Sometimes you spot something a bit left field that makes you wonder about the wider implications and whether trouble is just over the horizon.
I have spent a lot of time over the last few months speaking to financial advisers about the opportunities and risks created by the new freedom and choice in pensions due to come into effect from 6 April.
2015 is a watershed for me. It heralds the end of one journey and the start of another. It's difficult to be precise but sometime around 6 April will probably mark the transition point.
In May 2014, Steve Webb, addressing the Treasury Select Committee, indicated that the Guidance Guarantee "would be fairly basic ... fairly rudimentary ... fairly general ... but enough to get people to the starting gate".
For someone who's been involved with the Sipp market since its inception 2014 by any measure was an extraordinary year – and a year of considerable contrasts.
As is often the case, come springtime I was asked whether there would be any changes in the upcoming 2014 budget. I thought about it, taking into consideration where we were with pension reform and with a General Election on the horizon, and I categorically said "No – too near to the Election." The rest is history!
Having attended two excellent events in a week - a workshop by Enhance Compliance Solutions and an Infoline conference on Sipps - I thought I would reflect on the latest thoughts on capital adequacy calculations.
I spend a lot of my working life in planes, trains and automobiles and what appears to be even more time in airport security queues, waiting at overcrowded boarding gates and platforms and stuck in endless traffic jams.
In this brave new world of pension freedoms, people will have far more choice regarding what they want to do with their pension funds.
There's five months to go until the new pension freedoms are upon us and, with them, the change in death benefit rules.