Realising a dream
Tom and Sarah’s Story
Our relationship with Jon goes back to 2016, when I was approaching 55. My wife and I wanted to get an idea about where our pension investments were, and in particular, where we were against the Lifetime Allowance, so we needed a financial adviser.
At that stage, we were a little bit cynical about ‘advice’. We’d had various people trying to sell us financial products before, and we didn’t want that. We just wanted good, sensible guidance.
One thing that impressed us about Jon was that he wasn’t offering ‘get rich quick’ schemes. We’re ordinary people who just want to make the most of what we have, and so we wanted the advice to be about aligning our future goals rather than about money making ideas.
We felt good about Jon instantly, and took it from there.
THE PROCESS
What was really good is Jon didn’t just jump in and assume things. He took time to find out what we were looking to really achieve with our life, in order to plan out how our financial position could best support that lifestyle. He followed that up completing a risk profile on us so he could further sense who we were as people.
Jon made us think about specific aspects of retirement that we hadn’t thought about before. He really got us thinking about what our overall goals were for the next phase of our lives. We considered things like the budget we might need to live on and he talked us through how legislation might affect our pension benefits.
REASSURINGLY EXPERT
Jon confirmed a lot of the information we’d already gleaned from our own research, which gave us confidence, as well as providing additional insight.
He also helped us to see how one particular goal of ours could be realised.
We’d long wanted to buy a piece of land in order to build our dream house. Jon helped us to work out how we could use our pension assets – in a tax-efficient way – to fund it.
The advice he gave was very much targeted to what we were trying to achieve. There was nothing scary or unsettling about it.
BOUTIQUE SERVICE
Throughout our work with him he’s been very open and honest about fees and charges and one of the best things is how responsive he is.
What we like most about working with him is that it’s a trusted relationship. Jon is pragmatic and approachable. He’s made it feel like he’s taken the time to understand our needs, and it definitely feels like we get a ‘boutique’ service. We’d highly recommend him to others.