Altor Views

The extraordinary thing about us humans is that we were built for long distance running. Not me, you understand, but humans more generally.  The latest research into human history shows that humans are slower than most animals we hunted and so adapted to be faster over long distance.  We could pursue prey over several days […]

I saw a £2.5million car at my local pub a few weeks ago. That is to say I saw a car and when I went into the pub for a drink, the owner of the car was telling anyone who would listen how much he had just paid for it. I am not a ‘car

Life expectancy in the 1700s was shockingly short compared to today. Even more extraordinary was the fact that it was lower on average amongst sections of the British Peerage. Those who were the wealthiest often lived the shortest lives. Rich diets might have contributed, the diet of your average 1700s peasant was no fun, but

The employed workforce in the UK have been hugely helped by Auto-Enrolment. This was introduced in 2012 and has automatically opted 10million more staff into company pensions since it was introduced. The minimum is 8% of salary going into a pension for the majority of the employed workforce. The company pays 4%, the employee 3%

On 23rd January 2026, a child was struck by a Waymo (Google) driverless car near a school in California. What sounds like a bad news item, is actually a good news item. The reason? This was the first serious accident to involve a Waymo car in 200million miles. In addition initial reports suggest that the car

When I joined my third financial services employer, I was mid-twenties and pursuing a career as a financial adviser (pensions were kinda my thing). The firm I worked for had a big parent company who offered a generous pension scheme to all staff. In my case I was shown paperwork that listed a 10% company

I work pro bono with young couples about to get married. In most cases they have very little in their money budget so most of what we work on is budgeting, debt management and financial protection. The one budget they have huge amounts of? Time. Not free time during the day necessarily (although if they

The ever-brilliant Carl Richards describes our Human Capital as breaking down into four budgets. Money, Attention, Time and Energy. At different stages of life, we will have different amounts in each of these budgets. In retirement we might have more Money and Time but maybe less in the Energy budget than we had when we

I once tried to advise someone who had just been made redundant from Kodak. He had a decent sized lump sum in his bank account from them but was too young to retire yet. Having spent all of his years, man and boy, working for the same firm, he didn’t have a job to go

When my father died (earlier and then faster than expected), I really struggled with what to say at his funeral. I didn’t take my chance to talk to him about many things when he was still here. He was the kind of man who lived through his work, both paid and latterly charitable. In the