Gibson Financial Planning

03/09/2026

26/08/2026

The wealth nobody claps for

“I used my full pension allowance and paid in £60,000,” said no one, ever.

Not down the pub. Not at a dinner party. Not in the golf club.

Nobody tops up their ISA and waits for a nod of approval.

The things that build wealth and the things people talk about are often two very different lists.

A new car gets noticed the moment it appears on the driveway. A new kitchen becomes a topic of conversation at every dinner party for the next year. Buy a second property and people want to know where it is, what rent it brings in and what your plans are.
These things are visible. They invite questions, compliments and sometimes envy.

Meanwhile, the pension contribution that was made, the ISA allowance that was used and the investment account compounding in the background have no physical shape.

They do not photograph well. Nobody asks about them, so nobody talks about them.

Visible spending is not necessarily wrong. The danger is mistaking it for financial progress simply because it gets a reaction, while the quiet decisions do not.

When extra income comes in, there is a natural temptation to let it show somewhere. A better car. A few upgrades around the house. A lifestyle that tells the world things are going well.

Some of the most financially secure clients I work with live in a way that gives very little away. Equally, some of the people who appear most comfortable are under more pressure than anyone around them realises. They are spending to maintain a version of success that may not even be their own.

Looking wealthy and being financially secure are not the same thing.

Confusing the two is where a lot of financial stress begins.

In my experience, the difference is rarely just income. It is usually a fairly unglamorous collection of habits.

Owning things that produce income or grow in value, rather than things that continually cost money to maintain.

Making the same sensible decisions quietly and repeatedly.

And being comfortable with the fact that some of the best financial decisions you will ever make may never come up in conversation.

None of this means you should feel guilty about buying a new car, renovating your home or owning a second property.

It is simply worth being honest about which list the decision belongs on before you make it.

19/08/2026

Sometimes a crap financial decision is worth it.

It was 2018 and Lynda wanted an old VW campervan.

When I went to collect it, every sensible instinct told me to walk away.
I drove home in “Winnie”.

Not long afterwards, I took Benjy, our newly adopted scruffy terrier, to Ballycastle for fish and chips.
Winnie’s sliding door came off its runner and landed on my foot. I dropped my fish and chips. Benjy escaped.

That really set the tone.

I took Winnie to countless cycling time trials. On one occasion, while I was getting changed in the back, a complete stranger climbed in, sat down and started chatting to me while I was only halfway into my skinsuit.

Friends, Benjy and I took her on overnight camping trips.

Tobin and I had our first night away together in her at Murlough Bay.

I celebrated my 40th in Connemara with Winnie.

Then, against all sane advice, we drove Winnie to France.
Her engine seized on the first day.
To cut a long and painful story short, we returned to collect her in northern France two weeks later. Her battery died on the ferry, so we had to unpack the entire van on deck to get her jump-started.
Within half an hour, the exhaust developed a leak and we spent the next few hours damaging our hearing.

By February 2020, our driveway resembled an oil slick. Winnie went to Quiery Motors for a new gearbox.
Then lockdown happened.
Months became years and Winnie still wasn’t fixed. I could see her sitting in the mechanic’s yard from my office window.
We discovered that local teenagers were using her as a weekend drinking den.
She had to go. Someone bought her for parts.
I still haven’t received the V5 confirming that I’m no longer responsible for her, so perhaps the story isn’t quite over yet.

Financially, Winnie was an absolutely terrible decision.

I still think about that night at Murlough Bay.

Sometimes the return on an investment isn’t measured in money.

12/08/2026

A Tale of Two Couples

Two conversations, a fortnight apart, about essentially the same thing.

A lady got in touch about her retirement planning.

As we talked, it became clear that the household bills, the holidays and the lifestyle they'd built together depended on both her income and her husband's.

But she didn't want him involved in the planning. She couldn't really see why he needed to be.

We insist on working with both partners at the outset. There are rare exceptions, of course, but this wasn't one of them.

So we declined to take her on.

A few days later, a potential new client came in to see me on his own.

He was keen to make the next few years count and get himself into a strong position for retirement.

He and his partner have always kept their finances fairly separate. They each pay a set amount into a joint account for the mortgage, bills, holidays and everything else, then manage what's left themselves.

But he could already see where that was heading.

He was doing the saving and investing. She tended to spend whatever was left over.
His worry was that when they eventually retired, he would end up carrying the financial weight of their lifestyle.

And it was already starting to cause some friction.

I told him what I tell anyone in that position.

Get her involved.

Let her see what you can see.

