If you think nature abhors a vacuum, try investing in one.

Bad things came out of the UK financial advice distribution model of the 1970s-2000s. Financial salesmen (and they were men) were paid to "broke". If you didn't broker "product" you didn't earn your commission. No earnings, no food on table.

Unsurprisingly this model - predicated entirely on unaligned incentives between "adviser" and "client" - frequently led to bad consumer outcomes.

Mostly, thankfully, that's in the past. Most UK advisers are now fee-based (in a variety of ways, which we may or may not discuss in a later essay).

The very best financial advisory practices are built on the following key three principles:

1. The One Key Question everyone wants/needs answering is "are we going to be OK?"

2. Everything the practice does is focused on answering TOKQ;

3. The only way to answer TOKQ is with a comprehensive lifetime cash flow forecast using market-leading modelling software (eg anything not used by Dr Neil Ferguson).

Without exception, the plan must come first. The plan drives all advice. The plan determines the investment portfolio. No exceptions, not ever.

Why (among other obvious consumer benefits)? Because:

• People without a plan - investing into the void - react to whatever that day's "Catastrophe-of-Catastrophes"© is. Buy high, sell low, repeat until broke.

• People with a plan act in accordance with said plan. And you - the caring, empathetic counsellor/adviser - are there to help keep them to their plan.

The financial plan is the classy vehicle that will get clients to financial nirvana: the investment portfolio is just the fuel that drives said plan. Although vital, the fuel is not the focus.

You don’t buy the beautiful car and then spend all your waking hours gazing adoringly at petrol pumps.