It’s that time of year again: when we pull out the school uniforms, dust off the sports gear and buy a whole new set of school books. Kids across the country are back to school and of course some are making the transition to secondary. While it’s one of the biggest days of their lives, for many it’s a daunting experience. They may have to get used to changing classrooms on the hour for example, dealing with more than just one teacher and studying subjects they have never encountered before.

So, what can you as a parent do to help your child prepare?
 

1. Talk it through

“Starting secondary school is going to mean change for your child and with all changes comes anxiety,” says Sheila O’Malley of practicalparenting.ie. She recommends talking about it in advance. “Sit down with your child before the big day and talk about what is going to happen step-by-step.”Talking about the fears you yourself had as a child and the obstacles you faced in the same situation, will also help. Explain to your child how you overcame those challenges.

2. Cultivate a relaxed attitude

Children mirror the attitude of their parents and an anxious parent leads to an anxious child. “Try to cultivate a relaxed and positive attitude towards their starting at secondary school, which will be picked up by your child,” says Sheila O’Malley. “For example, talk about it in a positive way, emphasising that it will be a fun and enjoyable experience.” 

3. Get the right school gear

Psychologically a child will feel more capable in school if they have the necessary books, stationary, sports gear and they are wearing the right uniform. So, make sure you’ve acquired all the kit in plenty of time.

4. Encourage independence

“So many parents these days do almost everything for their children with the result that they become helpless when they find themselves alone in challenging situations,” says Sheila O’Malley. 

She recommends encouraging your child to be responsible and to stand on his or her own two feet. Rather than making their school lunch for them, perhaps you could teach them how to do it themselves? Instead of dropping them to school, show them how to make their own way there? Anything that encourages independence, will benefit them in the long run. 

5. Build confidence

A confident child is a capable one and the best way to build confidence in a child is to encourage their sense of worth.“Rather than trying to fight their battles for them and being overly involved in their lives, say to them: ‘I believe in you’ and ‘I trust you’.

“That way you teach them to deal with situations themselves, which is what they’ll need to do at secondary school.”

6. Emphasise the importance of friendship

One of the main challenges to be faced with when starting secondary school is having to make a whole new set of friends, often leaving behind the ones you had in primary school. 

If your child is introverted, explain that making eye contact, smiling, showing interest in others and starting conversations are ways to go about making new friends. It’s important to maintain friendships outside of school too. Encourage your child to join an afterschool club or to take up a sport. Shared interests will lead to stronger friendships.

7. Listen to your child

We all lead busy lives these days, but it’s important to take time to listen to your child. He or she will no doubt have a lot to talk about during the first few weeks of the school experience. 

By encouraging them to talk about their day and listening to what they have to say, you will help them to tackle any issues that may arise and provide emotional support at a time when they need it.

This month it’s time for the latest in our series of age related articles – welcome to the world of the sixty-somethings! As you (potentially) approach the end of your working life, you are at a really important stage in your financial life. We hope to give you some food for thought to ensure you make the wisest financial decisions to see you through the next phase of your life.

Plan carefully for the end of your working life

It is really important that you are getting the best financial advice at this stage – there are so many significant decisions that need to be taken. You want to work with somebody who can confidently confirm to you the lifestyle that you can afford into the future, who can help you plan your financial life for the rest of your life.

Your adviser needs to have their finger on the pulse too in relation to all of the pension related opportunities that are available for you – maximising tax-free cash opportunities, carefully planning your post-retirement strategy and deeply understanding the various tax reliefs that are available to you. The days of saving until you’re 65 and then buying a fixed income for the rest of your life are long gone. Now is the time to start thinking about managing your pot of money wisely until the day that you die.

Of course if you are a business owner, you need to have clear line of sight of your exit strategy and how you will generate the maximum personal value from your exit from the business.

Keep saving while you’re earning

Now is not the time to ease off on your savings, instead you need to put your foot to the floor! Your expenses have probably reduced – your mortgage hopefully is in the past, the kids are educated and have moved out and you have more spare cash.

Remember your time horizon for saving is no longer age 65, it’s until you die. So the more you save now, the better your lifestyle will be later in life.

Review your investment strategy carefully

In the past when your time horizon was age 65, it used to be all about having everything in cash or other low risk assets at this stage. Now that people are financially planning into their 80’s and 90’s (and beyond), your time horizon is longer and your investment strategy needs to reflect that. We will always carefully consider your total investment timeframe before carefully constructing your investment portfolio for you.

