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With limited entry-level job roles, giving yourself the best financial planning career education, will not only kick start your financial planning journey with relevant qualifications and skills, but it’ll also help you achieve success much faster.&nbs
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Begin your financial planning career journey today
Whether you are looking to become a paraplanner, administrator, mortgage and protection adviser or financial planner, the Financial Planner Life Academy is for you.
With limited entry-level job roles, giving yourself the best financial planning career education, will not only kick start your financial planning journey with relevant qualifications and skills, but it’ll also help you achieve success much faster.&nbs
Be sure to follow financial planner life on YouTube for extra content about a career within Financial Planning HIT THAT SUBSCRIBE BUTTON!
If you're looking to start your career in Financial Planning, check out the Financial Planner Life Academy here
Reach out to Sam@financialplannerlife.com in regards to sponsorship, partnerships, videography or career development.
And today's guest on the Financial Planner Live podcast is Hazel Carter. Hazel has had an extensive career within the financial services. She's worked within financial planning for years, but now she's retired and she wrote a book. Life's Good. It's the Disease. That's the Problem. It's about her husband, alan, and his battle with motor neurons disease, and she shares today her journey, and we talk about life protection, we talk about life planning, we talk about inheritance tax and all the good things that financial planners do to be able to prepare somebody for those life events such as Alan's diagnosis of motor neurons. We talk about her book, we talk about her networking and the charity that she supports and the money she's raising from this book. In fact, the book is being used in some of the leading academies and I suggest that every financial planner should buy the book, not only to support the good cause, but to also reinforce the importance of good financial planning for your clients. Hazel, thank you so much for joining me today on the Financial Planner Life podcast. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm good, thank you, nice to see you, sam.
Speaker 1:Nice to see you as well. Bobby Sahota, who I absolutely adore, has put you in contact with me and we had a lovely conversation pre this podcast about your journey in financial services. You've had an extensive career within the financial services and within financial planning, but it was a specific life event that happened in respect of your husband. That's really kind of given you some purpose in your later life and today we're going to sort of explore that as we explore your career and really what lessons can be learned from the book that you wrote about your husband's experiences and how financial planners can take that book, learn from it and implement it into their businesses. And you yourself are working with some academies making sure that the message is shared to the next generation about the importance of things like life cover protection and all the good things that financial planners do. So Hazel over to you. Why don't you give us a brief introduction to who you are, a little bit about your background and your career and where you are today?
Speaker 2:OK, well, I was originally born in North Devon and I now live in the West Midlands. I've lived here most of my adult life. I'm the eldest of five children, working class background. So I would have loved to have gone to university, but that was never going to happen. And back in the 70s, way before we had all the regulation we have today, I accidentally found myself working in the financial services sector. I accidentally found myself working in the financial services sector.
Speaker 2:My first job was in the back office as a quotations clerk in those days. So lots and lots of life and pension brokers would be calling in for quotes and I'd be the one calculating all the stuff and sending them out the door. That all got pretty boring by the time I was about 21 and I asked to go on the road as a broker consultant. But the company I worked for at the time actually said these words oh, we don't have women doing those jobs. It couldn't happen today. So I had to move and I went to work for a company back then that was called the life division of Royal Insurance, and that's where my career really started to take off. So I did 10 years with them. I was a specialist pensions and inheritance tax planning. Mostly I was working with the brokers in the community in Birmingham, but I was also looking after legacy clients, because life assurance companies have a massive book of clients that nobody's looking after. And then regulation started to kick in and I had to be making the decision am I going to start doing all these exams or not? But as fate would have it, I got a promotion to.
Speaker 2:I think I was called something like pensions manager or something, but it was a managerial role in the sales side of the business and in fact I found out I was the first woman ever to hold such a role and in those days it was really peculiar. I was given an office. People used to come in with my tea on a tray and there was an executive dining room which I used to go into. I was the only woman in there. It was really weird. The one thing that was a complication was they only had a men's loo for the executives. So you don't always get all the things when you get to be your first managerial role, but that took the first 10 years of my financial services career. That's what happened.
Speaker 2:But, as with a lot of high profile people, sooner or later somebody contacts you and says, hey, how about this? And I was um teased away by a 10 grand salary rise and a nice flash car and a job which was called regional sales director for what was supposed to be the north of England. Now I know you were down in the south, sam. Most people in the north think of the north of England as everything above Birmingham. This particular company thought that everything north of Watford Gap was north. So I had everything north of Watford Gap all the way up to Scotland, and including Scotland, as a sales manager for a mortgage company it or not who dealt with the intermediary market.
Speaker 2:Cutting a long story short, after a whole round of redundancies in that business, I ended up working for my first IFA business and it was one in Coventry and they were looking to expand. They had an embryonic network and in those days the sort of networks that were out there had been set up for regulatory purposes really. So you've got the biggies, you know, you've got the DBS and the Countrywide and a few others. But this particular organization wanted to set up a let's call it more of a wealth planner style of network. So they were looking at things like cash flow planning and all of those things that we now do as standard. They were looking at them as being the icing on the cake type of services, over and above, you know, the normal protection covers and everything else. So it was a bit of an exciting time to be in that business, um, and I I was the front line in that organization.
