Dear All
The second comment is we all have our own investment style, choices, ideas and thoughts. There is no right, no wrong. There is always I could do better, and I made a good choice. It is always about being opened minded, knowing your bias, being prepared to listen and to be prepared to change.
Having learnt painfully through the last couple of years, to do your own thing, to make your own choices, is very hard.
To give my personal perspective of telling my 79 year old mum having taken over from a BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP wealth manager wish I had done it 10 years earlier when even knowing nothing I would have saved her 10's of 1000's, that her pension (all ISA) has gone down >30% and the low point was July 2020, got out, went back in and watched it all go down further...we are still in recovery mode and are still below January 2020, we got close in September but not there yet. But to be able to say this week if Australia opens up next year you can go and visit your big sister for the last time (having lost her brother last Christmas and sitting in her front room watching the funeral on my work laptop) and if Aunty Flo is not there go see your Katie and Pru (nieces) and just get Business both ways there is the money there, if not I will cover it is a good thing. We have enough to cover your basic lifestyle (state pension + forecast dividends), and it is 50:50 income:growth.
I will say from a personal perspective, sometimes being totally in cash is the right decision, if that means you sleep at night (ok not a lot and you are answering calls and messages but you try), get your kids breakfast, iron their uniforms whilst they eat and get them to the school gate before it shuts, and be there to listen to your wife in tears at her mum's bedside whilst she is dying (having lost her gran 1 year earlier and her dad 2 years earlier) and then turn up and deal with a stressful day at work, before walking out to get the girls from the school gate and go I will do the other hours after they are asleep, and don't forget to load the washing machine as…
