By the time you’re in your 60’s you’ll have spent (generally), forty years living a 5-day week at work, weekends off, life determined by the seasons, school holidays and even the oddly timed start of the tax year.

The UK is very rare in having a 5 April tax year end. The reasons for this unusual tax year date back to the Middle Ages, when the tax year began on ‘Lady Day’ (25 March), a religious festival. It was moved to 5 April in 1752 as part of the UK’s switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, then moved to 6 April in 1800 because of a mis-match over leap years in the new and old calendars. Most other countries, including the USA, France, Germany and Ireland, align their tax years to the calendar year.

The largest survey of recent retirees in the US found the biggest source of anxiety that retirees suffered from was a lack of routine. We can tell when retirees are bored, they spend too much time fiddling with the detail of their money, accounts, investments, and sometimes ex-City workers keep coming back (though not on the 7.23 from Dorking) and popping in to see us for a coffee. We can stop haemorrhaging our money, we can’t stop losing our time.

It's filling our lives in retirement that is important, not sitting at home counting shekels – you can’t eat it (Bill Gates quips about how useless money is at improving a cheeseburger) and it won’t stop us dying. Once today is finished, that’s one less dawn and sunset we are both going to have so it’s best to crack on with doing things, seeing people and having a blast.

Simple money stats:

A £100k single investment in the Lowland investment trust on 1/1/1987 delivered £525,928 in dividends up to 31/12/2021, averaging £16,214 in income per year with an average dividend growth rate of 8.33% per year. However it holds reserves covering only 55% of the dividend it pays compared to Claverhouse at 118%
In 9 of the last 10 years Merchants Trust beat the Vanguard FTSE ETF, a passive tracker costing only 0.09%. If you invested £100k in both ten years ago and sold £4k each year from the tracker and just the divis from the trust, the Vanguard shares are now worth £74,557 and Merchants Trust is £137,397 – 78% more. (Note: DON’T sell shares to raise income).
The big tech play was an ETF run by Cathie Wood at Ark Investment Management. Since inception nine years ago Ark has pocketed $300m in fees whilst the investors have lost $10bn. As the man say … go figure.

What the journos said:

“Thanks, Doug. Do you know any others that charge such high fees? I thought 5% initial charges had largely died out …” Moira O’Neill
“Fear not, I wouldn’t wish XYZ on my worst enemy!” David Stevenson

Discretion forbids the naming and shaming, however the company in question publishes this fee schedule for ISAs:

And what our readers say:

Good Morning
I am new to hearing about your company, but everything about the interview with Doug Brodie this morning on Sky News exuded professionalism. No posturing, no positioning, just cool calm erudite logic!!!!
I'm not ready for retirement planning yet (I'm locked into Buy-to-let for the time being). But based on that one interview alone, I'll be heading straight to Chancery Lane when I do manage to escape!
Sincere best wishes
Neil Bxxxx (Baby Boomer)

And if you’re worried about the gloom and doom, we don’t think you should be. We’ve spoken frequently about the disconnect between the US and UK markets, and the unwinding you’ll see in the media is getting rid of the froth that has built up in the US with all the low cost money (see Ark ETF above). Two US figures that show there is underlying strength in their economy: global air traffic is back to 69% of pre-covid levels and US mortgage applications are up 25% year to date.

An even better disconnect is the absence of correlation between income and share price – counter intuitive it may be, however remember that dividends are declared (generally) just twice a year and are decided by the board, whereas share prices are set and reset and changed again 60 seconds of every hour from 8am to 4.30pm, by anonymous investors who are invisible to the market.