I had been emailing her for about three weeks.

It was important otherwise I wouldn’t have sent her five emails, two phone calls and one text but she hadn’t replied to any of them.

I suppose on reflection the content of my emails weren’t that exciting or important to her, and maybe I wasn’t forceful enough in the language I was using. Maybe I needed to stress the urgency a bit more, but it’s not my style. And anyway the majority of my clients will testify, I don’t normally email them unless it's important.

The reason I was reaching out to this particular client was because I wanted to talk to her about her pension. She had a pension in place with a previous employer and I was monitoring it for her and against my advice two years ago, she decided to leave it where it was instead of my recommendation of transferring it into a particular retirement bond.

“Let’s give it a couple of years”, she said.

It had performed ok up until now, and feeling a certain amount of loyalty to her ex-employer (who really didn’t give a rats ass if she left it in the scheme or not) as well, she left it where it was.

I was tracking it for her, something I didn’t have to, but I wanted to see if she was in fact right and I was wrong. So, I used to track her fund against the one I had recommended two years ago.

And at first there wasn’t much of a difference, and the fund she stayed in was performing better than mine, but over the past 6 months’ the difference between both was becoming wider and wider, and it wasn’t in her favour. Her fund in fairness had performed fine, it was +5.4% over the past two years. The one I wanted her to transfer into was +14.1%. And the difference in monetary terms over those two years was €27,405.

Rather than continuing staying invested in her ex-employers scheme, it was time to get it out and I had the evidence to show her why. And time was important, she had only 12 years’ until she was 65 and with every passing year the difference in what her funds was growing by and what it could have was only going to get bigger. So, she was running low on time, and time is the most important factor when it comes to saving – it is more critical than your annual return or even the amount you are saving, it’s that important.

How was I going to get her to contact me? I could have just left it at that and if she didn’t want to contact me, it’s her loss not mine.

And then on the way home from work last week, I turned on the radio and on came a song I really like, called Magic from Coldplay.

Why the next thought entered my head, I will never know. But it did and I thought I’d give it a go, it just might work.

So, the very next morning, at 9.02am, I emailed her again, but rather than the subject title of my email being Pension Review as it was with the previous emails I sent her, it was, I’ve got Coldplay tickets if you want them.  

And as if by magic (excuse the pun) at, and I joke you not, 9.07am, I received a reply from her saying she love them and thanks so much for thinking about her. At 9.09am, she followed up her email with a call to my mobile.

“Hi Liam, thanks so much for emailing me, I had been meaning to contact you, as I saw your other emails about the pension, but I never got round to contacting you, my apologies, but those Coldplay tickets, how many have you”?

I let her down gently by telling her I was promised two tickets and had thought of her, but they subsequently fell though and I didn’t have the tickets I thought I had anymore.

And she was fine about it, a little disappointed of course, but what she never had, she never lost.

The email did the trick however because we spoke about her pension, we even arranged to meet up and since that meeting, and following on from it, we have begun the process of moving her pension to that retirement bond for her.

When we met, I joked with her and said she thought more about Coldplay tickets than what her income in retirement might be like. She was more interested in having that two hour experience with Chris Martin and co. than what she would be living off in 12 years time. And the difference in terms of a monthly income, if that differential remained the same between both funds, was significant – it was going to be €1,000.

She didn’t realise how big this difference was (I had mentioned it in two emails though) but the lesson learned for me about this episode was that my original subject matter wasn’t exciting enough for this particular woman. It might have been for many others, but for her it wasn’t.

And the reason for this might just down be down to her memory.

She had probably been to lots of concerts, and she loves the memory of how they made her feel, so she was excited about going again. She has no memory of retiring and I guess I failed by not tapping into that emotional right side of her brain by making her feel excited about the prospect of retiring on a really good income.

If I did, would she have responded quicker?

Probably

And if I really did have two tickets for Coldplay, or any other band you like and I called you with the offer the day before the concert, how would you react? You would probably move mountains to make sure you could go. You would arrange to have the kids minded, you would arrange transport, accommodation, etc. and you would do this very quickly because you are motivated by the end result – the concert.

Pensions are not exciting. Nothing much about personal finance is but that’s not to say you should ignore them either. And that is where the role of financial advisers has to change. We have to get people motivated to act. We have got to get your attention and get you to sit up and take notice and take action.

We need to give you a reason why. We need to give you a goal that creates excitement like going to a concert does. And you may not know what your financial goal or why is yet, and that’s OK as well, you may need help to uncover it and when that happens, your financial situation will improve no end, and you won’t skip past those emails anymore.