What keeps clients awake at night?

For the third year running, businesses are treading water amid endless budget speculation. It's no longer if taxes rise, but which ones and by how much. This government treats the business sector as a cash cow for its pet projects. Client anxiety never comes from one headline figure. It's the compounding mess of macro shifts hitting cash flow, margins and long-term security at once. Retirees fear outliving their capital, landlords face a liquidity shock as fixed deals expire, and corporates find debt servicing too costly to justify expansion. Importers and exporters are squeezed by higher employer NI, shifting tax tiers, revised business rates and stubbornly high energy costs, then Sterling's tug-of-war with the Dollar and Euro moves margins before goods even clear the port. Clients don't want theory. They want to know if the business survives GBP/USD swings, or the pot survives sticky inflation. That's the job: cut the noise, protect the margin, give them a plan they'll stand behind.

What we once read about in books by authors like George Orwell and Ray Bradbury, are starting to feel more Factual than Fiction. This is enough to keep even the deepest of sleepers awake. People are literally preparing for a dystopean future, with threats ranging from Nuclear War to Financial Ruin. Michael Crichton wrote a book called "state of fear", it centered on how a government controls its population by always providing them with something to be scared of. The left against the right, the workers against the benefit claiments, the east against the west, Donald Trump against everyone. Todays issues make that book look more like a handbook to navigate todays way of living rather than an book of Fiction. The governments around the Globe are ruling with a state of fear, and this is why people are terrified.

What I’m seeing isn’t fear of one particular thing. It’s exhaustion from financial uncertainty. Clients can deal with bad news; what they struggle with is feeling the goalposts keep moving.

Mortgage clients worry about their next payment. Investors see war or political headlines and wonder whether they should sell. People approaching retirement ask whether the number they spent decades building towards is still enough.

The danger is when temporary uncertainty creates permanent financial decisions. Selling investments because of one frightening week, abandoning retirement plans, sitting on excessive cash or putting life decisions on hold waiting for the ‘perfect’ moment can do more damage than the event people were frightened of.

Markets will move. Governments will change. Rates will rise and fall. A financial plan that only works when the world is calm isn’t much of a financial plan.

The question keeping many mortgage clients awake is no longer, ‘What rate can I get?’ It is, ‘Will I still be able to afford my home when my current deal ends?’

Clients are worried not only about higher payments, but whether their age, income structure or existing commitments will limit their options under lenders’ affordability rules. For landlords, rising mortgage costs are being compounded by taxation, regulation and maintenance expenses.

People can usually deal with a difficult answer; it is not knowing what their options will be that causes the greatest anxiety. Reviewing matters early can replace that uncertainty with a workable plan.

As a mortgage broker my clients are panicking about upward rate movements. This is even more pronounced for clients at the end of their 5 year fixed rates when rates were sub-2%. This is extremely distressing for many, and has led to clients having to either return to work, get a second job, or sell up.

When an owner-managed company sits down with me now, the two things on the table are a supplier's letter and the payroll run. They want to know what a bill will be, not what a market might do, and they don't take the rough with the smooth on it. Mortgages, pensions and investments are another adviser's book, not mine. What they carry in from outside is the headline about energy going up again, and the assumption that the cap in that headline covers them. It doesn't. The cap rises 4 per cent from 1 October for a typical household paying by direct debit. Ofgem says you "are not protected by the price cap" if you "have a business energy contract". A cap that covers the typical household but not the business paying the wages is a bad deal. It leaves an owner pricing next year's work off a number that was never theirs. Check your own contract before you quote next quarter's work.

With mortgage clients, the biggest worry is often uncertainty rather than any single interest rate. People want to know what their next monthly payment is likely to be, whether they can still afford to move and how much breathing room they should leave in the household budget.

Recent mortgage repricing has brought that anxiety back into focus. A Bank Rate hold can sound reassuring, but fixed mortgage rates can still move in the opposite direction. Giving people some clarity over their options and likely future costs can be just as valuable as finding the lowest rate on the day.

Inflation, energy prices and geopolitics matter, but clients tend to focus on what might impact their own plans. At the moment that means general tax uncertainty, inheritance tax specifically, interest rates and the direction of the UK economy. US politics comes up frequently too, because America tends to dominate both geopolitics and global investment markets.

Clients often focus more on interest rates than inflation. A change in mortgage costs or the return on cash has a much more tangible impact than the latest CPI print.

Market volatility generates questions when headlines are alarming, but long-standing clients tend to take the rough with the smooth. What creates more anxiety is uncertainty: not knowing what governments, central banks or tax authorities might do next.

Most of our clients are relatively cushioned from day-to-day pressures such as the cost-of-living crisis, so their concerns tend to be broader.

Geopolitical risk is increasingly part of the conversation, particularly fears around further escalation in Russia's war in Ukraine and the US-Iran conflict. Clients also worry about the world their children and grandchildren are inheriting, alongside what they perceive as an ever-increasing tax burden.

Interestingly, emigration is coming up more often. For most of our clients, moving abroad is not really practical because their families, friendships and wider lives are firmly rooted in the UK. But the fact that more people are even raising the possibility says something about the level of unease.

Markets will always move up and down. For many clients, the bigger worry today is whether the wider world, and the rules they have planned around, are becoming less predictable.