Don’t have a real responsibility for our youth?
WE ALL need to deal with climate change for THEM – and NOW
Young people who feel “hopeless and paralysed” by fears about climate change need help and support, mental health experts have said.
Place2Be – a charity offering counselling in schools – said the issue was becoming “more and more prominent”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-57555760https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-57555760
Consumption of renewable energy in the United States grew for the fifth year in a row, reaching a record high.
‘Pre-loved’ fashion moves from niche to mainstream as retailers join the fray
Younger shoppers are driving a surge in sales of secondhand clothing and furnishings, spurred by the desire to help the environment and find alternative looks to fast fashion.
On eBay, sales of “pre-loved” fashion and homewares have shot up in the UK over the past year, with the company selling more than 60 million used items. Murray Lambell, general manager of eBay’s UK business, said: “There is definitely a change in mindset, driven by younger consumers up to the age of 30.”
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2021/may/01/pre-loved-fashion-moves-from-niche-to-mainstream-as-retailers-join-the-fray
The climate emergency is bigger than many experts, elected officials, and activists realize. Humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions have overheated the Earth’s atmosphere, unleashing punishing heat waves, hurricanes, and other extreme weather – that much is widely understood.
The larger problem is that the overheated atmosphere has in turn overheated the oceans, assuring a catastrophic amount of future sea level rise.
As oceans heat up the water rises in part because warm water expands but also because the warmer waters have initiated major melt of polar ice sheets. As a result, average sea levels around the world are now all but certain to rise by at least 20 to 30 feet. That’s enough to put large parts of many coastal cities, home to hundreds of millions of people, under water.
The key questions are how soon this sea level rise will happen and whether humans can cool the atmosphere and oceans quickly enough to prevent part of this.
If seas rise 20 feet over the next 2,000 years, our children and their descendants may find ways to adapt. But if seas rise 20 feet or more over the next 100 to 200 years — which is our current trajectory – the outlook is grim. In that scenario, there could be two feet of sea level rise by 2040, three feet by 2050, and much more to come.
Two to three feet of sea level rise may not sound like much, but it will transform human societies the world over.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2021/apr/13/sea-level-rise-climate-emergency-harold-wanless?utm_term=df0639d7e897827b1813f440780eb56f&utm_campaign=GreenLight&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=greenlight_email
The UK has extended its global leadership on green finance by requiring its principal financial regulators to consider climate change.
The move raises global ambition ahead of COP26 in November where the UK is aiming to ensure every financial decision takes climate change into account.
Let’s Talk Tax
Budgets are all about gathering in money, by way of taxes to spend to support the country, its public services, businesses, and citizens.
Each Government takes a view of what is important or what is in their manifesto.
There are three approaches dependent on the particular politics of the government:
Since the Finance Act 1976, successive Governments of all parties, with private sector capital, have made a substantial step forward in supporting small businesses, from start up to sale.
New technology and drug development has been financed. Infrastructure and public services supported by specific tax reliefs.
The recent Budget recognised the benefits gained through tax benefits being used to influence behaviour.
Inheritance Tax Planning
How does this help you, as someone planning your financial future and that of your children and grandchildren?
There are opportunities for you to remove assets from your estate within two years, whilst keeping control and keeping it accessible, should you need to pay for your care costs.
The investments have a wide range of assets, depending on what outcome the Treasury are interested in encouraging you to support.
There is something for you, whatever your approach to risk. If your choice is to invest according to your values, social, environmental or supporting new technologies, you have a range to fit those values.
In my experience, your beneficiaries will be delighted that you saved 40% tax on their inheritance and made a difference to the wider world, building the country’s sustainability.
Capital gains tax, income tax savings, or income tax reclaim
For those of you who have reached your pension lifetime allowance limit and are looking for other tax savings, then you should explore, with your financial adviser the choice between different tax beneficial opportunities. The options are varied and must be made with professional help.
You care deeply about our planet, its people and places.
You’re passionate about growing your talents in a meaningful career.
You want to achieve great things but keep your life in balance.
Then you might be interested in this friendly, informative coaching-led Network Hub Events that make it easy for you to connect with like-minded women, building valuable relationships & growing your expertise.
https://womeninsustainability.net/
It is important to read behind the story and not assume the headline is all. Sometimes you find it is not what you expect.
I often call companies to ask about the reality of their ESG proposition.
Lamborghini has finally added a hybrid to its line-up, and it’s bad for the environment.
In the light of the Covid-19 pandemic, my newsletter, April 2020, it is important to give a view of the portfolios we manage.
Not individual valuations but an overall position.
To put things in context, the portfolio with the biggest drawdown has
reduced in value by 19.5% but most have reduced by less than 14%, after
increasing from January 2019 to the current fall in February 2020 by
28.5%.
