I lock things away in the saving and investment process and then do a quarterly check. That is my financial planning approach, and it works for me.

This weekend was the quarterly check, and not a lot has changed since the previous review. Although the markets have been up, down and around, what I have invested and where I have invested has not changed that much. That is the way I like it: decent growth safely and steadily and no panic. Although Panic will come because we are due a crash – just have something ready to take advantage of it or at least keep your monthly investment process and buy, buy, buy. When the market is down, think of it as a fire sale. Don’t Panic, and just keep doing what you do.

My advice to people and I say advice, because I am no financial planner and I am not qualified to give anything but my own opinion based advice, is always the same. Invest, forget about it and automate your process for adding to it at a level that fits your own planning.

I do keep it all simple. I am in the ‘invest in indexed linked funds and lock it away and forget about it if you can’ type of guy. I do have other investments, but on the whole, this is my approach. It is the safest and the best opinion based advice that I give out.

All the other stuff around Bitcoin, flying with the Reddit crew or trawling through the analysis to make great stock picks – I say, yeah, you can do that. Still, I don’t know anything about it, so you are on your own there. It is the safest way. I don’t know much about it, to be honest, so there is no lying in that.

If I could go back to my younger self, I would insist on doing the same. Invest in indexed linked funds, US-based (they give the best return), lock it away, and forget about it.

These days my younger self is my son, and my approach for him is exactly that. By the time he is an old man and heading for retirement, there will be nothing much on offer from the state pension when you look at the current erosion rate. For that reason, I am starting him early.

If you have children, then please do the same. Start them early, push yourself to save a little for them each month, lock it away, and do your quarterly financial check. Then, when they are old enough, teach them to do it and build into them the same principles because the government will not do it.

The government will take the pension money from their pay for sure, but what they will get back will be meagre. So don’t wait until the last minute to let your children get screwed over by the current and other sh*t, shocking governments. Instead, do pension building by yourself NOW! – protect their future and, if you can, save your own future while you are at it. The future to plan for your children is forty to fifty years from now. Imagine what that will be like – a scary or an exciting thought, depends how you look at it. I always say the future is bright if you plan for it. But it might just be totally f*cked up in all kinds of ways!

Do it for you, do it for them and review your planning quarterly because, in two hundred quarters time, your children will be happy campers… relived! Safe! in control and settled with what life they have left to live…

And you can rest easy in your grave that you set them on the right path.

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