Speaker 2:Uh, often you'd find me on a stage at one of these awards ceremonies or you'd find me writing articles in money marketing, or I'd be on the pims conference I don't even know if they still do that um. So I'd be at loads and loads of industry conferences and I did, I think, five years with them, helping them build the whole thing up, before I realised I wasn't going to make any progression there. So I moved out, did a few years in financial services tech before getting headhunted back to my IFA practice and this time I went back in as a director and I was responsible for, you know, much more work at that stage. That took me up to about 2005 when I needed to go into hospital for surgery and I was off work for quite a few months, and when you're off work you have a lot of time to think and sort of. You know where am I going, what's the future look like, etc. Etc.
Speaker 2:Um, and as fate would have it, I was approached again by uh, the mighty axa no longer exist in the uk, um, and they wanted me to go in and be a subject matter expert about the intermediary market. They didn't really understand the intermediary market and I worked't really understand the intermediary market and I worked with them for a few years. They sent me overseas. I did a lot of research in South Africa and Australia about the financial planning markets in those countries and eventually I went to work for one of the businesses that they owned. They owned an IFA practice and I went to work in that business as head of acquisitions and I was starting to build that business up for them over time, cutting out a few years. I ended up. The final job I had before I stopped working was at a company called succession, again in the world of acquisitions, again trying to trying to build a national IFA, a quality national IFA serving, you know, middle and upper end of the market. So that's my career in a nutshell.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Now that's a great overview. I love it so much. The funny thing is, I remember there's a Simpsons episode where Monty Burns you know Monty Burns in the Simpsons you might not have watched the Simpsons.
Speaker 2:I don't, but I know of it.
Speaker 1:He had an executive toilet. I think it was a gold-plated executive toilet and you know it was funny when you said you had the keys to the executive room. I was thinking I want to show the keys to the executive toilet and lo and behold, you did and it was a male toilet. So funny, funny picture. First off, I want to just ask you know, we get a lot of women who listen to this podcast. Females can listen to this podcast.
Speaker 1:We have a distinct lack of women coming into the profession. There's a huge need for more advice for women as well. I think 53% of millionaires are going to be female by 2027. So that transition of wealth that's happening is going to put more money into females' hands, and I think females do tend to prefer advice from females. Right, they do tend to feel that the advice that's being given is more suited to them when it comes from somebody who's actually the same sex as them. Right? Did you find it a real struggle being a female back then when you were working throughout your career? Have you found it a struggle? Do you feel like there was sexism or anything like that?
Speaker 2:have you experienced that or, um, you know, can you speak about that at all and give people kind of an insight into how that's maybe changed over the years, if it has uh well, I can distinctly remember one of my managers when I was probably in my 20s, when I used to go into his office just to ask him, you know, for help with whatever. He would say oh, come over here and sit on my knee Now in those days.
Speaker 2:Of course, there was no awareness of what that really meant and I just used to laugh it off.
Speaker 2:And I think one of the things I did find was it was really important for me to make sure that if I was at industry events I didn't stay up too late. I wasn't the one, you know, the last person dancing on the dance floor. I certainly wasn't the person getting drunk and getting silly all over the place, because I was very aware that my reputation could be made, which had been long, hard fought, you know, to make a good reputation. I realized it could go in a second if I wasn't careful. So I was always very careful to keep my professionalism wherever I went, whatever I was doing. And it did used to sadden me back then that most of the female practices who specialized in wealth management into the organization, but they were always so few and far between and I was always very aware that it should be an occupation for women, not because women want advice from women, but because I think women have a natural nurturing instinct and they've got good people skills and and they listen well, and there's loads of great male financial planners.
Speaker 2:My own financial planner is a man actually, and has been the day I decided I wanted a financial planner was quite an interesting day, because when you work in the business, who do you choose? And I knew thousands, but I chose a man who I'd worked with, who I trusted, and he still is my financial planner to this day. But so I always thought it was quite a shame that there weren't more women, and it is the sort of job that can be fitted around family life. You know, in the days when I was working in the industry, there perhaps weren't so many national IFAs as there are now and the nationals give women a choice of flexible working etc and all the fringe benefits. So I think it would be great to see more women in the business.
Speaker 2:Um, in management, I was one of the few um, but equally it's a great occupation for men and we need more generally, don't we? We need more financial planners. There's 67 million people in the UK, x million working population. There aren't enough financial planners to go around. So what's happening is only parts of society are being served by the business. So we need more of them and we probably need some specialists here, there and everywhere and some generalists, and they all need to work together holistically on, you know in with clients, because you can't be an expert in everything um, so I did an interview, uh last week with someone called kerry griffith, and she is a female financial planner and she gives advice to women divorcing multi-millionaire CEOs.
Speaker 2:Wow, okay, that's very niche.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's funny because when I was talking to her it's like, well, that's like super niche, like surely you know, are there enough clients in that? Area how do you win clients, how do you build relationships? And um, we talked about key person of influence, which is a book by dan priestley, and it's all about becoming a key person of influence within a certain sphere. So for her.
