BrilliantWithMoney

If you have questions about BrilliantWithMoney, you’ve come to the right page.

Here are a selection of FAQs about the site. We hope we have covered your question below, but don’t hesitate to get in touch if we haven’t.

Who are you?

We are the team from Informed Choice; an award-winning firm of Chartered Financial Planners. It’s probably easiest to explain who Informed Choice are, so you can understand where BrilliantWithMoney fits in to the big picture.

Informed Choice is a family owned and managed firm of Chartered Financial Planners. We are fifteen years old and our head office can be found in Cranleigh, Surrey – the largest village in England. Our day job is offering independent financial advice and planning services to individuals and small business owners. We are a growing business and claim to be one of the best in the UK.

BrilliantWithMoney is our new personal finance education and information website. The site editor is Informed Choice managing director Martin Bamford. Martin is a Chartered Financial Planner and Certified Financial Planner (CFP) professional, and was recently named as one of the most influential financial advisers in Britain.

It’s nice to meet you.

Why are you doing this?

Back in 2006, site editor Martin Bamford wrote his first book about personal financial planning. It was an overnight success, quickly becoming WHSmith Business Book of the Month and opening up the world of money management to a new audience. Two more books about money quickly followed and a total of around 40,000 copies were sold.

We know that people want to become more engaged with their financial planning, particularly given the recent credit crunch and global financial crisis. The old days of financial illiteracy are long gone. The people we speak to today want to understand how money works, and how they can build, manage and protect their wealth.

BrilliantWithMoney is here to provide the tools to do just that. The knowledge we plan to provide within this website will turn personal financial planning from a very dull and complicated topic into an exciting and easy to understand area of your life. We promise.

So, you say this website is free. What’s the catch?

There is no catch. This website is free to use and is fully funded by Informed Choice. In that sense we are donating our time and other resources to develop BrilliantWithMoney to further the cause of personal financial education.

However, we want to be quite clear about our commercial motivations as well. We will make money from this website in one of two ways. Some visitors will want to engage with us for formal financial advice and planning services, and we charge fees for that. Also, some visitors will use our new online Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP) or the online investment platform we are developing.

The site itself is free to use and is completely impartial. A criticism often levelled at some financial websites is the lack of clarity over their funding. You can be assured that there are no hidden affiliate links, advertisements or money influencing editorial to be found here.

Is the stuff on this site independent financial advice?

In a word, no. We are a firm of Independent Financial Advisers and what we offer to our paying clients is independent financial advice. As an IFA firm we are completely impartial and unbiased. In fact, because we charge fees for our services we are not even motivated to recommend a financial product like many other firms are.

However, you will never find financial advice on this website. What you will find is information and occasionally guidance. Advice is only ever delivered on a personal basis after a detailed exploration of the facts about your own financial situation and objectives.

Can I write for BrilliantWithMoney?

We welcome guest contributions from experts in all areas of personal finance. Please get in touch to discuss your article idea and have a read of our contributor guidelines here.