Five’s a nightmare

Greg: I'm good, anyway, cuz, uh, my, so, I was just talkin' to my mom, and she said, apparently, he'll leave me five million anyway, so I'm golden, baby.
Connor: You can't do anything with five, Greg. Five's a nightmare.
Greg: Is it?
Connor: Oh, yeah. Can't retire. Not worth it to work. Oh, yes, five will drive you un poco loco,
my fine feathered friend.
Tom: The poorest rich person in America. The world's tallest dwarf.
Connor: The weakest strong man at the circus.

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If you’ve watched it, you’ll recognise this hilarious scene from TV series Succession, which chronicles the dramatic relationship between a dysfunctional family in charge of giant media conglomerate Waystar Royco.

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It’s fascinating to watch what untold riches can do to simple human beings. Spoiler alert: it’s not pretty.

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No matter how many private jets, copters, yachts and private islands, there’s no inner peace.

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And so being left with a mere ‘5’ in a relative’s Will is more of a hindrance than a help.

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Poor Greg.

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And yet perhaps this sort of thinking helps to prove that the numbers themselves don’t matter? It’s what you want to do with them that does. £5m might be golden to you. Or it might be just a number on a graph and in reality, nothing to do with your life, goals or destination.

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Amid the current market mayhem clients will be be anxious about what the numbers mean for them. However, the most helpful explanation I’ve heard is from Tom Skinner of Barnaby Cecil.

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He likens market turbulence to Formula 1 racing. He says that what people talk about, what’s of interest, are the incidents on the track, not the petrol. But like the petrol, the portfolio just the fuel. It’s the plan that really matters. If the plan is wrong then, yes change it, but that’s the thing you should be looking at, not the markets.

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Easier said than done perhaps. But you could always mention how your own pension has dropped recently. As Andy Hart, of Maven Adviser, says: “One cannot have market returns without enduring volatility. The danger is that our clients have forgotten this,” adding: “The behavioural adviser shines during the tough times.”

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What are your methods for reassuring anxious clients?

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And are you watching Succession?