The fall was dramatic, and we may still see further falls as the markets are tested.
However, a 28.5% recovery in a single year demonstrates that markets recover and normally faster than anticipated during a crisis.
Portfolios are designed to match clients’ individual appetite for risk and should provide stability, providing better than cash returns and out pacing inflation.
Investments that help the world stay healthy, minimise waste of scarce resources and provide a sustainable return
“Make Our Money Count”
– Public Demand for Sustainable Pensions & Savings Reaches Record High
Climate Anxiety is taking hold of our younger friend and relations, as a member of Women in Sustainability I regularly meet to exchange ideas on a range of subjects including sustainable fashion, food waste and how to make a positive difference in the world we inhabit.
As a member of the Ethical Investment community, I work with clients to ensure their money is used to meet their needs first and then to meet their values.
Until recently it has been a slow burn, with many critics and challenges from within the retail investment community. However, attitudes are changing and so are the opportunities.
The City’s Green Initiative is a welcome response.
The City institutions are now on board, fearing overwhelming insurance claims from disasters caused by the changing weather and reducing values of assets within the larger pension funds, most of which have historically relied on returns from fossil fuels.
The benefit of running a small firm, allowing freedom to move quickly, is that I recognised the opportunities to invest in alternative energy, new science and engineering developments.
Having access to excellent research on what is actually in the chosen funds, I have been able to provide investments that have outperformed the stock market for the last 5 years.
They have been good for my clients and good for our future.
My research process allows for client specific investments that meet their values and avoid investments in things they are unhappy about, for example a young Vet student recently asked me to invest only in funds that have a good Animal Welfare approach.
I have always believed that Capitalism is good, but it must be Good Capitalism.
Providing money to help solve problems;
ESG means Ethical Social and Governance.
Governance means that the providers of collective funds demand changes at Board level in the way firms are run, for the benefit of their employees, the local community and their supply chain.
Information source: FTSE Russell ‘Green Economy’
I offer this reminder, as I am often asked about the need to pay National Insurance and the most appropriate way to achieve full benefits. It is easy to check your personal account on line.
Clearly most of us do not rely on the State Pension and the question is how much additional funding is needed to achieve a realistic income at the time you plan to stop earning or reduce your working time.
Most people are shocked once they look at the levels of funding necessary, which means that you can either choose to fund to the desired outcome or delay your plans. Most importantly start early and fund realistically but also take the opportunity to get a realistic forecast.
Pension funding is still the most tax efficient way for all but basic rate tax payers, with Stocks and Shares ISAs used for anyone who is currently a basis rate tax payer.
One important warning, Cash ISAs give a return less than inflation and the only tax benefit is that the small amount of interest is tax free.
They do not make financial sense for medium and long-term savings. Inflation is expected to run at about 2.5% in the foreseeable future. Stocks and Shares ISAs are exposed to market fluctuations but rarely give a negative return in the longer term.
The most challenging issue for all 20 to 30 somethings is how to get on the housing ladder. As a country we consider home ownership an essential.
Tax policy is designed to drive behaviour and, as far as housing is concerned, it has worked for those who bought their homes at the right time.
For clients who have children and grandchildren it is a subject regularly referred to as a concern to them as well as the younger family members. Increasingly taxation is being designed to assist, one example of which is the Help to Buy ISA.
What is a Help-to-Buy ISA?
A Help-to-Buy ISA is a government scheme designed to help you save for a mortgage deposit to buy a home. To qualify you must be classified as a first-time buyer and not own a property anywhere in the world.
Savings are tax free just as with any ISA product. However, a Help-to-Buy ISA gives you the added bonus of getting government contributions.
How do Help-to-Buy ISAs work?
The government will top up any contributions you make by 25%, up to the contribution limit of £12,000. So, for every £200 you save, the government will contribute £50. This means you can earn a maximum of £3,000 from the government.
The minimum amount you need to save to qualify for a government bonus is £1,600 (which gives you a £400 bonus).
You can start off your ISA with an initial deposit of up to £1,000 which also qualifies for the 25% boost from the government.
Help to Buy ISAs are available to each first-time buyer, not each home. So, if you’re buying a property with your partner, for example, you’ll be able to get up to £6,000 towards your deposit.
Profile: Jan Oliff on tragedy that led her to ethical investments
By Amanda Newman Smith 5th November 2018
Jan Oliff on changing the sector’s gender profile and how personal factors led her to be an ethical specialist
Sometimes the reasons people do the jobs they do or hold certain views are intensely personal.
That is the case with Jan, director, Jan Oliff Financial Planning.