Speaker 1:She's all about connecting with those that operate within divorce sector, so legal people. You've got people that are like coaches, who try to coach relationships and, you know, mitigate any kind of problems people splitting up, counselors, that kind of stuff because in that space where you've got multi-millionaire ceos, there's a few quid knocking about and people can afford that kind of counseling and level of service and coaching around their marriages. So she connects with those types of people and built her network that way and now she's the go-to person when it comes to women divorcing multi-millionaire CEOs. And on an episode I'm going to release in a couple of weeks probably next week actually we're going into a bit of detail about her career journey.
Speaker 1:I think she's a shining example of one niching down, like you just said, and picking a specialism. But also a great inspiration for a female set up her own business and developing her own. Special is her own niche and her own financial planning approach, which is highly unique and super interesting. So it's well worth having a listen to that one, hazel. So just tell us a little bit about leaving work. What happened? Why did you end up leaving your career? What was that life event?
Speaker 2:Okay, well, the plan before I tell you what actually happened. The plan was for my husband to stop work at 65. I would have been 62 then and we'd been gearing up all the time we were together. We were gearing up for this big event of retiring and traveling, etc. Etc.
Speaker 2:But unfortunately, in the latter part of 2017, he told me, um, he had a problem with his arm. He was a bit like you, sam, really fit and healthy. He he did have the odd drink, but he didn't smoke, went to the gym regularly, played golf, did running, cycling, skiing, the whole lot but he had this weak right arm. So he wasn't feeling unwell. But he went to the GP who said well, you know, you could have this, this, this and this, and luckily he had private medical insurance. So there's one tip for everybody Get that. And so I said, yeah, just claim on the insurance, go private. So he did.
Speaker 2:And two months later, we were sitting with a neurologist in a hospital in Coventry and Alan was told you've got six months to two years to live, which was a huge blow and very difficult to compute, because he was fit and healthy and suddenly he's being told he's got a terminal disease. It was motor neuron disease, which is quite well known now, especially because so many rugby players have had it, but women get it as well. And, as you can imagine, for the next few days our heads were blown away by this terrible news and we had to think long and hard about what this meant. You know, what do you do with news like that, and I think the first thing Alan said is well, I don't.
Speaker 2:If I've only got a short period to live, I don't want to keep working. So suddenly it's like, okay, well, am I going to keep working? So suddenly it's like, okay, well, am I going to keep working? And I did actually tell my boss. I said to my boss this terrible thing's happened and I don't know what to do. And he said take a month off straight away my company were brilliant.
Speaker 2:That was succession. He said take a month off, think about it. This was like November, december, time of 2017, and I took that month off and in that month, alan and I got our heads around some of the practicalities of the diagnosis, and one of the big prior practicalities was he was going to become completely paralyzed. His arms were going to stop working, his legs, every muscle in his body was going to stop working. Potentially, he was going to stop being able to speak. He was going to be on a ventilator sooner or later. So he kept saying to me I want to speak. He was going to be on a ventilator sooner or later. So he kept saying to me I want to sort all our financial affairs out right now. And there's me thinking don't think about that, let's just be together. Let's just have some time, you know. But he was really keen now.
Speaker 2:At that stage, he had a financial planner, and I did too. We hadn't merged everything together. We knew collectively where our affairs were going, but he didn't have a will, a current will, in place. Neither of us had lasting powers of attorney. So one of the first phone calls was to my financial planner, who, luckily, had experienced loss himself. He'd gone through losing his wife, he knew and understood all about probate and what was going to hit us at some point in the future and he said, right, okay, you know, we need to get together, we need to look at everything you've got together collectively, and certainly we need to quickly get on to things like the wills and the lasting powers of attorney, which we did, and I did mine at the same time. It just made sense to do the lot together.
Speaker 2:Um, and there were silly things, like Alan had his own bank account, I had my bank account, and we even went to see the banks together and one of them was perfectly happy to take Alan's word for it that he wanted it to be in joint names because Alan couldn't sign anymore his signature. He was using his left hand. Uh, the other bank wanted us to jump through all sorts of hoops to turn the thing into a joint account and in the end, when we came home, alan said to me look, go online. Here's my password, here's my bank account, go in, transfer all the money that's in there into your own bank account and then you've got control of all the finances and that's fine. He didn't have any critical illness insurance. I did, but he didn't, so we couldn't make any claims on that.
Speaker 2:He did, have he? He was working for a private company. He had shares in that private company, so he was able to liquidate those. The guy he worked with was perfect about that.
Speaker 2:So alan liquidated his shares and Alan stopped work and I had my month off and I kept in touch with my boss, but there was no way on this earth that my heart could be in my work while my husband was dying and I needed me and I wanted to be with him. So over the next couple of months, I kept talking to my company and they kept saying take as long as you need, but it felt wrong to keep taking a salary. And I loved I'd always loved my jobs, I'd loved my career and I loved that particular job I had then. But I had to just say I can't do all of this all at once. And, funny enough, my mom was ill as well. She had vascular dementia and I was already a carer for her, but she was like low maintenance, whereas Alan was high maintenance care because he couldn't do anything for himself. So I eventually stopped in the June of 2018.
