Financial biases are often linked to investing. However, subconscious tendencies can affect many aspects of your finances, including your estate plan. An estate plan sets out how your assets will be managed during your lifetime and distributed after your death. It might include writing a will or creating a trust to provide for young children. As estate planning can be emotional, it’s not surprising that behavioural biases could affect how you approach the task. So, here are three ways biases might affect your estate plan. 1. Putting off your estate plan due to emotions or overconfidence Trying to avoid confronting difficult emotions means some people put off estate planning altogether. A February 2025 survey carried out by JMW Solicitors found... Read More

One of the retirement challenges many people face is how to handle wealth decumulation. During your working life, you’re typically working to increase your wealth, and this usually shifts as you enter retirement. So, if you’re retired or are nearing the milestone, read on to find out more about decumulation dilemmas and how you might manage them. Changing your mindset may be the first decumulation dilemma You might expect retirement challenges to focus on your money. Yet, one of the first obstacles to overcome is often your mindset. After decades of saving money or contributing to your pension, it can feel strange to start depleting your assets, even when you’ve built them up to fund retirement. For some retirees struggling... Read More

Understanding where your wealth is coming from and how you’re using it could help you make more informed decisions. However, as so many assets are intangible, having a clear picture of your wealth can be difficult. Finding ways to visualise all your assets is often useful, and something people have been doing for centuries. When you hear the term “Exchequer”, you might think of the government’s economic and finance ministry or the position of chancellor of the Exchequer, which in 2025 is held by Rachel Reeves. However, the term is much older than the position. The government explains that it is derived from a chequered cloth that was used by accountants in the 11th century to aid auditing by providing... Read More

Your relationship with money is related to far more than how much cash you have. In fact, psychological influences could be having more effect on your decisions and how you feel about wealth than you think. Speaking to the Guardian in July 2025, financial psychotherapist Vicky Reynal stated she believes thoughts and feelings about money have “everything to do with our earliest experiences, deepest yearnings, and misgivings”. Her unusual role sees Reynal work with clients to assess why they’re making certain financial decisions. She notes that while many clients understand what they need to do to improve their financial position at a rational level, they can’t bring themselves to do it. For example, some people know they need to cut... Read More

Do you consider yourself an optimist or a pessimist? The “blue dot theory” could suggest that humans are hard-wired to be pessimists, after psychologists discovered that once our brains are primed to see something (such as a blue dot), we see it everywhere, even when it’s not really there. Read on to learn more about how the blue dot theory could be affecting you and how you can stop it from negatively impacting your life. The “blue dot” theory In 2017, Harvard researchers asked participants to identify blue dots among thousands, ranging from very blue to very purple. During the first 200 trials, the participants could accurately identify the roughly equal proportion of blue and purple dots. However, as the... Read More