Hamish Barton, Senior Investment Director at Rathbones, shares his approach to financial planning, retirement, and how clients want their children and grandchildren to prosper. Hamish is based in London. He joined following the integration with Investec Wealth & Investment, where he spent 16 years building bespoke investment portfolios for private clients. A Certified Chartered Wealth Manager, Hamish works with clients to understand their lives and goals before he considers a single investment. As a father of two young children, he brings a generational perspective to the questions his clients are grappling with and to the ones he’s facing himself.
Article last updated 17 September 2026.
When did money first become truly significant to you?
The first time it became really significant was when I took financial responsibility for someone else. That was when my wife was expecting our first child. You're suddenly forecasting ahead, realising that for a period you'll be going from a two-salary to a one-salary household. That means making sure your household finances are well structured. So, when that change occurs, you don't have to panic about sustaining your existing lifestyle. When someone else is reliant on you to provide financial stability, everything sharpens in your mind. I remember when I was leaving school, the first thing my father said was: ‘Your phone bill is now yours.’ That was the first small jolt. But it’s a very different thing when it’s a family depending on you.
Hamish Barton | Senior Investment Director
Reassurance is often the most valuable thing we give.
How has your idea of living well changed as life has evolved?
As soon as you start a mortgage with someone else, you realise you have joint financial responsibility. You’re not just trying to live well yourself; you’re trying to help someone else live well, and even more so when you have children. It’s pretty rare that you contribute equally. But when considering contributions as a percentage of your respective incomes, you invariably find a way to share things fairly. Living well is about building financial security that lets you ride out periods of change without having to dramatically alter how you live. That’s what I try to help clients do, and it’s what I try to do myself.
What’s the biggest challenge your clients face when trying to invest well?
In many respects, it’s easier to help people when they know what the change will be. The biggest challenge is helping provide advice when people don’t know what the future might hold. The most common uncertainty is what future care expenditure will be. It’s an unknown liability. Some will consider themselves fortunate because they never need extended care. Others will find themselves progressively needing more and more, which becomes more expensive. And then there’s the conundrum of wanting your children to live well, and your grandchildren, but not at the expense of living well yourself. That’s the riddle we spend the most time trying to solve.
How do you help clients plan when the future is so uncertain?
The approach we always take is a broadly conservative one: assume the worst and hope for the best. Prepare for the largest potential expenditure and the lowest level of potential investment return. Model that to ensure there’s sufficient wiggle room. That way, anything that deviates from your plan should hopefully provide an upside surprise rather than a downside one. We can stress-test your investment plan with the lowest returns and the highest inflation, and provide a spectrum of prospective outcomes. It’s a way of providing reassurance: this is or isn’t financially affordable, based on your current circumstances. That reassurance is often the most valuable thing we give.
So part of living well is simply not having to worry?
Absolutely. The primary reason people seek advice is because they worry about whether they’ll have enough money to live well. You’re trying to remove that layer of worry. Everyone has different demands – looking after children, looking after parents, holding down a busy job, and other interests. There’s no doubt that household finances add to that tangle of concerns. We want to take that particular concern away. Someone with a very busy job doesn’t want to be distracted by worrying whether their ISA has been used or a pension contribution made. They want to know they have security in their financial position. And you build that trust with clients so that when you tell them everything’s going to be OK, they believe you.
Hamish Barton | Senior Investment Director
“The primary reason people seek advice is because they worry about whether they’ll have enough money to live well. You’re trying to remove that layer of worry.”
What does investing well look like for your generation?
As a generation, we’re all aware of the ever-increasing cost of living. The ability to save feels significantly squeezed – particularly for high earners, where pension contributions are now restricted. Pensions are highly unlikely to fund retirement for high earners today, because you simply can’t get enough capital into them during your working career. And no one expects to see the same appreciation in property that our parents’ generation enjoyed. Interest rates were basically zero from the late noughties through to 2021, and as a percentage of monthly income, their mortgage payments were far lower than ours are today. So savings are moving more towards financial assets. That comes with different concerns: financial assets are naturally more volatile than property. We are a generation that needs to become more comfortable with fluctuations in the value of our savings. Which means thinking long-term.
When it comes to retirement, everyone’s version of living well is different – how do you deal with that?
Some people consider spending £5,000 a month egregious. Others see it as the bare minimum for covering the cost of their household. Our responsibility is to guide individuals towards a sustainable level of expenditure, generated from their assets, that allows them to live well. If someone has a huge interest in fast cars but doesn’t have the asset base to support that, we have a responsibility to tell them they’re going to run out of money. Equally, there are others who won’t turn their heating on because they feel it’s too expensive, and we have to convince them they have more than enough capital to live more comfortably. All of that falls within the remit of being sage advisers in helping people meet their targets.
What advice would you give your younger self about investing well?
Think long-term. Even when the world around you is changing fast. We’ve been through an extraordinary period of legislative change, Budget uncertainty, and what you might call an AI revolution. Thinking long-term is challenging when you’re seeing that much change. And equally, people are worrying about surviving day to day, let alone thinking about setting money aside for their future retirement. But the life you want in the future is being funded by the decisions you make today. Start early, stay consistent, and don’t underestimate what time can do. No one has a crystal ball, but the best plans are the ones that don’t need one.