Speaker 2:And all along that journey, we were talking to the financial planner having a look at the impact of not working that we had no income coming in. We luckily had some cash savings we could draw out of. We didn't need to draw the pensions. The cash input from the shares was helpful because we were facing some quite hefty expenses. We had to build a wet room in our house. That's 14 000 pounds. Um, we had to buy a vehicle that was suitable for a wheelchair to go in. So there was a lot of chopping and changing regarding our financial affairs urgently needed to be dealt with and thank goodness, we had a financial planner. And this is the lesson I like to share when I talk to potential advisors or advisors going through training. The work of a financial planner cannot be underestimated when these critical things happen in people's lives.
Speaker 1:Why do you think financial planners sometimes avoid these conversations then early on in the advice process? Because I do a bit of work with Legal in General on their podcast called Just Covered and it always does talk about. We bring advisors onto the podcast and they talk about how they position financial planning critically on its cover, pmi et cetera, and the reasons why they do it. But statistics are showing that not all advisors really are offering this level of protection or they feel uncomfortable sometimes talking about this level of protection. What would be really good is because you've gone through this process right and you've gone through it and you've had some things in place and some other things haven't been in place. So what do you think financial planning is so important? So if somebody is listening right now they're a financial advisor or they're starting out in their career, let's hyper-focus on what you've experienced and what financial planning can do to protect and secure and to make your life easier or the life easier of a client if it ever happened to them well, I think it's not a sexy conversation.
Speaker 2:Is it talking about death?
Speaker 2:let's face it. But it is vital and a lot of people don't talk about death. Even in my social circles people don't like talking about death. They don't like talking about the fact that Alan died. You know it isn't an easy topic, but the fact of the matter matter is we are all going to die and I think it would be more healthy for society if we all talked about death and dying more, not just from a financial point of view, but generally. But from a financial point of view, I think when people are younger and they're working, they've got children, their priorities are not thinking about when I'm going to be X years of age and I'm going to die, that their priorities are not thinking about when I'm going to be X years of age and I'm going to die. You know so I suppose.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was always taught in the early days in my industry. The first thing you did was you protected the wealth that already existed. So if you had debts and mortgages in particular, you needed to put appropriate protection schemes in place, because if somebody dies and you've got no protection to pay off that mortgage, then the person who's left behind has got a real big challenge on their hands. So I think you know life and pensions. Financial planning 101 is get your life insurance, get your critical insurance, because we're all going to die, definitely, but most people along the line are going to get a serious illness of one type or another a dementia diagnosis or a cancer diagnosis. People in their 20s, 30s, 40s get cancer diagnosis. So critical illness is something I've always been a real big fan of, which is why I took it out very early on and, um, up until alan died, I still had critical illness insurance and and I cancelled it. Didn't need it anymore. But but so protection is number one. It's not a sexy topic, it doesn't remunerate very well, but let's just do it as a baseline. Let's make sure that's all started and done and then we can start to look at things more like accumulating wealth, because money in buildings, cities and banks doesn't grow, premium bonds don't grow. They're deposit schemes.
Speaker 2:So you've got to move on then to accumulating wealth, and I'm a big fan of people saving early, starting a savings plan, whether that's ISAs or pensions or whatever the current thing is that people can purchase. I'm a big fan of people getting into the discipline of saving early. When I give presents to my nephews and nieces. I always give a check, believe it or not, an old-fashioned check which has to be put somewhere. Um, so my, my brothers and sisters open bank accounts for their children because auntie hazel's sending checks. And I say to everybody you know, save. Because we were very lucky, we had savings and so when Alan got ill we could dive into them. A lot of it was invested at that stage, but there was some slush, slush funds. So a properly structured investment strategy with a view to what are you wanting to achieve with your life in terms of homes and holidays and fun stuff and retirement. So that's the next big stage on.
Speaker 2:And then I think what happens is some people I know because I'm obviously of a certain age now a lot of people I know have got loads of money and they're not spending it because they're afraid. They don't know how much they can spend, because they don't have a proper cash flow plan, so they don't know that they could have a £10,000 holiday instead of a £2,000 holiday. They don't go business class because they're frightened it's going to cost too much money and they're going to run out of money. So I think a financial planner's job, when they're dealing with people with lots of money is to help them work out, well, how much do you want to spend this year, next year and the year after, and how much more do you want to spend later in life. So the whole cash flow planning thing is something I'm a massive fan of, and scenario planning.
