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Gemma Darcy APFS, CeMAP

Director & Chartered Financial Planner delivering financial planning advice in a language everyone can understand.

Your Guide to the Financial Planning Hierarchy of Needs

Your Guide to the Financial Planning Hierarchy of Needs

Like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – a model for understanding what motivates and fulfils us as humans – the Financial Planning Hierarchy illustrates the various stages which can guide us towards our financially secure future. We start with an emergency fund saved at...

Your Guide to the Financial Planning Hierarchy of Needs

Like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – a model for understanding what motivates and fulfils us as humans – the Financial Planning Hierarchy illustrates the various stages which can guide us towards our financially secure future. We start with an emergency fund saved at the beginning of our career and end with the management of the estate we leave behind.

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Need Help with your NHS Pension?

Need Help with your NHS Pension?

The decisions you make around your NHS Pension are some of the most important you’ll encounter as there’s no opportunity to change your mind once you’ve taken your pension.

Whether it’s wanting flexibility in retirement, or making that career choice, I’ve not yet met a single NHS client who felt confident with the information they’d been given relating to their pension.

Meet our Chief Investment Officer

Meet our Chief Investment Officer

Our Chief Investment Officer, Justin Onuekwusi, sat down with Lauren Hardy at Portfolio Adviser for the latest ‘View from the top’ interview series. He tells of how he has set about achieving the primary goal of achieving good client outcomes through a relentless focus on transparency, advocacy and clear communication.

Imagine your future – Does NI pay for my State Pension?

Imagine your future – Does NI pay for my State Pension?

I wanted to explore the future of pension planning in the UK. Oh no, I hear you say, this is just because you’re in the business of selling pension plans. While of course this is true, I also feel strongly about sharing my expertise and knowledge to encourage younger people to take responsibility for their financial futures as soon as they’re able. And so this three-part series explains what the Government is responsible for today, along with their plans for the future, and what we can all do about ensuring we don’t need to work until the bitter end.

Welcome to The Investor

Welcome to The Investor

Good advice – really good advice – has the power to change your life. Sometimes in momentous, memorable ways, and sometimes in quiet, gradual ways. We devote this issue of The Investor – our 120th – to the invaluable advice that’s passed on to us from trusted sources throughout our lives.

What being Chartered means to me

What being Chartered means to me

All Chartered Financial Planners need to satisfy rigorous criteria, but anyone who’s read my story knows my formal education was interrupted by having my son Josh at 18. Gaining chartertership was my way of proving to myself that I had the ability to go the full educational course.

Why I chose to follow Darcy Financial Planning Ltd’s pension advice

Why I chose to follow Darcy Financial Planning Ltd’s pension advice

A Client’s Story: “After discussing my options in detail with Gemma, I realised my current company pension, like most generic employer-provided Defined Benefit schemes, assume you will use your fund to buy an annuity and progressively de-risk your investments as you approach retirement. This is not necessarily appropriate if you have a mixture of pension pots or intend to use your investments on a draw-down basis, in which case a significant proportion of your pension remains invested for 20 years or more.”

Creating a Brand for the future

Creating a Brand for the future

When I took the leap to start my own business five years ago, the importance of creating a meaningful brand identity was not a high priority. At the time, I’d been an adviser in the financial services sector for over 14 years; going it alone – albeit with the power of St. James’s Place behind me – felt like a brave move.

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