Your Viking genetics & Financial Planning

At home on one of my bookshelves I have counted at least five books about King Alfred the Great.

Alongside a well thumbed copy of The Anglo Saxon Chronicles and An Ecclesiastical History of the English People sits the poem Beowulf and a whole host of other books about Anglo Saxon history.

As you may conclude I love the subject.

But what on earth has that got to do with Financial Planning? Bear with me…

King Alfred had a nemesis. The Vikings.

So it was with great interest that I read an article in The Times yesterday about Viking genetics and a DNA testing project that is trying to identify Norseman ancestry in the British population.

A fun part of the article was an 8 question quiz to determine the readers knowledge of Norse.

And it was the eighth question that provides the link to Financial Planning;

How would you best describe your approach to planning financial security? Do you;

a)    Maintain a mixed portfolio of shares, bonds and other investments

b)    Invest heavily in high-risk stocks

c)    Pour everything into emerging markets, convert the profits into gold and store the lot in a box that can be buried at the first sign of pillaging and lie there forgotten until a farmer ploughs it up 1,000 years later.

Come on we all know that a little part of us wants the right answer to be c) even though in this non-Viking era a) makes far more sense.

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