Speaker 2:You know the what-ifs. So this is what you've got. This is where you're going with it. What happens if one of you has to stop work, one of you gets a critical illness, one of you has a life-threatening accident and can't move, can't work, can't do anything? So there's a lot of facets to the world of what a financial planner can do. And then there's the whole thing about inheritance tax planning. I mean, alan gave away some wealth during his lifetime and I do now as well, but it's all managed. It's all part of the cashflow plan. I know where I am, I know where I'm going, I know what I'm doing and I'm spending more and more on holidays because you know it's growing nicely.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much well, this is the power of having a good financial plan in place, isn't it? It takes away that financial insecurity and allows you to free up your life, free up your mind, three up that you're thinking, to be able to focus on things where, hopefully, you can enjoy your life. But you know, as you rightfully pointed out, you need to have the, you need to protect your wealth. Um, you know, and you've experienced this, uh, in your life. I mentioned the just covered podcast with legal in general.
Speaker 1:Beth, who was on the recent episode, sadly lost her husband to lung cancer. Come out of nowhere, right, lung cancer didn't smoke or anything. He was a young man. You know kids there. They were a young couple. Anyway. They, he, he had diagnosis and he's put off for ages by the doctor, doctor's, nothing's wrong with you type thing. He's like no, no, no, you need to go and see someone. Anyway, it turns out he's got his lung cancer. So they had critically illness cover, pmi, etc.
Speaker 1:Now what was interesting from that podcast episode and I urge people to listen to it is that they had payout, right, pretty sharpish payout. She's actually illegal and she actually works illegal in general as well. So they had a payout that money wasn't used to pay off the mortgage, it was used to create memories. You know it was used to create memories. It was used to get the best level of care that he could get. So all those experimental um treatments that you hear about that people do just giving pages to try and raise money for they had the money to do it and they had the money to go to disneyland, they had the money to go to lapland, they had the money to build the extension to make his life that little bit better whilst he was around. Right, yeah, it gave them those extra, those extra months, I think in years, actually together as a family to make memories.
Speaker 1:I found that really powerful because you always hear, like, well, you get your life cover along with your mortgage and most people don't want to take life cover because they're spending so much on their mortgages now they think they haven't got the disposable income. So they'll think, well, I won't have them, I won't have the life cover because I'd rather get the extra money going into the cost of buying the house, which is crazy when you think about it. Right, because there's a high chance you're going to get critically honest in your life and not be able to work, you know. But I just thought that was a really interesting point that she raised, that it didn't pay the mortgage, it was to make their life better and she's living proof that that cover needed to be in place and because it was in place, it did make their lives better. And also, we forget about some of the things that are also included with pmi and income protection and life cover, which is things like counselling.
Speaker 1:Now, her ability to not have to go to work, yeah, and take time off and heal, the ability to go and see a counselor at no extra cost to her, because it's part of the package, these whole well-being elements that make the process a lot easier for the person who's left behind, as well as the person who's going through the illness and suffering. And it's a sad story for your husband, you know. It's the thing that we get scared of the most, isn't it? And death's a funny, funny topic, man, we don't, we don't like talking about death because we don't want to die, but we are going to die and I think the quicker you can kind of establish that you're going to die, the more you appreciate life. Nothing makes you more appreciative of what you have and grateful for what you have, knowing that one day you won't have it yeah you know, and that's super important, I think it's so, sam, when Alan was ill, people used to come and visit.
Speaker 2:Well, people did come and visit him, lots of people did. And he would always give them one piece of advice. He would say don't put off the things you want to do until you retire. Do them now. Don't wait till you retire, because look what's happened to me, I'm not going to reach retirement. That's what he used to say to people. And people would go out and they would say do you know? We were thinking of doing a big holiday to Australia when we were 65. Well, we've booked it now for next year. And he would. He changed people's thinking about um, spending a bit now while you can assuming you can afford it, of course, assuming it's not going to, you know, really ruin your cash flow forecast for the future.
Speaker 2:But when I tell my story, when I do my talks, a lot of people say to me we've learned so much from what you say. Because I talk about none of us know what's coming around the corner. I have my talk that I give to IFAs or trainee IFAs is called Life's Good. But what's Around the Corner? And my life has been a series of ups and downs before I even met alan, and when I met alan, it was a wonderful thing that happened in my life and we have met the best time.
Speaker 2:The best years of my life were with him and neither of us could have foreseen what's coming and it was like a train hitting, hitting us when it did come. And you're right. One of the things I remember talking to the financial planner about was we've got this holiday coming up At the point of diagnosis. We'd already booked a holiday to Vietnam and we looked at the cash flow again and instead of going normal economy class, we bumped it up to business class. It was like several thousand pounds more, but it didn't matter because we knew Alan didn't have long left. As it happens, it wasn't the money that stopped us doing some of the nicest things, it was the fact that he was 100, paralyzed and there was some.
Speaker 2:There was a million challenges involved in that, um, but we did manage some lovely holidays in the uk, um, and we made the best of a bad job I mean, that's all you can do when somebody's going to die, um, but it and it really sharpens your focus about what's important in life, and money isn't important. Memories are important.
