John was recently featured in New Model Adviser Magazine speaking about the financial planning and was asked the question – “Do client’s children ever cause problems?”. Here is his piece from the article which can be read in full by clicking here.
In my experience so far, clients’ children don’t tend to cause hassle. Sometimes I see children sneaking around to see who that man is talking to mum and dad. Invariably they are told “that’s the man who is here to help us with / talk to us about our money”. And yes, I understand that this isn’t really answering the question being asked, but I am mentioning it for a reason. Children who are used to seeing their parents seeking help around money and personal finance are more likely to embrace an open attitude around such matters in the future.
Most of our clients with older, grown up children have a very open and positive relationship with money. As part of our ongoing financial planning service, we talk about helping children, both now and in the future, about how to help and if our clients should help.
Positive financial planning helps alleviate any awkward discussions because our clients have the context to make decisions as to when they can, whether they can, or if they even want to give money to their children. They are then more proactive about taking action and talking about this. I believe it is because of this that we haven’t had much grief, if any, from the children of clients (yet). In fact, often our main discussions with children are in relation to getting their parents to spend more money on themselves!