry for the step-daughter. In time she will inherit a complex portfolio of investments that will take time and money to unwind. Once completed, she will then pay half to the government in inheritance tax while being poorly prepared to manage the rest, making her a prime target for the less desirable end of the advice industry.