Who wants to be a millionaire?

(Cartoon: Richard Collins, The Age)

Somewhat weary from my limited sleep last night I still made it on time for my appointment this morning.

Sitting in the reception area waiting for my personal adviser to appear my mind turned to the delicate art of decorating a Financial Advice Service effectively.

To my mind such an office needs to appear sufficiently professional and prosperous as to suggest to a potential client that this is a successful business that knows how to make money and therefore I should sign on and join the gravy train. On the other hand the office should not appear so grand and luxurious as to suggest that it is living the high life off the fees of its clients and therefore is a business to be avoided at all costs.

Looking around the reception office my bleary eyes take in a tasteful, mainly black (of course) neat and cosy area. No grand fountains, staircases or pianos. Check one.

Moving to the conference room I am seated around a (yes again) cosy table for four. No waiters, groaning buffets, overflowing drinks bar or massive trophy cabinets in view. Check two.

The consultation which follows is itself soothingly professional. Several personalised and flash booklets are tabled. Each sets out the lurid details of my financial affairs replete with dazzlingly colourful pie charts, graphs and percentiles. My night in Emergency is threatening to overtake my attempts to appear to receive this burst of information as though I am totally cognisant of business matters to PhD standard. In reality I begin to wonder whether I will be permitted to phone a friend for assistance.

I am conscious that my every utterance at this stage betrays my financial naivete and I expect that at any moment the adviser will wheel in an audience to provide four unhelpful multiple choice prompts for me to choose from.

The adviser's triumphal final flourish comes when discussion moves to their fees. I never realised before how amazingly small a percentage can sound. I start to feel smug that I have selected the cheapest service in town. My moment of glee is destroyed when I notice what the fine print shows in dollar terms. It is almost beyond belief how many digits in dollar terms that oh so tiny sounding annual fee percentage is equivalent to.

I depart shell shocked and armed with my personalised booklets promising to do my homework. I've always been a sucker for the least line of resistance and I know I don't have the stamina to 'test drive' another service for comparison. So, no doubt after a suitable period has passed to suggest that I have carefully and fully digested the adviser's reports, I will call the adviser back and sign on for the deluxe, term of my natural life, program.