liadnan

... so shouldn't go and see financial advisers...

So, it's official then, I have less grasp on my financial affairs than a chaffinch. Liadnan is Dullard. Write it out a hundred times..

'Twasn't that bad really, I suppose, looking back...

I spent half an hour with my voice becoming smaller and smaller, trying to hide in my chair, as he asked me questions..
"And that's all your debt?"
"No, then there are the three credit cards."
"And that's all."
"No, there's..."
"Pension"
"No"
"Savings"
"No"

And so on and so forth.

A small moment of triumph when I pointed out that two very senior barristers of my acquaintance had dutifully salted away a significant part of their earnings over the years in order to ensure themselves a long and Equitable Life, but oh, so shortlived.

Then he got onto what I wanted in my life. Well, I dunno. Stuff.

At one point he told me how much I had spent in the last four years. OK, so I did actually know all of it, in a general kind of way, in bits and pieces, there was no need to rub it in.

In my own defence I would point out that three years of training as a lawyer is not the cheapest way to spend your time. Particularly when it's the bar, and so there's no loverly training contract with a big cash advance, just a few scholarships. Even more so when you are coming from a background of faffing about in academia and semi-academia for years on end, and not from nice wealthy parents... So that money has actually given me a potentially lucrative career. Also a very very large number of books, but I didn't tell him about that...

I didn't buy anything anyway, going along was just my first baby step on the road to fiscal responsibility. Which I suppose is required now I'm 30 and my forehead seems to go far further up my head than it did a couple of years ago. And he did admit that I should be earning enough that I can put all this behind me now, though he looked unhappy when I told him about Greece...

Could have done without the explanation of how financial products worked conceptually too. More numbers, less legal stuff thanks, I've worked on cases where I had to understand Lloyds of London underwriting contracts, cases involving hedge funds and derivatives, and other of the mad things they dream up down the road in the City, so I do have just a tad of a clue about that end of it and can understand a personal pension.

Ho hum.

"And I pray that I may forget/These matters that with myself I too much discuss".

Or something like that.
Whatever...