Since establishing her own business in 1992, Jan has built a reputation as an ethical investment specialist.
Like many advisers in the field, Jan has generated business through a genuine interest in helping others and aiming to create a better world. But ask her why she became interested in socially responsible investment in the first place and it becomes clear it was for personal reasons rather than business ones.
“My mother died in 1986 at a young age.
Nobody had told her smoking was dangerous and she had lung cancer. I wanted to invest some money that she had left me into something that avoided tobacco. Only the Stewardship fund offered that at the time, so I invested in it and that was my way into the SRI* marketplace,” she says.
Jan believes the SRI* market has gained many supporters as a result of the 2008 financial crisis.
How to get started with ethical investing
“Clients felt let down by financial services around the time of the crisis and people are becoming increasingly aware of issues such as damage to the environment.
“Everyone has their own story and their own values based on personal experience. Some are more interested in governance issues than the environment and vice-versa,” she says. “I have one client who is in her 80s and she wouldn’t invest in gambling because, as a young teacher in Glasgow, she was seeing children coming to school with no shoes on because daddy had spent all the money in the betting shop.”
Five questions
What is the best bit of advice you’ve received in your career?
Don’t retire. It came from my 92-year-old neighbour, a district nurse who retired at 72 and thought it was far too soon.
What keeps you awake at night?
Nothing to do with work. If it was, I’d give it up.
What has had the most significant impact on financial advice in the last year?
Increasing awareness of values and governance.
If I was in charge of the Financial Conduct Authority for a day I would …
Listen to a representative sample of workers as the go-to people for ideas to improve the system and culture.
Any advice for new advisers?
Use your brain and your emotional intellect. Together they are powerful.
Jan was drawn to the financial services world following some tragic personal events that really brought home to her the need for people to plan their finances.
Her sister was widowed at the age of 29 and she sadly lost a friend in a car crash. At the time, her friend had everything to live for; he and his wife had just had a baby and were in the middle of renovating their home. “His wife had to return home to her parents because they had no life insurance,” says Jan .
Wanting to get the message across to people that it was important to be financially resilient, just in case the worst happened, Jan joined Barclays Life in 1981 and stayed there for 11 years. However, by 1992 she had become disillusioned and it was then she decided to set up her own financial advice firm.
“It had become clear that banks were giving priority to selling contracts that made money for them. I left Barclays early in 1992, at a time when the country was in deep recession and jobs were scarce. I’d relocated to Bristol, I had just got married and everything combined to say it would be better to create something,” she says.
So what has it been like for her to do that as a woman in financial services?
“It’s been largely amusing and sometimes frustrating. At times, my physical appearance is the only thing that seems to matter,” she says.
“My frustration comes in at the lack of understanding about the insight and intellect that women can bring to the industry. As head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde recently said if it had been Lehman Sisters rather than Lehman Brothers, we would have avoided the crash. I’m not going to argue with that.”
Jan thinks getting more women into the industry will happen naturally, once men with old-style, sexist attitudes have left.
“The industry will get rid of the wrong type of bloke and more women will come in once they’re gone. Things are a lot better now, but the bad attitudes are still there. Even women have that bad attitude at times. The whole culture in financial services has been one of bullying and disrespect. You have to stand up to it,” she says.
For some women, perhaps the misconception that financial advice is all about facts and figures rather than building relationships and finding solutions to problems puts them off it as a career choice. Jan points out the fact many advisers rely on their para-planners for the more technical side of the job.
“The para-planners are the ones doing the numbers; they do most of the technical stuff. Take a lot of IFAs away from their para-planners and they’d be lost.”
Trust and transparency are things Jan works hard at in relation to her clients. She is a member of Soroptimist International, a global volunteer organisation that has more than 75,000 members in 120 countries. With human rights and gender equality at its heart, the aim is to make women’s voices heard and help fund local causes.
However, Jan believes any sort of volunteering – whether it is charitable work or providing pro bono advice – should be for the right reasons and not to promote a professional service. Her thoughts on creating more widespread consumer trust in advisers are as simple as starting with the way you treat your colleagues and clients.
Should financial advisers be volunteers?
“I truly believe if every practice has a culture of respect for clients and colleagues, so it becomes unacceptable to say abusive or unkind things, if you do that, you gain trust,” she says.
“We are moving forward, as there are many good advisers who are great for the profession. But we need to get rid of the ugly ones as they cost the rest of us a lot in terms of our reputation and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme levies. I’m still confronted by people at conferences that make me think ‘what on earth are you still doing in this profession?’.
“Every profession has this, but I wonder why we tolerate it. We need to encourage those individuals to get out and earn their income elsewhere.”
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* SRI – Sustainable Responsible Investing
