I recently returned from a holiday in North Africa and have mused over the similarity of walking through the local bazaar to the financial journey investors must experience if they have no clearly defined financial plan.

A clearly defined financial plan exists when a person has aligned their financial goals with their life goals; they know the exact amount of risk they need to take; they know the "number" that enables them to achieve all they want from life.

Now put yourself in the sandals of the financially confused person with none of the above. Walk with them through the financial bazaar of life: every stall is stacked with shiny trinkets manned by grinning, shiny toothed salesmen enticing you with; tax efficient investments; guaranteed returns; spectacular returns; unbelievably great returns; structured this and hedged that; no strings attached, get your money back whenever you want, etc, etc.

And not forgetting there is always an intriguing darker side-alley with a hint of an even more glittering trinket at the end.

One such "trinket" is currently distracting and bothering a prospective client of ours. The investment is offering glittering, guaranteed, double digit returns in one asset class on the other side of the world. When quizzed a little deeper of the appropriateness of such an investment, in conjunction with the client's other life planning needs, it became glaring obvious the "trinket" had no relevance or place in the client's financial plans and the veneer of "too good to be true" proposition soon lost its shine and was hastily disregarded .

Unfortunately not all people are this lucky and leave the bazaar unscathed; take the likes of celebrity cricketer, Darren Gough losing £1m in a suspected Ponzi rip-off scheme.