My daughter, Chloe, painted a picture last weekend that gave me a jolt. It’s an acrylic-on-canvas depiction of two silhouetted soldiers in combat against a blazing red, orange and yellow sky.
One figure is a sniper, crouching on a dark hillside with his rifle pointing straight at his opponent. The larger silhouette in the foreground is standing some distance away from the foot of the hill, his rifle aimed at the man above him.
There is nothing to identify either man or show they are on two opposing sides – tellingly, they are almost identical. And to the left, a huge black cross dominates the skyline – a stark reminder of the fate that lies ahead for one, if not both men.
My emotions were all over the place when Chloe showed me this painting. “Is this what I think it is?” I asked, foolishly but instinctively. Chloe nodded.
She is only 11, so on one level I was bowled over at the maturity of the subject matter, the powerful anti-war message and the techniques she used to produce it. But at the same time, the darkness in this artwork disturbed me.
Chloe has become much more serious about art in the last year and we’re now buying professional art supplies rather than pencils from the kids’ aisle in the supermarket. I realise she’s growing up and has gone past the happy mum and dad type pictures of infant school.
But this latest piece is so blunt in its depiction of war. There’s no gore, but it pulls no punches in saying this is how it is, and this is how it ends. So, finding a place for it on the wall at home wasn’t a comfortable experience.
The myth of the tortured artist was also playing on my mind. We all know Van Gogh chopped his ear off, and countless other legends in the creative arts have been plagued with all sorts of personal demons.
Not only that, I was dwelling on the idea of drawings giving an insight into what’s going on in a child’s mind. TV news is always on in my house, and some of the images from warzones around the world are harrowing to watch. What were they telling Chloe about the society she’s growing up in?
But even as I ran away with myself on that front, I guessed it reflected Chloe learning about World War II at school. I asked her if that was why she chose to create this scene and she said yes. It made me feel a little better, though not completely at ease.
I was also unsettled last year when my eldest, Liam, performed the first song he’d ever written at the tender age of 14. Our family joke had been that George Michael wrote Careless Whisper when he was only 17, so Liam needed to get a move on.
So after a year of dragging a book of lyrics around with him in a journal that we were forbidden to look at, Liam finally unveiled the finished article, with lyrics, guitar chords and even a middle eight.
It was a bittersweet song about acceptance of loneliness while hoping for something better. A minor chord progression brought a lump to my throat and I reacted with a mix of emotions – wow, did he really write this? I’m so proud – but is that how he’s feeling inside? Have I missed something I should have picked up on?
Luckily, Liam and I are close and we talk a lot. So I soon realised that I was falling for another myth about creative people – that song lyrics are always autobiographical. They might be, but you can’t assume they are.
I realised this after reading a biography of 80s pop band The Smiths, where lead singer Morrissey is revealed to have drawn inspiration and borrowed phrases from 1960s kitchen-sink dramas he watched on TV in the afternoons. I’d previously assumed singers are speaking to us about themselves, rather than taking on an imaginary persona and situation.
That’s why Kate Bush’s cover of Elton John’s Rocket Man is so striking. Rather than change the words in line with 1990s gender norms, Bush sang about having a wife. This was way before same-sex marriage was legal in the UK and it’s brilliant.
Myths and assumptions are woven into how we view the world, which in turn shapes how we respond to particular situations. Debunking those myths every so often is like having a good spring clean – we can get rid of all the ‘stuff’ that has had its day.
That is why all the Financial Planning Week activities and events that have occurred this week are so worthwhile. But it is important that we carry on debunking the myths around financial planning for the other 51 weeks of the year.
I’ve been working on an article about financial-planning myths for our February issue, so I like to think I’m also doing my bit for the cause. I obviously can’t say too much about that before publication, but what fascinates me is where the myths come from. They can’t just be random beliefs that are plucked out of thin air – there must have been a grain of truth in them once, if not any more.
I spent a fair amount of time asking people in different areas of financial services about what the main myths around financial planning are, where they come from and what can be done to change the misconceptions.
I learned that these myths often stem from the past and can get passed down from generation to generation, not considering changes in modern thinking and practices because they are rooted in a snapshot of time.