Speaker 1:The things you do with your money is important the memories, the quality of life as well, isn't it? Yes, so if you are going to go through an illness, if you are going to get diagnosed with something is, can you have a quality of life, can you? You know, my mother-in-law's got some terrible problems and they didn't have much money. You know low income. They had inherited some money from the mother-in-law dying which has allowed them to move out of their council house into a caravan which they've now bought. They've got a garden. It's a lot warmer in there and she's a lot more at peace knowing that. And for us it was just like I'm so glad that she had that money and the ability to not be in the places she was in, because it was. It wasn't good for her at all right for her well-being and her health.
Speaker 1:Now she's in a better place and you can just see that she's still in pain. She's still got pain, but she's not in pain in somewhere where she's horrendous in her environment. She's still in pain, she's still got pain, but she's not in pain in somewhere which is horrendous in her environment. She's in. She's having a better quality of life. You can't take away the pain, but you can improve the quality of life, and if that means signing a piece of paper and paying a premium on a monthly basis to do that, this is the importance that financial advisors need to be. You know pushing this life protection, suggesting this life protection and telling these stories, and it's your story. It's a book that you've wrote, isn't it? So let's go on to that, because it's the book that you're using to inspire the next generation of financial planners around the importance of life protection, and your husband's story is doing that.
Speaker 2:So tell us a little bit about how you're spending your time now you're retired yeah, well, of course, when Alan died just before Covid, I wasn't working and I had to think did I go back to work? But I had a mountain of notes from when he was ill and I people had said to me, why don't you write a book? And I said to him before he died, how do you feel about me writing a book? And he was all for it. He said I want people to know what it's like caring for somebody with this disease as well as what it's like having the disease and all the ups and downs that that presents.
Speaker 2:So I sat down in Covid and spent months and months, mostly in tears, I might say recounting everything that happened in the 18 months that Alan was alive. So all the financial ups and downs, all the physical ups and downs, the emotional ups and downs, and I captured them all in a book that I've titled um, something that Alan used to say all the time. I'll show you it just is this working? Yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:So the book's called life's good. It's the disease. That's the problem. There's Alan, um, and there you are, um, and I wrote, believe it or not, I wrote 79,000 words because there was not a lot else to do in Covid. Was there, um? And that was way too big for a book. I actually googled how many words are in war and peace and it wasn't that many more. So I thought hang on, I don't want to produce war and peace here. So I ended up having it all edited down and I produced this um brought it to the world, if you like, last June, june 2023.
Speaker 2:I launched it on what would have been Alan's birthday, um. 21st of June last year, and that, coincidentally, is global motor neurone disease day, which we didn't know that when he was diagnosed with the disease. So it's kind of weird that his birthday is the same day as Global MND Day. So I launched this book on the 21st of June. I self-published, I created my own website. I didn't want to put it on Amazon or anywhere else, because they take a lot of money from books and you only get what's left over, or anywhere else, because they take a lot of money from books and you only get what's left over. I wanted to be able to give 100% of the money from these books to charity the three charities that looked after us while Alan was ill. So I was very fortunate that I was able to secure some some money nine thousand pounds from various people who decided they wanted to support me in this project, so that covered the cost of printing, I covered the cost of everything else and I had 1500 copies of it printed and I calculated the price to sell them out was £12.99 and I worked it all out that if I sold every single one of those, I'd be raising something in the region of £20,000 for charity. And I'm delighted to say that, as a result of all the talks I've been giving of late and all the work I've done in what is now nearly 12 months, 800 of them have gone and I've got 700 left and I've got more speaking engagements for the rest of this year, including with some financial advice firms who are using me as part of their academy training and people buy this book to give to the people who I'm talking to as part of a goodie bag or a bit of a giveaway or whatever.
Speaker 2:And I think if every IFA in the land showed this book and made their clients read this book, their clients would say, my god, anything could happen to us at a moment's notice. We better make sure we've got our protection and our legal bits and pieces, our wills and our lasting powers of attorney in place. We better make sure we're having some of these wonderful holidays before these nasty events coming. So this book actually can incentivize clients to think twice about everything. It certainly helps advisors to realize the power and the benefit of good financial planning.
Speaker 2:Um, and I think generally it's a love story actually, sam, if you ever get to read it. People usually say to me they feel like they know alan and they know me through reading this book. Um, and it was made with love, really for the. It's my gift to the world and I, as I say, I don't take a penny from it. I'm lucky that, because I had a good financial planner, I am now able to do the work I do for free and sell this book and not make any money from it myself. So I'm very blessed, um, but that's what I'm doing now all day long public speaking, podcasting, writing articles, meeting wonderful, lovely people. It's opened up a whole new world to me. This, this second, second part to my life well, I think that's wonderful.
Speaker 1:There's a load of things I can take from that. What was the name of the book?
Speaker 2:again, life's good. It's the disease. That's the problem. The web, thank you. The website is just called life's good bookcouk. That's my website and people can buy the books on there. They can communicate with me via the website if they like. There is a contact the author page. Um, there's, there's lots of stuff on there.
