40s & 50s

When Tom told us we could retire, to be honest, we were both quite emotional. We weren’t expecting it.

Tom was recommended to me by my brother. My brother has his own accountancy firm in Otley and he recommended a couple of people to me. We met with Tom and the other people who my brother recommended and we just felt more comfortable with Tom – not that there was anything wrong with the others! If it doesn’t sound too woolly, we just clicked with Tom. We had chemistry. He didn’t try and sell us anything, he was very honest with us and down to earth with us and didn’t try to push anything on to us. There was no hard sell; he was transparent.

Lesley was in the process of being made redundant at the time and I’d been made redundant about 18 months before that. I was coming to the end of a short contract and we wanted some advice on whether we could retire. I am 55, Lesley is 53. We’d built up quite a lot of pension contributions during our working lives. We had a good pension pot.

So, we went to Tom really to see if we might be able to retire early. When Tom told us we could retire, to be honest, we were both quite emotional. We weren’t expecting it. Both Lesley and I hoped we could retire but to hear that confirmation from someone who was independent, not emotionally attached, made us feel very emotional.

I carried on working until March of this year. I retired the day lockdown started so we didn’t anticipate that our lives would be like this. But when we’re able to again, we want to do a bit of traveling and do some things around the house. And maybe move home. One of the things that Lesley and I would like to do is go back to Japan – we went in 2008 and we’d love to go back. But we want to get into the swing into retirement first and get our heads around not working any more.

I would have no hesitation in recommending Tom to people in similar circumstances.

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