Investment advice: beating inflation, not the market

Investment advice: beating inflation, not the market

Money in a savings account feels safe. The balance never falls. You can check it whenever you like.

But the catch doesn't appear on the statement.

Today, £500,000 might buy a comfortable family home with a garden. At 4% inflation, the same amount might only stretch to a one-bedroom flat above a shop within eighteen years. At 10%, that drop takes just seven years. Even with interest added, growth in cash rarely keeps pace with rising prices.

The number in the account looks fine. But what it buys has collapsed from a house to a flat.

What we measure your money against

Not a market index. Not what your neighbour's portfolio did last year.

Inflation.

Your portfolio is built to target a return above rising prices over the long term, because that's the benchmark that decides whether your money still buys the life you planned. Beating the market is a competition. Beating inflation is the job.

How it works

We start with how much risk you're comfortable with, which is a longer conversation than a questionnaire. What you need the money for, when you need it, and how you'd feel watching it fall twenty per cent in a bad year all change the answer.

From there your money goes into a portfolio matched to that level, spread across global markets to soften the ups and downs, and monitored by a joint investment committee that reviews what's held and why.

We don't build a bespoke portfolio for every client. Firms that do tend to charge for the privilege and struggle to explain what they've done. We use offer a defined set of risk-rated portfolios, benchmarked to inflation plus a target, so you can see whether yours is doing what it was built to do.

Investing in line with what you believe

Some clients want their money kept out of particular industries. Others want it working towards something specific, renewable energy, better housing, companies that treat people decently.

Both are possible, and the range of options has widened considerably in the last decade. We'll talk through what's available, what each approach costs, and what it means for how your portfolio is likely to behave. What we won't do is promise that investing this way improves your returns, or costs you them. The evidence is mixed and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

Where the money sits

ISAs, pensions, general investment accounts, bonds. The wrapper matters as much as what's inside it, because it decides what tax you pay and when.

Using the allowances in the right order is the least glamorous part of investing and one of the most valuable. [Read more about tax-efficient investing]

What it's for

An investment portfolio isn't a scoreboard. It's the thing that pays for the years when you've stopped earning.

It's the money still being worth something when your children need help. It's the holiday you take at 70 without checking the balance first. It's the difference between a plan that survives twenty years of rising prices and one that quietly doesn't.