Last week was half term, so the diary was slightly quieter than usual.
I took the opportunity to head up to Norwich to visit my eldest son at university. Inevitably, somewhere between food, coffee and the usual parental interrogation, the conversation turned to money.
Student debt. Careers. AI. What happens after university. Where to live. Whether buying a home will ever feel realistic. And that uniquely unsettling question facing anyone in their early twenties:
What on earth am I supposed to do next?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I came back to work and found myself having remarkably similar conversations with clients.
Different ages. Different sums of money. Very different circumstances.
But the same underlying questions.
What happens next? What is the money for? And how do we make good decisions when the future feels increasingly difficult to predict?
Three themes stood out.
The Hardest Part of Retirement? Spending the Money
We spend decades teaching people how to save.
Then, almost overnight, we expect them to become comfortable spending it.
This week I met two families approaching precisely that point.
For one, income that had supported their lifestyle is coming to an end. They have substantial pensions and investments, but they are approaching the moment when those investments need to stop being something they accumulate and start becoming something they actually live from. Cash reserves have been bridging the gap, but a structured withdrawal strategy will soon be needed.
Another family has already been living from cash. What initially looked like annual expenditure of around £300,000 appears to be much closer to £200,000, while a previously expensive second property has been transformed into a holiday let that broadly covers its own costs. Those two changes materially alter the financial picture.
But in both cases the conversation wasn't simply:
"How much can I withdraw?"
It was:
"How do I know I won't run out?"
That is why good retirement planning is about much more than choosing investments.
We talked about cash reserves, maintaining enough accessible capital so that investments don't have to be sold during a market fall, tax-efficient withdrawals, pensions, ISAs and even whether guaranteed income through an annuity deserves a place in the plan.
There is a psychological transition here that I think financial planning sometimes underestimates.
If you've spent 30 or 40 years building capital, deliberately reducing it can feel like failure.
It isn't.
The money was accumulated so that one day you could use it.
The job of the financial plan is to give you the confidence to do so.
Spend It, Gift It, Build Something With It
At the other end of the spectrum was one of my favourite conversations of the week.
A couple are considering using a significant part of their wealth to help fund a substantial community building project.
Not after they die.
Now.
The potential project could cost more than £600,000 and is still at an early stage, but the motivation behind it was fascinating.
Their children are financially secure. Their own lifestyle is well funded. They have pension assets they may never need. So rather than simply allowing wealth to accumulate and eventually pass through their estate, they are asking:
"Could we do something useful with it while we're still here to see it?"
That creates plenty of technical planning.
How much pension money can be accessed tax-free? What are the income-tax consequences of taking more? Could qualifying charitable gifts attract Gift Aid? How should donations be structured? And, most importantly, how much can they give without compromising their own long-term security?
But those are mechanics.
The interesting bit is the philosophy.
Financial planning tends to focus heavily on accumulation and inheritance. Yet there is another possibility:
turning financial capital into something meaningful during your lifetime.
For some people that's helping children onto the housing ladder.
For others it's supporting grandchildren through education.
It might be philanthropy, a local charity, a church, a community project or simply giving more away while you're around to enjoy seeing the difference it makes.
Sometimes legacy isn't what you leave behind.
It's what you get to see happen.
The Next Generation Has Different Rules
Which brings me back to Norwich.
Across this week's meetings, children in their twenties kept appearing in the conversation.
One was at university and questioning whether a traditional degree was preparing them for a world being reshaped by AI. Another was beginning an internship and trying to find a foothold in an increasingly difficult employment market. Parents were debating when, how and even whether to help with housing.
These conversations felt particularly relevant after spending time with my own son.
My generation left university into a world that, broadly speaking, looked like the one our parents had inhabited.
Get a qualification.
Find a career.
Work hard.
Buy a house.
Build a pension.
Move steadily upwards.
I am increasingly unconvinced that our children inherit the same roadmap.
AI is already changing graduate jobs. Housing affordability is completely different. Careers may be less linear. The relationship between education, employment and financial independence is changing extraordinarily quickly.
One client put the uncertainty particularly starkly: we have far less confidence that the world our children occupy in fifteen years will resemble the one we understand today.
And that presents parents with an interesting financial-planning challenge.
How much should we help?
Give too little and we potentially leave young adults tackling structural problems that simply didn't exist to the same extent for previous generations.
Give too much, too soon, and we risk removing independence, ambition or the satisfaction that comes from building something themselves.
There isn't a formula for that.
But increasingly I think intergenerational planning shouldn't start with:
"How much can we give them?"
It should start with:
"What are we trying to help them achieve?"
Those are very different questions.
Key Takeaways
1. Retirement isn't the end of financial planning.
Moving from saving to spending can be one of the biggest financial and psychological transitions of your life. A sustainable income strategy, sensible cash reserves and an understanding of guaranteed and investment-based income all matter.
2. Your wealth doesn't only have to become an inheritance.
If you've genuinely got enough, using some of it during your lifetime can create opportunities, experiences and legacies that you actually get to witness.
3. Don't assume your children's financial lives will follow yours.
AI, housing, education and employment are changing quickly. Helping the next generation may require a very different playbook from the one that worked for us.
Final Thoughts
Sitting in Norwich talking to my son about university, student debt, careers and what comes next, I was struck by how familiar the conversation felt.
A few days later I was having variations of it with people approaching retirement.
The numbers were completely different.
The questions weren't.
Have I got enough?
What happens next?
What should I be doing with the money I've got?
And perhaps the biggest one:
How do I plan confidently when I don't really know what the future looks like?
That's ultimately what financial planning is trying to solve.
Not predicting the future.
But building enough flexibility that, whatever happens, you've still got choices.
And whether you're 21 or 71, having choices is a pretty good definition of financial freedom.
If any of this weeks landed with you, why not get in touch via the link below?