An example of such a strategy that some people consider is an investment “glide path”. Instead of putting all of your money into low risk assets as before, some use a rule of thumb of keeping “age 100 minus your current age” in equities. So, a 65 year old would have 35% of their investments in equities. While such rules of thumb are useful, we will always look at your individual circumstances, your own specific attitude to risk and all of your available assets in deciding what’s right for you.

Know your current (& likely future) expenses

As the days of earning income draws towards a close, a significant factor that will impact your future wealth is your expenditure. Now is the time to get crystal clear on what you spend. So actively track your spending, know how much you’re going to need in the future to live the life that you want. Then we can demonstrate to you everything that is financially achievable for you for the rest of your life.

Keep your emergency fund full and protection in place

There can sometimes be a temptation to think that you’ve cleared all the hurdles and can now just start spending your hard-won savings. Unfortunately things can go wrong at any stage in life. That emergency fund that you had built up is still really important to see you through any significant bumps in the road.

Your life cover and specified illness cover are also still very important. You may not need as much cover as before, but you still need to protect your loved ones and yourself against future disasters. And it’s a fact of life that you’re also more likely to claim at this stage in your life too…

Think about future work (seriously!)

We suggest that you look at future work opportunities too. However you will be doing this as much for the mental wellbeing benefits as for the actual financial benefits. And you will only look at work on terms that suit you – doing work that you like, in a location that is easy for you and where the work hours really fit around the rest of your life. Work at this stage should be a source of enjoyment, not a chore!

As the world of work draws towards an end, you still hopefully have a very long life in front of you. So it is really important that you retain a long-term view of your finances and get really good advice in doing so. And that’s why we’re here. We want to guide you to allow you live the very best life that you can lead, for the rest of your days.

We wrote back in May about “Staying out of your own way”, a piece that resonated with a lot of people in these volatile investment markets. In this article, we spoke about how managing our own behaviours is the single factor that will probably have the greatest impact on our investment success.

Now picking up that theme again and going a little deeper, we’re going to explore some of the main biases that unfortunately are in-built within us and that can really cloud our judgement when it comes to investment decisions. These biases regularly trip up even the most experienced investors.

Recency

Recency bias is a bias towards placing too much emphasis on recent events, as opposed to looking at a longer-term picture. An everyday example is when someone is asked to list their 10 favourite books or movies. What often happens is that the person will give far more weight to recent reading or viewing, as opposed to thinking through what their favourites really are.

This pops up a lot in investing where investors give far too much weight to recent events. An example is where a stock or even a market takes a short-term dip. Even if this is after a prolonged growth period, investors can often give too much weight to the recent dip, as opposed to considering the long-term trends.

Anchoring

Anchoring bias is where you base a decision on a past piece of information, even though the old information may have become irrelevant at this stage. A good example of this in relation to investing is when we see people anchoring investment decisions to the price paid for an asset. Thy might say that they bought a share at €10, so they won’t sell it for less than that. However they are forgetting that the market doesn’t care what you paid for the share – this is irrelevant to the future performance of that share. Instead investors should lift that anchor and decide whether to keep or sell that share based on the actual fundamentals impacting the share price.

Loss Aversion

This is one that has visited us all at some stage… Basically we hate losing far more than we enjoy winning, in fact some researchers have suggested that the pain of losing stays with us twice as long as the joy from winning. Listen to Roy Keane – some of the big losses in his career still gnaw away at him, while he rarely thinks of the successes he enjoys. Doug Sanders, who lost the British Open in golf in 1970 after missing a 3ft putt on the last hole was asked about how often he thought about it. His answer was that thankfully it got easier with time – he now only thinks about it once a day.

When it comes to investing, we can cloud our decisions by the small losses we suffered. The pain of accepting a loss and moving on is too great in our minds and can stop an investor selling a stock at a loss, even though the future outlook might not be good. People can become frozen with the fear of losing.

Confirmation

The nodding donkey… We all have pre-conceived ideas about subjects, even ones where our basis of opinion is questionable. Then you receive more information that appears to “confirm” your previous hunch, and this guides a decision. The challenge with this is that you are not considering all of the available information, instead your hunch has been apparently confirmed as correct. When investing, it makes sense to consider all of the information available and put your own pre-conceived ideas aside. Something may show up in the new information that quickly demonstrates that your original hunch may have been misguided. 

As we said back in May, the key to investing is often staying out of our own way, as our behaviours can really undermine our potential to achieve successful outcomes. Keeping up the saving habit, staying focused on the plan and not trying to time the market are all important to your long-term success. Being aware of your own biases is important too. Identify the ones that possibly loom larger in your own though processes and check yourself against them before you make an investment decision.