Speaker 1:There's tips for carers if anybody's dealing with caring right now, there's tips on there for carers well, listen, one of the things I'm going to say here is one is that I it's stories, isn't it? It's the stories that really hit home as to why you should do something about your life right, and that's as you say, it's a love story. It can happen to anybody, um, or happen to anyone that you love, right? These things, these things can happen. It educates financial planners, old and new, as to the importance of good financial planning and protection. I think it's a fantastic tool to give to clients, especially a certain age perhaps, or any age. Really, like you know, read this, read this book, because it could happen to you and, you know, let's learn from it. Good, from an educational perspective, the academy stuff so I think that's absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 1:You touched on as well, like you're spending a lot of time doing networking and events, and bobby introduced you because she saw you at an event and she knows you and she said it was brilliant. Do you find that? You know you've had a career right? You've, you've, you've probably networked and marketed in lots of different ways and all different trends that have happened throughout the years? Based on your level of experience, and now doing something as a passion project, how valuable is standing up an event and actually talking about something you're passionate about. How connected do you become to the audience? What's the energy like in comparison to other ways that you've marketed yourself or networked historically in the past?
Speaker 2:well, obviously, when I was in business, networking was was vital. I was front and center for most of the companies that I worked for In this new phase, as I call it, my new chapter of my life. I first launched the book. I was all very hopeful that radio interviews and newspaper articles would generate loads of sales and it just didn't happen. I started to do on a small scale, I started to do presentations and network and meet people who also introduced me to other people who I could go and do talks for and what have you. And quite quickly I discovered that every time I gave my talk in person and worked the room as you do before and after, I was getting such high success rates from this. I was getting such high success rates from this. So I think part of that is because, of course, the money goes to charity, but people were interested in the story.
Speaker 2:I've always read true life stories. I'm not much of a fiction reader. I prefer real stuff and I've had situations where 75% of my audience have bought a copy of the book and I've had a few standing ovations, which is really weird. When that happens, it's a bit like you know, oh my gosh, I'm not a film star. But people are standing up and applauding and the biggest reaction, of course, is people have tears in their eyes because it is a very poignant story. And I was at the Houses of Parliament, believe it or not, this week, speaking on behalf of Hospice UK as a result of you know, this week is Dying Matters Week, interestingly, and the first person who came up to me straight afterwards was an MP and he said I want to buy a copy of your book. It turned out that he had some experience of motor neurone disease.
Speaker 2:But I have found that men in particular, believe it or not, are really interested in this story because I think it hits home to men, more so than women, that they they might not live as long as women do. Men are more, I think, worried about their life expectancy generally than women are, and I've met hundreds and thousands of men through my work and I'm a golfer, so I've met even more that way and I've met loads and loads of women through all the things that I do, the women's networks and things I belong to. But people when I when I'm there and I deliver my story and I tell them about the importance of getting good advice and planning for the worst, hoping for the best, planning for the worst. People buy my book because they want to learn these lessons in life. People, I think, want to understand what could happen to them. Motor neurone disease is a pretty rare thing. One in 300 people will get it. We're all more likely to get cancer, but whether it's cancer or motor neurone disease, when it hits you it is a terrifying and terrible situation and your world is turned upside down. And I think people, in a sort of morbid sense of the word, really want to read about that stuff and understand it and be a bit more prepared for the day when it might happen to them. Um and and they want to learn from our experience.
Speaker 2:I mean because our journey was quite inspirational to a lot of people. While we were in the middle of it, we didn't let anything hold us back. We always used to say where there's a will, there's a way. So we took on challenges, my husband and I, to make fun things happen. But in our private moments we sat quietly holding hands, crying, talking, and the world outside didn't matter to us. But I would advocate people networking. It's a big, big thing, big big thing. I love doing it. People hate doing it. But you've got to learn to love to do it and you have to fake it till you make it in some situations in life, don't you?
Speaker 1:absolutely. I'm going to ask you quite a personal question, like on the subject of death matters and, um, talking about death, what were those final sort of weeks and months actually like for you as a couple? What do you go through, what do you experience in that moment?
Speaker 2:okay, um well, the day of death came very suddenly, so I'll talk about the weeks leading up to it. Um alan went down with pneumonia, sadly, twice towards the end of his period of time with the disease. So he was rushed into hospital a couple of times and we thought he was going to die. He thought he was going to die. He actually said to me on one occasion as the ambulance was taking him out of the house if this is it, I want you to know that my time with you has been the best part of my life and that really choked me up when he said that. But it was important for me to hear that. But after we got over the pneumonia, after the panic of the pneumonia was over, he was taken into a hospice for symptom management and he ended up in April 2019il 2019. He was in maricuri and they were absolutely amazing.
Speaker 2:I can't speak highly enough of the hospice movement. I think they're wonderful things, wonderful places, and in maricuri it was so different from him being in the hospital. I could personalize his room, we could, we could make it his space and I could stay overnight and we could have visitors all day long, every day, if we wanted to. Now we'd been able to do stuff like that at home. But at home we'd been having carers coming in, doctors coming in, district nurses coming in, and the house never really felt like our home. Once all that was starting to happen. But when we were in the hospice, once all that was starting to happen. But when we're in the hospice all that was still happening. But I wasn't having to do any of the caring, because he needed 24 7 care. He couldn't scratch an itch, he couldn't comb his hair, he couldn't clean his teeth, couldn't dress himself, couldn't toilet himself, nothing. Everything had to be done. But at least when he was in the hospice I could become his wife again and just be there for him, hold his hand, watch some box sets together.
