Andy (North Yorkshire)

It is a real weight off our minds to know that someone who knows what they are talking about is looking after the financial side of things. Tom’s encouragement that we can afford to take lots of holidays is a big win!

1. Please provide some background information e.g. your job, marital status, any children, needs, concerns and goals

My wife and I are approaching retirement age and have two children in their early 30s. I used to work in the oil industry as a processing geophysicist, mainly in Aberdeen, and we moved to North Yorkshire 13 years ago after our children had left home. I started my own one-man band limited company 21 years ago and dividends from this have been our major income source. The company is in the process of being wound down, which will happen around my 65^th birthday. We would consider ourselves to be in a fairly healthy position financially but in the absence of a final salary pension scheme or similar we are cash rich but pension poor. We own our house so have no particular needs at this stage, though we are both aware that our bodies are starting to creak more than they used to and so would like to continue taking as many holidays as we can!

2. Why did you need financial advice? Was it a problem you had or a goal you wanted to achieve?

Although we would both consider ourselves to be fairly intelligent, we had been aware for a while that we really needed some professional help to get our finances in order. We had been maximising our ISA allowances for a long while, primarily with cash ISAs, and needed to make a decision about our personal pensions and whether we should withdraw these early. A few years previously I had been contacted by a financial advisor through my business insurance but he seemed very aggressive in his marketing and we declined the offer. Following an appointment with Pensionwise we obtained a list of local financial advisors and spoke to two. Tom won the day through being really personable and patient with our questions. He gave us total confidence that we were in good hands.

3. How did your adviser help?

Initially we had several meetings with Tom during which he talked us through the pros and cons of our different investments, patiently answering all our questions and explaining that a few of our investments were not consistent with our risk profile. Our investment portfolio is now significantly changed, no longer heavily biased to cash ISAs with multiple different accounts. Without his input we would probably have started drawing on our comparatively small pensions, which would financially have definitely been the wrong thing to do. We have retained control of a couple of investments but the majority are now part of Tom’s remit.

4. How have you benefited from the advice? How has your life changed? What can you do now that you couldn’t previously?

It is a real weight of our minds to know that someone who knows what they are talking about is looking after the financial side of things. Tom is now also in the process of trying to sort out the plethora of different accounts that my mother has, for which I thank him hugely. Being able to monitor the progress of all our finances if we wish through one single portal is very simple and useful.

Tom’s encouragement that we can afford to take lots of holidays is a big win!