Long-term Planning
Insurance is not an investment, and treating it as one is expensive
The purpose of insurance is to transfer a loss you could not absorb. Every other use of it is worse value than the alternatives.
Long-term Planning
Retirement, insurance, estates and the decisions with thirty-year tails.
20 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 1 of 2
Long-term Planning
Inflation does not affect everyone at the same rate
The headline figure is an average across a basket that probably does not resemble your spending.
More in Long-term Planning
Long-term Planning
Retirement planning starts with an annual figure, not a total
The pot everyone talks about is an output. The input is what you intend to spend in a year, in today's money.
Long-term Planning
The safe withdrawal rate is a research question, not a settled figure
A single percentage circulates as though it were established. What the research actually shows is narrower and more conditional…
Long-term Planning
An employer pension match is the closest thing to a guaranteed return
Where an employer adds money conditional on your contribution, declining it is a decision with a measurable price.
Long-term Planning
State pension entitlement depends on rules that vary beyond comparison
How much a state provides, when, and on what conditions differs so much between countries that only your own system's figures mean…
Long-term Planning
A will mostly decides who has to deal with the paperwork
Estate planning is presented as being about who inherits, and a large part of its value is about who is authorised to act, and how…
Long-term Planning
Powers of attorney matter while you are alive, which is the point
The document people delay is the one that would be needed at the moment nobody could arrange it.
Long-term Planning
Planning for the age you might reach, not the one you expect
Life expectancy figures are averages, and roughly half of people exceed them. Planning to the average underfunds half of all…
Long-term Planning
Nobody can find your accounts if you have not written them down
Assets that nobody knows about are functionally lost, and modern financial lives are unusually easy to lose.
Long-term Planning
The order of returns decides retirements that started the same
Two people with identical average returns and identical savings can end up in very different positions, purely because of when the…
Long-term Planning
A financial plan is a set of decisions, not a document
Plans fail less often from bad forecasting than from never being revisited when the facts changed.