If, like me, you do not know your annuity calculator from your interest rates, your endowment mortgage from your fixed rate mortgage, take heart from the fact that you are certainly not alone.
Up and down the country there are people like us, reasonably intelligent people who have a complete blockage when it comes to all things financial – which is pretty ironic when you consider the fact that it is the single most important thing we will ever have to think about.
I do not know what it is about finance that causes such a mental blockage but it happens to me that I have what I think is a perfectly reasonable meeting with my financial advisor, only to realise after I have left that I did not have a clue what he was talking about and forgetting what it was that we actually agreed.
The key thing for me is to take detailed notes after the meeting so that I remember why I put money into this fund above that fund and so that I have a lasting record of what we agreed and why we agreed it.
You would not attend a business meeting without taking minutes of what was said so these written notes are just a record of the conversation that you can use as an aide-memoire in later months.