The mid-career advantage to accelerate your wealth

Mid-way through your career, you may be feeling somewhat overwhelmed, balancing multiple goals, ambitions and the need to either start something new or strengthen what you’ve already built.

The middle of your career often coincides with your peak earning years, a stage when spending can also rise as you enter a ‘financial comfort zone’. Whilst it’s great to feel secure with your spending habits and current standpoint, it’s also vital that you remain a good friend to your future self by keeping those longer-term goals in mind. 

Conversely, you may not be feeling comfortable with your current job or financial situation. At this point, a career or role change along with improvements to your current spending habits might be weighing heavy. 

Whether you are feeling miles from your objectives or feel as if your current plans need a boost, this is the perfect time to take stock, lay out roadmaps and plan ahead.

Clarify & prioritise your goals

At a time in your life when you may be juggling multiple objectives like paying off debts and mortgages, home renovations, saving for your children, supporting aging parents and retirement planning, it’s essential to be clear on your needs for each so that you can compose or adjust your financial plans with adequate funding.

Once your goals are clear, it’s important to set up a strong budgeting plan and to evaluate whether or not your current strategy and holdings are in fact doing enough for you and maximising your potential outcomes. Even what may seem like minor tweaks can have huge impacts on your end results.

The common case for short-term, more “flexible” needs

We will kick-off with the shorter-term, potentially more flexible aspects of your plan. It’s common to simply look to a current account or online banking linked savers account for your more immediate needs, but this may not prove most efficient. Generally speaking, most of these products do not offer a return above that of UK inflation, currently at 3.8%. Therefore, despite receiving a return, the value of your hard earned money may still be decreasing with weakening purchasing power.

In this scenario, people tend to go for safer, less volatile investment options which we have catered for through the creation of our Cash ISA, a tax-efficient savings account, and Liquidity+ options.

In addition, it’s important to build up a strong financial safety net, such as an emergency fund covering 3-6 months of your income in case of unexpected circumstances such as redundancies, major home repairs or even adjusting to sudden rising costs. 

Safety nets can help to prevent you from unintentionally accumulating high-interest debts that can be seen with credit cards. Not only can this chip away at your financial health, but also your mental health.

According to the National Debtline (a charity that helps people dealing with their debts), almost a third of people who had faced debt problems in the past three years said that their mental health got worse as a result, highlighting the importance of considering unexpected costs within your financial plans. Not all debt is automatically bad, but managing it is important. 

What’s on the horizon? Planning for the medium to long term

Everyone’s goals and plans will look different, with many juggling multiple priorities which can undoubtedly feel overwhelming. A key thing to note is that you are not alone, and many face the same predicament. Whatever your plate looks like, planning for each aspect (and maintaining a strong plan) can help to ease stress.

At this stage of life some common goals may be looking to purchase a home, moving somewhere with more space or renovating. 

Take a look at the average UK house price data for January 2025, published by the UK government. Using London as an example, an average house price of £564,000 with a 10% deposit equates to £56,400. According to Moneyhelper, stamp duty on top of this may be £18,200. Legal & transaction costs, renovations, furnishings, van hire and removals can all quickly add up on top of this. 

This may also be the time in your life that you might be saving for children. Starting off, UK nursery fees can take up a significant chunk of income. Following this, costs of school uniforms, school trips, hobbies & sports soon present significant costs, so it’s important to include them in your financial plans. 

On the topic of saving for your children, you may also be looking to put some money aside for when they get older, to give them a springboard and strong footing to fuel their goals, whether that be buying their first car, support for university or to get started on their travel bucket list. On top of your own Individual Savings Account (ISA), you can open a Junior ISA in their name with a further annual allowance of £9,000 to boost potential returns and maintain tax efficiency. 

One consequence of huge gains in life expectancy in the 20th century is the boost of engagement between the middle aged and their parents’ lives. Therefore, you may also want to factor in costs of extra support and care for them if their current provisions are not enough.

Get ahead

Planning for all costs involved is vital, and whether you’ve already been putting money aside or you’re just starting out, it’s important to evaluate where you hold this money. Some key points of what you’ll need to look out for are noted below: 

• Are you using tax efficient strategies? 
• Are you able to see what you are invested in? 
• Do you feel that it’s doing enough for you? 
• Are you able to review your investments should your circumstances change? 
• Are you receiving support with your investment decisions?

The common case we see is people turning to bank savings accounts, without considering other options. Cash can be useful in the short term, but holding it for longer periods can expose you to longevity risk. Throughout history, cash investments have significantly underperformed in comparison to Stocks & Shares investments, as illustrated here. As a result, Stocks & Shares have built a strong case as a growth engine for those medium to long term goals, although this does come with capital risk as the value of your investment may go down as well as up.

Our expert Asset Allocation team have carefully curated investment portfolios, factoring in volatility to provide you with a solution specific to your situation. This will be assessed by our investor profile questionnaire, which gives us deeper insight into your time frame, risk appetite, ratio of assets, capacity for losses and financial experience to provide you with a portfolio recommendation tailored to you.

There is no one-size fits all solution when it comes to financial planning and with that, likely no single portfolio that will capture the suitability of numerous goals and so building your plans with us means that you can open as many portfolios as you like.

Though past performance is not an indicator of future performance, you can take a look at our website where we can measure up our performance of each portfolio, along with their geographical and sector compositions, along with all fees stated clearly upfront.

The home stretch: Retirement

Retirement may feel distant, but this stage in your life may well be your prime window for both earning and as a result saving. Amongst the more immediate goals mentioned above, it’s important to keep this in mind, as retirement and pension provisions are one of the most essential yet underfunded objectives. 

Here’s a few considerations which can strengthen your financial position for your later years:

Tracing old workplace pensions

If you have worked for a few different companies over the years, then you may have multiple workplace pensions running without realising. According to Pensions UK, 3.3 million pension pots are now considered lost, at an average value of £9,470.

Using our free Find, Check & Transfer service, you can input your employer name along with a date range and then our pension tracing team will do all the digging for you. If found, you can transfer your funds into a Self Invested Personal Pension with us, where you’ll have strong visibility and the ability to review your preferences in line with your investor profile. 

Consolidation ticked off? Review your pot 

If you have already consolidated your pensions, that’s great news. The next step is to check on the quality of where you hold those funds. In general, pension accounts can be rather stagnant, with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach which can lead to both underperformance and lack of suitability. 

Not feeling as if your current provisions are doing enough? A Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP) allows you to take back control to plan efficiently for your golden years. This doesn’t have to mean attempting to meticulously track the markets, as we have built and actively managed portfolios tailored to you.

If you’re not too sure on what’s best for you, we can provide a detailed, impartial review of your current holdings using extensive investment data and advanced analytics tools. 

Especially important for the self-employed

If you’re self-employed, the roadmap for your retirement may well be entirely in your hands, and so it’s crucial to build your own provisions.

A final note 

Juggling multiple priorities can be exhausting, and it’s completely normal to feel worn down at this stage. The good news is that planning ahead can help to reduce the ‘what ifs?’ by giving you clarity, control and more confidence in the future. 

The bottom line remains that you do not need to be wealthy to feel financially secure, you just need to kickstart with a solid plan and stick to it. 

Want further help with financial planning or have any unanswered questions? As always, please feel free to book an appointment with us so that we can assist you further, we are here to help you.