Science: knowledge about the structure and behavior of the natural and physical world, based on facts that you can prove, for example by experiments.
Humanities: understanding concerned with human culture, especially literature, history, art, music and philosophy.
The two key words above are “knowledge” and “understanding”.
TCFP aims to help you understand what must happen today to be sure of a decent 30+ year afterwork income that keeps pace with inflation.
Once understood, our job becomes stopping you blowing yourself up. We do all we can to help you manage the immense force that is human nature.
Human nature – instincts honed over millennia – demands that you act, do something, anything when the spaghetti hits the fan. That urge is amplified by financial journalism and a stream of talking heads. Resistance is essential to success.
Thankfully, we are invariably successful in both imparting this understanding and having you keep faith with it. Our work is therefore humane.
Were we to mistake what we do for science, we would attempt to educate you, to prove things to you using facts. This would eventually spell disaster because there are no facts about the future.
All science, all knowledge is backward looking, it is based on things that have already happened, it cannot predict what is to come. The future is always uncertain, knowledge is not interested in uncertainty, but we are; it is all we have to look forward to.
We can point to the historical record (knowledge), and we do. It tells us that trying to forecast the economy or politics, time the markets or pick consistently superior investments are fool’s errands.
There is no proof of the future, and there never will be.
Every time we listen to clients, we hear a human story, not a financial one. It may be couched in financial terms but at heart it’s a story of hope, wishes and fears. It’s the entire human experience.
And it is always about the future.
Knowledge informs about 10% of what we do. The other 90% is understanding humanity.
Beware the mad financial scientist.
Boring But Effective | Truthful, Helpful, Kind
advice@townclosefp.co.uk