Let's get you both around the same table, looking at the same numbers and talking about what you actually want your future to look like.

He texted me later that day.

They'd gone for a walk at lunchtime and talked it through.

She was happy to come on board too.

That's a big win, and not just for us as financial planners.

Because if two people are building a life together but pulling financially in different directions, eventually something has to give.

The best spreadsheet, investment portfolio or retirement plan in the world won't fix that.

Worse, resentment can start to build.

I'm certainly no marriage counsellor (Lynda will attest to this), but I've been doing this long enough to see how money can become a source of tension between two people who otherwise want exactly the same things from life.

Two couples. Two very different outcomes.

One wanted a financial plan built alone, around a life that had been built together.

The other turned a private financial worry into a shared conversation about their future.

We only ever build the second kind of plan.

31/07/2026

Never Count Another Man's Money

A new client sat down across from me a few weeks ago. First question: "How do I compare to my peers?"

I hear some version of this a lot. We all want to know we're keeping pace - maybe even a little ahead. There's an old joke about it: A wealthy man is one who earns £100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.'

I always give the same answer. Don't spend a minute wondering what anyone else earns. Never count another man's money. The only number that matters is what your chosen lifestyle costs - and whether your plan gets you there. We each run our own race.

Easier said than done. The neighbour's new car. The friends' third holiday of the year. The extension going up next door. It's all right there, in view, inviting comparison.

A few months ago my coach walked me through what he called a happiness audit. List everything that brings you real happiness. Put a cost against each one. I expected a long list of expensive things. Instead, nearly everything on my list was free, or close to it.

That's the trap. We assume other people's lives cost what they look like they cost, and we measure ourselves against a guess. It breeds a kind of low-grade anxiety that never resolves, because there's always someone with a bigger car, in a bigger house, on a longer holiday. Comparison doesn't just steal joy - it stalls progress. You stay stuck, chasing someone else's scoreboard instead of building your own.

So try the happiness audit yourself. Write down what actually makes you happy, and be honest about what it costs. You might be surprised how short - and how cheap - the real list is. Then build the plan around that, and let the neighbours have their new car.

23/07/2026

Careful what you wish for

Two client meetings this week.

Yesterday's client is a good friend. We were both 23 when he came on board with us, the first person I ever set up with a pension.

We're both 47 now. We updated his financial plan. Confirmed he's still on track to retire at 56. Most of the meeting went on working out his maximum likely spending per year in retirement. To say he’s looking forward to retirement is an understatement.

This morning I visited a client who had to retire a couple of months ago. Health reasons, not choice.

He built the business up from nothing. Loved what he did. Told me it's heart-breaking watching it get dismantled.

The struggle isn't money. It's purpose. People no longer need him. His customers have already moved on. His world has shrunk significantly in a matter of weeks.

One man counting down to a retirement he chose.

One man living a retirement he didn't.

Robbie Williams said when he retired “I ate Krispy Kremes, honey Dijon kettle chips. I got really fat and watched all the Housewives of everywhere franchise and searched for UFOs from my bedroom window. And what I realised after 3 years in this retirement was that I have no purpose. And then my brain started to turn to Swiss cheese, and I realised I had a moment of, ‘Oh I understand why people die when they retire now.’”

Mitch Anthony has a line I keep coming back to: you need enough purpose to wake up in the morning, and enough money to sleep at night.

Careful what you wish for.

09/07/2026

Never Buy the Next Size Up

We were in Spain a couple of weeks ago on a family holiday. As I pulled on my shorts, I had to admit they were a little tighter than they had been in Crete last October.

I remembered some advice a portly friend gave me years ago: "Never buy the next size up."

I decided it was time to lose a couple of kilos.

Two kilograms of body fat equates to roughly 15,400 calories. Once I knew that number, the problem became much easier to solve. I could calculate a sensible daily calorie deficit, estimate how long it would take and fit it around my training schedule.

Without those numbers it's just a vague ambition. You tell yourself you'll "eat a bit better" or "exercise a bit more". Good intentions rarely survive long without a plan.

Forgive the tenuous link but financial independence works in much the same way.

Suppose your ideal lifestyle costs £75,000 a year. If your goal is to reach the point where work is optional and your investments can sustainably generate that income, you might need a portfolio of around £1.9 million, assuming a 4% withdrawal rate.

For many people, £1.9 million feels overwhelming. Almost impossible.

But that's simply the end goal.

Once we know where you're trying to get to, and when you'd like to get there, we can work backwards. We can calculate how much needs to be invested each year, decide on an appropriate investment strategy and identify where compromises might be needed.

