“I don’t think people realise that they need a financial adviser until they’ve got a financial adviser.”
Read what Deb and Lyn had to say:
We’ve worked with Fotis, we think it’s around 15 or 16 years. It could be a little longer. In that time he’s helped us with quite a number of key changes. You know, those sort of stages in your life, things like, you know, ill health, changes in jobs, buying and selling houses, investing, and inheritance, and most recently, of course, planning for the early retirement that we took three years ago.
So it’s been quite a long journey, and I think working with Fotis has felt like a journey to us, with a trusted friend alongside. Not a friend that tells you what to do at all, what Fotis does is asks you what you want to achieve and then he advises you on how you can meet those goals.
I can’t remember what we even did before Fotis coming along, we kind of bobbed along really, but now having Fotis is steering us in the right direction and putting our thoughts and plans into reality really. And we’ve accomplished a lot of goals that we were hoping to reach, and we have reached them. And this is where we are today, in a lovely property, in Norfolk, the dream we had ten years ago, and now it’s coming to fruition and we are reaping the rewards with Fotis on board.
Fotis helped us to fund the retirement by first asking us some key questions. It would be fair to say that this was a really big step for us, we were wage earners, we had a very comfortable living, and you know, we were going to be going from this place of comfort to pensioners. We knew that our lifestyle would change, we wanted it to change for the better.
And one of the first things that Fotis said to us was that it is a balance, it’s not about living like kings, well, queens, and then running out of money, but neither is it living like paupers and you don’t have that quality of life that you want. And all your money backs up and after your days your relatives have a pot of cash. So he helped us first of all to budget, that started with some key questions, didn’t it? What kind of life do you want, will there be adventures, will there be holidays, do you want to be ladies that lunch, do you want a new car, what changes do you anticipate coming up when you retire. For us, one of the first things was downsizing and moving. We’ve moved from the outskirts of London up to Norfolk. So it helped us to focus on the goals that we wanted to achieve, that was immensely beneficial.
It’s a much sharper focus now for us because we haven’t got the spare cash if you like, that we used to have, we’re not money rich anymore but we are experience-rich, we do have adventures. And we do live a great lifestyle, and maybe a lifestyle we didn’t realise that we could, had it not been for Fotis’s wisdom, his reassurance, and his input.
In 2016 I had cancer. All is good now, I’m healthy and everything, but even through that process having Fotis on board was a reassurance, it was a help, it was support, advice. And help for you as well, because, you know, if things didn’t go the way, you know, they could’ve done, it was a help for you as well. Yeah definitely.
Fotis makes me feel relaxed, confident, and he’s so knowledgeable and professional and respectful of Deb and I. Being in a same-sex relationship it’s not always an easy issue, we have in the past come across people that have not been as respectful as Fotis. And he’s so fully supportive of us. And that gives you a lot of confidence and that support is just marvellous. He truly is a genuinely lovely man. I’m so pleased he’s with us on our journey together.
And we’d like to do a great shout-out, a big shout-out to Stella, Fotis’s PA, that does a marvellous job. Any problems, you give Stella a ring and she gets back to you straight away. She’s excellent, very efficient.
We would recommend Fotis to everyone. We would particularly recommend Fotis to other same-sex couples and it’s one of the things we’ve talked about to him. That you know, being a diverse couple if you like, that’s one of the reasons we wanted to do this, we want to be visible, we want to show others that are in a similar situation that might be watching this that they can engage to quite a deep level with someone without fear of recrimination, without fear of discrimination, and be respected and feel totally comfortable. So yeah, we would have no hesitation, at all, in recommending Fotis.
We want to finish by saying that I don’t think people realise that they need a financial adviser until they’ve got a financial adviser, a good one like Fotis. We really wouldn’t be without him for the rest of the journey. He supported us this far and we’re looking forward to telling him of all our next adventures so he can help us reach the next goals.
