Elaine and Michael’s story

We first met Neil 26 years ago. My husband Michael is a welder. I was a stay-at-home mum looking after the kids back then, but I’ve since gone back to work. Neil was the sales manager at the Co-operative insurance. He approached us when he became an Independent Financial Adviser and offered to help put a financial strategy plan together. He then gave Michael some advice on getting a pension set up as he didn’t have anything in place. He was 35 and a contractor at the time, but we wanted to start putting something away for retirement. When I went back to work when the children were older, Neil helped me to take out a small private pension too.

I retired a fortnight ago on the week of my 65th birthday. I can’t get my government pension until I am 66, but they put in a new computer system at work, and I decided it was more than my head could get around at my age!

It’s a big transition. Michael isn’t looking forward to retirement, he likes working. I’m finding it difficult and I’ve only been finished a fortnight! But I don’t want either of us to be working until we’re ill – you hear terrible stories of people not even getting to retirement and I don’t want that. We’ve got a son and grandchildren who live in Australia and we want to go out and visit them. And Michael would like to buy a motorhome so we can do some travelling.

When the financial crash happened in March 2020, when coronavirus hit, like many others, we were in a bit of a panic about what might happen to our pensions as they’re in stocks and shares. I was able to get straight on the phone to Neil and he talked it through with us. We’ve ended up readjusting our retirement plans slightly – Michael has pushed back retirement until March next year, instead of this November as we’d originally planned – but having Neil to reassure us that we would see some of the lost value back in time, made a real difference and has now happened.

Neil is one of the nicest, most trustworthy people I’ve ever met. We were invited to his 50th birthday; he’s like a friend as well as a Financial Planner! We always see him once a year when he does our cashflow modelling. A lot of it goes over my head, but I know we’re in good hands.

He keeps us on the right track. We know we don’t have to do what he says – he’s only advising – but we do because it’s good advice. He’s very reliable and knows what he’s talking about. Neither of us can fault him.