Take the idea that financial planning is too complicated and only for people who have some financial knowledge. People who don’t have much financial knowledge arguably need financial planning more because they ‘don’t know what they don’t know’ and a financial planner can help them become more financially literate.
But Pete Ridley, a finance expert at Car Finance Saver, told me the complexity myth “can intimidate many from even starting their financial planning journey and it probably stems from the technical jargon that has embedded itself in the industry”.
Anyone who knows me or has read my previous essays will know jargon is one of my pet hates. I see it in other walks of life – education, for example – and it’s like a red rag to a bull.
I can trace this back to my post-grad journalism course. Before that, I was a sucker for an obscure word and a clever-clever phrase. That had been rewarded in my English BA, where they liked you to be ‘adventurous with your vocabulary’ and sound like you’d swallowed a dictionary.
My journalism tutor, a hard news reporter with decades of experience, soon knocked that out of me. Even now I find myself relaying her catchphrases to my kids – ‘word economy please, don’t use 10 words when one will do. Keep it simple – KISS.’
Yes, I know every industry has its own terminology and shorthand. But jargon is often lazy and acts as barrier to those trying to learn what the words are really referring to. People using it seem to rely on it either because nobody has ever taught them what these words mean in plain English, or if they really do understand it, how to express it in simpler terms.
So, they might understand the concept, but they’re stumped when having to explain it to the layperson. Much easier to trot out the jargon and look like you know what you’re talking about.
To give credit where credit’s due, there’s more awareness and effort around avoiding jargon in financial services than there used to be, so things have improved. But we can still do more.
I remember the founder of a PR firm telling me about a client – the founder of a financial-services provider – who was excited about the ‘amazing’ press release he’d drafted. It was apparently going to get journalists just as excited to write about his new proposition as he was.
The PR took one look at it and burst the guy’s bubble. “We can’t send this out to journalists,” he’d told them. “What does all this fluff actually mean?”
Flummoxed, the client was unable to answer the question and ended up falling back on the stock phrases he’d used in the press release. The PR – a former journalist – wasn’t satisfied and sent him off to think about what he was really trying to convey and how he was going to redraft the release.
If we’re going to quash the idea that financial planning is for the elite, we need to make sure that the language we use to talk about it is inclusive. But back to my discussion of financial-planning myths with Pete Ridley.
Another myth Ridley highlighted is the old chestnut that financial planning is only for the wealthy. “This myth probably originates from a historical context where financial services were tailored primarily for high-net-worth individuals,” Ridley told me.
While high-net-worth individuals are still ideal clients for obvious reasons, I know many advisers who help ‘the average man or woman on the street’ navigate the retirement maze or help people that are starting a business to make the most of what they have. The trouble is, the general public doesn’t know that many modern financial advisers are financial planners or what that entails.
When I spoke to Paul Welsh, senior adviser at financial advice firm Financial Planning Corporation, he pointed out that there’s a distinction between the broad umbrella term ‘financial adviser’ and financial planning, which is a part of that. As he puts it, “financial planners are financial advisers, but not all financial advisers are financial planners.”
Welsh talked about other misconceptions – how many people think financial advice is all about investments. They don’t realise financial planning is more about the things people want to achieve in life for themselves and their family with the help of the money they have – or could have with a bit of planning.
Welsh is helping to debunk a lot of these myths by working with solicitors, who point their clients in his direction when they might benefit from financial planning. But once a myth is engrained in society, it’s difficult to dislodge.
I’ve heard from advisers that some people are still harking back to classic Coronation Street episodes featuring shady financial adviser Richard Hillman in their opinions of financial advisers. Hillman – played by ex-Grange Hill actor Brian Capron – went on to become a serial killer, which perhaps cemented the myth that financial advisers are not trustworthy.
Advisers are doing a lot of great work on social media to debunk the myths. But I think that until people start seeing financial planning as a people-based role rather than numbers based, all the old stereotypes and the baggage that goes with them will remain.
I almost wish we could do away with the ‘financial’ element of the job title and find a different way to describe the role that doesn’t tap into the myths that drag it down.