Eugene and Margaret Boyle

Eugene: We’ve been working with Chris, for four or five years now.

Margaret: The research that I did was really about looking at financial websites and advice and guidance about pensions, somewhere like the Financial Conduct Authority. We got links through to approved financial advisers and Chris’s name was on that list. He was fairly local, so that seemed a good starting point.

Eugene: His advice to me was, don’t leave it too late to retire, because that’s a common failing that people do. You’ve got to give yourself some time to enjoy it. I did resist that advice for a couple of years. Then the opportunity came, and we retired. We were working with him for quite a while. He was invaluable in the decision process, as part of the retirement. I came from a background of not really understanding the nuances of pensions and the different forms that you could move it to. Chris was absolutely invaluable as an adviser, this is before we even took him on.

Margaret: I do think the important thing that Chris did with us, was to go through our financial requirements and to look at what we were spending and how we were spending it. That’s something we hadn’t really done before. It was a plan in terms of, looking at where the money went, and how much money we would need to fund our retirement.

Eugene: Once we got to the stage where we understood that we were going to go down the investment route, Chris did produce a financial plan that reflected several things. It reflected our outgoing spends, our way of living, the way we wanted to live, and affordability. It made the whole thing very tangible, very easy to see. It’s a very useful service.

I did some very simple planning, in terms of figuring whether it’s going to run out of money or not. Just by a simple spreadsheet, based on the investments. But that’s not the same as the in-depth analysis that Chris is able to do. He’s got these fantastic tools that you can factor in different nuances, whereby you might spend so much money in the early years of your retirement typically, that’s a typical reaction that people have when they retire. Then tail off a little bit later. We effectively had a ‘stop partying’ mode. An age whereby we stopped being quite as active. That was invaluable to see how the cash profile eked out as we went along. We were more than comfortable with what we saw.

Margaret: It was reassuring. I do think it’s important that I think what we get from it, is the fact that it feels tailor-made. It’s not something like one-size-fits-all. I think it’s really important that somebody listens to you and your circumstances and what you need.

Eugene: I think what Chris was also able to offer us, and this was quite significant for us, was a profile that’s based on the level of risk that you want to take. He’s very good at gauging your risk averseness. He’ll factor that into the planning, or it’ll bounce out the investment so that it reflects what you’re willing to commit, and that was quite reassuring.

Margaret: I think the best thing for me is not having to worry about finances, I just take it that Chris will do the worrying for us. For me, it’s putting it in someone else’s hands and trusting them and being able to relax and not think about it.