Our story

We - Richard and James - are the founders of MyFinanceFuture. For both of us, it’s an idea that’s been with us for a long time. For Richard, ever since he first had a big financial decision to make for his own young family. And it stayed with him ever since, brought back into focus each time a new financial decision came along. For James, it started in his mid-30s when he first started thinking about his long-term financial goals and the career and investment choices that he would need to make to achieve them. Until a chance encounter at a reunion for friends and former colleagues led to us discussing the idea and discovering we had very similar views.

Each of us had found there were no good planning tools available to help us make big financial decisions. So, we’d each ended up working them out using spreadsheets, piecing together research on tax, pensions, investment returns, retirement spending, education costs and other things. It took a lot of time and effort and wasn’t straightforward, even for those, like us, with 25+ years’ experience in Financial Services and financial technology to draw on. It made us think others must find it even more challenging to make big financial decisions well, and it planted the germ of an idea.

The idea

The idea is this. What if someone could develop a planning tool accessible directly to individuals so they could make their own financial plan? What if it covered the whole of a family’s finances, so there’s no need for a spreadsheet to create a full picture? What if it was straightforward to use for those who aren’t financial professionals and removed a lot of the effort needed to create a plan?

Discussions with friends and colleagues on their (similar) experiences, and a well-publicised “gap” in the UK financial planning and advice market, suggested there was a real problem to be solved. We were conscious of the complexity of the task and past unsuccessful attempts by financial services companies to address the problem. We nonetheless resolved to take on the challenge.

Our principles

We adopted some principles, which would steer our decisions in developing the service:

• Put you in control. We want to put you in control of your plan and decisions, rather than hide decisions or maintain the plan on your behalf so you have to ask for changes to be made.
• Make it easy to create a plan. We want to reduce the effort required, for example researching and encoding tax and pension rules and reasonable assumptions around economic factors, so you can focus on achieving the best outcome.
• Support the many. We aim to support all those who want to make a financial plan for themselves and those for whom traditional Financial Advice services are out of reach for reasons of cost or otherwise.
• Be transparent. We make assumptions explicit and publish detailed calculation results, so they can be checked and validated by users and third parties.
• Give guidance, not advice. We provide financial guidance, not advice, since we believe this is the best way to provide cost-effective access to financial planning tools and support those in the Financial Advice Gap.
• Be on your side. We avoid conflicts of interest that consciously or unconsciously create counter-incentives to offering guidance wholly for your benefit.
• Build a sustainable model. A long-term planning tool has to be sustainable in the long term, so we aim to establish a sustainable way of funding its ongoing support and development.

We believe these principles are invaluable in helping us steer the right course. At the same time, we recognise it’s not possible to follow all the principles fully all the time since they are often in tension with each other. For example, putting people in control of all aspects creates challenges for us in making it easier to create a plan. So, as a concluding principle, we will be clear and open on our reasons where we need to make compromises between the principles in developing the service.

What our customers say

Customer feedback from the initial free pilot of the service includes:

Our message

Our message is that financial planning is for everyone.

Many people hesitate to get started, perhaps because they don’t believe they have the skills, they are daunted by the scale of the task or they just don’t know where to start.

If that sounds like you, we’d love to hear from you to understand what barriers you face and hear your thoughts on how financial planning could be made easier for you. You can get in touch with us here.

If you agree with us that financial planning should be for everyone and you’re ready to give it a try, then why not Get Started For Free. Or, if you’re not ready to start but want to stay in touch for the future, you can sign up for our newsletter here.

Happy planning!