Speaker 2:Sadly, his voice stopped working a few weeks before he finally died, and that was awful because I'd been used to him saying to me absolutely every day of our time together. He used to tell me he loved me every night before we went to bed and I used to say the same back to him and he kept doing that right up until the time his voice stopped working. So when he couldn't speak anymore, it was awful. And what happened over that last few weeks was the world became smaller and quieter and very centered around his room in the hospice and the day that he died I actually couldn't get to him. My car was in for an MOT and I couldn't get there and then it failed its MOT and that's when I thought, to hell with this. I'm going to drive his car to the hospice and go and see him.
Speaker 2:And when I got there his best friend was with him. It was about six o'clock. His best friend was with him and I turned up and I was all very apologetic because he'd been waiting for me for hours to show up. I was there every day, um. But I noticed that he didn't look himself. He looked strange and I called a nurse in and she gave him a quick sort of bit of midazlan or something just to settle him down, because you do get very anxious, you know, when you can't breathe properly and all these terrible things happening.
Speaker 2:And then I looked at him and I looked at his best friend and I said to his best friend I don't think this is right, there's something more going on here. So I called the nurse back in and she quickly recognised that he was coming to the end of his life there. And then and they lowered the bed down these hospital beds go up and down. Hospice beds do the same thing she lowered the bed, she moved him over and she said it's okay for you to get on the bed with him now, which I did, and I held him. And I just held him and gradually his breathing just stopped and it was all over.
Speaker 2:And I looked up at the clock at that point in time and it was something like quarter to seven. I'd been there 45 minutes and a little part of me realized that he'd waited for me to turn up before he finally let go of life. And it was just amazing that his best friend happened to be there too. Um, so Simon his name was Simon and I just stayed with Alan for a little bit and it was all very peaceful, it was very quiet, it was very beautiful. I remember kissing him on his forehead, his cheeks, his eyes and his lips and that was it. It was over. So it was a good death. I think they call it in the circles and I was so glad I was there with him and this picture here. Can you see that?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That picture was taken by a friend on the 4th of June and you can see we're smiling and we're happy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The next day he died and I didn't know that was going to be the last photograph that would ever be taken of the two of us together, but we had 13 fantastic years. I didn't meet him till much later on in life. We had the best life and I'm so grateful for that I had. I had a fabulous career and had a great husband and a great life, and I'm grateful for that. And now I have a new life and a different life, and I'm grateful to people like you, sam, for helping me get them.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing that story and I sprung that on you really at the end and perhaps should have warned you, but I think you probably told the story so many times, but it was beautiful. A couple of things that I'm taking away from the conversation today. Right, life is short. Hold on to those that you love. Tell them you love them, because words mean so much.
Speaker 1:right yes words mean so much. Protect the ones you love. Yeah, protect the ones you love. And that mary cure you. Wow, you know, the support that they can give you in those hospices is just incredible. And isn't it interesting that when you go through a real difficult time and a troubling time in life you start to actually realize what we have in society that supports us.
Speaker 1:When I've gone through some severe depression and became suicidal had that quite a few times in my life I turned to um the samaritans and I remember thinking you're somebody at the end of the phone who's giving up your time just to talk to me. And it was probably the most amazing experience I'd ever had, just knowing that somebody was listening to me and I could be as honest and as open as I could be. And I remember thinking you're a, you're a, you know the truest form of the word, samaritan, you're a saint. I was just like it just blew me away. So I give a lot back.
Speaker 1:I do talk club men's mental fitness, um, you know run, run, mental health chat. You know I'm part board of directors for a mental charity, mental health charity men, so you know when they think, you know when you go through these problems. You'll see them and they'll find that there is a lot of support in the uk and it's about kind of leaning into that and we must look after these people because they are truly samaritans. They are truly there, a lot of them giving up their time to help us in some of the most difficult periods of our lives, of which you went through. And the final note that death is sad, but there is peace as well, isn't there that can come from from it? Yeah, and another thing I took from this as well is chapters. There are chapters in life, isn't?
Speaker 1:that yes your life runs in chapters. You know, when one chapter closes, another one opens, doors close, they open and there isn't. There isn't this linear approach to life, it's just a tapestry right. And you're going through this stage of your life and you're turning a traumatic event into something of positivity of which I truly, utterly admire. So thank you, hazel, for sharing your journey today. On the Financial Plan of Life podcast, I ensure that we put the links into the show notes. I hope that people listening will buy the book and I hope that they will buy it for their clients and I hope they'll buy it for their employees. Buy it for their employees and we will put links out on linkedin as well and hopefully drive some interest. Get you some more public speaking so we can keep up the good work that you're doing in this chapter, if you like.
Speaker 2:Thank you, bless you. Thank you very much thanks, hazel.