Lessons from dad
26th January 2018
For a large part of his working life my dad was a gravedigger. It was hard and dirty work, but Dad knew the importance to the bereaved family of the sad day he was involved in, and took great pride in making sure the grave was perfect.
The pay for this back-breaking work was unspectacular, but Dad always made it his priority to make his pension and saving contributions each month. Putting all the money he could away into products sold to him by old-school IFAs who came knocking, dressed in their slightly too-big suits and friendly sales banter. “Are you a high-rate taxpayer or just an irate taxpayer?” was one chap’s favourite factfinding question, I remember.
Dad as a young man
Any money that was left after savings and household bills Dad spent on his passion for motorbikes and enjoying the countryside…plus a few pints of beer down the local pub with his mates. The ‘luxuries’ that me and my brother were treated to had to be funded by whatever Mum could save from her job as a dinner lady at our school.
With this financial discipline and aided by a memorial mason business venture in later years, by the time he was 60 Dad had managed to buy his dream house in the country and pay off the mortgage. He had also managed to build up a significant pension fund and had turned this into an annuity (yep, people still bought annuities in those days!) to provide him with the income he needed to support himself and Mum throughout their retirement. There was also a fairly significant lump of savings to supplement the annuity income.
What drove this seemingly sensible and wise financial behaviour is debatable. It could have been a desire to look after his family and secure a financially secure future. He may have seen building wealth as a way to prove to the world that he “wasn’t just a gravedigger”. Or maybe, having been born in 1945, the years growing up on a small farm during post-war austerity formed habits he could never change.
Sadly, Dad didn’t live to enjoy the fruits of his hard labour and diligent saving. He passed away from lung cancer at age 65, not long after finally giving up the gravedigging. He never got to go on the motorcycling holidays with mum to Europe he had planned or just enjoy summers, uninterrupted by work, walking his dogs around the Sussex countryside he loved.
Dad left enough money for Mum to be very financially secure. In fact, he left enough that she was able to make gifts to me and my brother that helped us get on the property ladder and have allowed me to take the risk of starting my own business. We know how lucky we are but would happily give the money back in return for Mum and Dad having the chance to enjoy their retirement together.
I often wonder whether dad might still be with us now if he’d have realised sooner that he already had enough to be financially secure for the rest of his life. Maybe stopping work a few years earlier would have extended his life. Maybe not. Maybe he wouldn’t have believed it even if he had been told. We’ll never know…
So, what did dad teach me about financial planning. These are the things that stand out to me:
● Pay yourself first – make sure savings come before any other spending
● Make sure you know what you value most and spend any spare money on those things
● Don’t give two-hoots what other people might think or try and ‘keep up with Joneses’
● It is your behaviour that will make you wealthy and not clever investment ideas or sophisticated products
● Know how much is enough and don’t work for longer than you need to in a job you don’t enjoy
Pretty good teachings from a bloke who would tell you he didn’t understand money and finance!
Thanks Dad.