Perhaps you save a little more today. Perhaps you delay financial independence by a few years. More often than not, it's a combination of both.

The important thing is that the goal stops being an aspiration and becomes a plan.

The shorts are already fitting better.

Financial independence takes rather longer than a fortnight, but the principle is exactly the same. Know your number. Decide on the timeframe. Build the strategy.

Then simply keep going.

02/07/2026

Cliffs

I've just finished What to Make of a Life by Jim Collins. In it he talks about cliffs - unforeseen upsets that throw everything up in the air and leave us confused, or reviewing our life.

This week alone I've had two separate new client conversations. Both people have individually faced their own cliff recently, in the form of major health scares in their late fifties. Both have paused since and taken radical stock of where they're headed. One of them put it simply: it shook her out of her reverie.

Sometimes that's what it takes to wake us up. Our own health event, or that of someone very close to us. What matters is what we do next.

Collins says we just need to take the next logical step, however small that may be.

For both of these people, the next logical step was to pick up the phone to us. They'd already decided, in the days after their scare, how they wanted to spend whatever time they have left. What they needed from us was simpler than that decision - was it actually affordable? Could the numbers carry the life they now wanted to live?

That's often where we come in. Not to make the big decision for someone, but to tell them whether the life they've decided they want is one their money can support.

For one couple it was a straightforward yes. For the other person, it wasn’t so simple - financial compromises have to be made and not everything she wants is possible.

Nobody chooses a cliff. But of the people I've met who've been through one, I've yet to meet someone who looked back and wished they'd waited for a better time to act.

They wish they'd started the conversation sooner.

If a health scare, a loss, or some other cliff has recently made you rethink how you're spending your time, get in touch. We'll help you work out if the plan forming in your head is one you can afford to live.

17/06/2026

A story my dad told me early in my career has stayed with me ever since.

A woman was standing in a supermarket, looking at two fillet steaks. She picked them up, then put them back. They felt too extravagant.

The woman beside her said, quietly:
"Buy the steaks. My husband died last month, and I'd give anything to share one more meal with him."

I found myself thinking about that story again recently after meeting with Josie.

Josie's husband had passed away almost a year earlier. Understandably, she hadn't felt ready to deal with the financial side of things until now. When she finally came to see me, we were able to get everything organised fairly quickly.

As she was leaving she told me she wished they had spent more of their money making memories together while they still had the chance.

Not long afterwards, Josie decided to cash in her investments. Her plan wasn't to buy more possessions or leave the money sitting in a bank account. She wanted to spend it on experiences with her daughter and grandchildren while she could enjoy them together.

It's a sentiment I hear a lot from clients in their seventies and beyond.

Very few people look back and wish they'd spent more time waiting for the perfect moment. Many wish they'd taken the trip, booked the meal, celebrated the occasion, or simply made more time for the people they love.

The reality is that none of us knows how much time we have.

That's why good financial planning isn't just about preparing for the future - it's equally important to make sure you're enjoying life today.

Because sometimes, the memories you make with the people you love are worth more than the money sitting in an account.

Buy the steaks.

And on that note, I’m off to Spain tomorrow with the family and my bicycle 😊

11/06/2026

Remember Bill from a few weeks ago with the stock windfall?

We met again a few days ago to run through his financial plan. I started by confirming his net worth - £4.8 million.

He couldn't believe it. He'd never added it all up before.

His chosen lifestyle costs £60,000 a year. All but £200k of his net worth is investable - liquid, accessible, no hassle. A tax return once a year, easily handled by an accountant for a few hundred pounds.

I showed him on the screen that he was never going to run out of money.

He took it in for a moment. Then the questions started.

✅ What if I doubled the gifts to my brothers and sister? Done. Instantly modelled. No material impact on his lifetime cash flow.

✅ What if my house is destroyed and insurance doesn't cover it? No problem.

✅ What if I spend the last 30 years of my life in an expensive care home? Modelled. Still fine.

✅ What if I lose the head in a couple of years and buy a Ferrari? Added. Easily covered.

✅ What if I need emergency surgery and have to pay for it privately? There's £100k set aside for exactly that.

One by one, he threw his worst fears at the plan. One by one, they bounced off.

That's someone stress-testing his own freedom for the first time. He needed to break it before he could trust it.

He sat back.

"That's my head sorted. I'm going to be ok. Let's go."

Then, on his way out, he said something that summed it all up.

"I can head back into work now knowing I can jack it in any time I want."

That's not a number on a screen. He’s not retired but he’s free.

That's what financial planning is for.