Neil & Lesley

Neil  
My name is Neil and this is Leslie. We’ve been clients of One Life since 2017.

Leslie  
We got in touch with Nick because we were at a stage in life where our children were leaving home, we’d seen them through university, and we had a little bit of money sloshing around and we weren’t quite sure how to put it to best use. So, we thought we’d look for a financial adviser at that point.

Neil  
We chose Nick partly because he was local, and I did some research as well. What is good about Nick and One Life is that you can come along and get a free chat, first of all. So, we got a feel for what he was about before we made any decisions.

Neil  
When we first met Nick, he proved to be quite a relaxed, chilled guy. He was quite friendly and I also felt that he helped Lesley relax. We were very impressed, obviously, because we’re still with him. So clearly, we were impressed.

Leslie  
Over the last seven years, he’s helped us with all kinds of things, really. We inherited some money, so he helped us with investing that. He’s helped us when we’ve looked at helping our children by giving them money to get on the housing ladder. He’s helped me personally because I don’t like talking about money, and as Neil said, he’s made me feel much more at ease. I think one of the first things I said when we first met him was “I find talking about money really difficult.” He asked, “Why?”, I then explained, and he has kept that in mind.

Neil  
Nick’s helped us plan for retirement. We do the sums, and we try and work it out, but having someone who’s an expert, explaining with his graphs and fantastic software what it means if we retire at a certain time, has been very helpful. For me, the main thing is that he’s given me confidence that I can say, “Yes, I’m going to stop now.” and I know that we’ll be okay.

Leslie  
I feel safe about retiring because we’ve done all the sums, and Nick can say, “You’re safe up to this age, but when this happens, you might need to sell the home.” So we know what the options are.

Neil  
The best thing about working with One Life is the systems that are in place. They have this great software that gives you graphs and projections and Nick makes it so easy to understand. So even though we’ve dealt with finances, and banking and all the rest of it in the past, Nick just makes it very, very clear with different scenarios. I think it’s really good the way he operates that and communicates that to us.

Leslie  
We want to do more travelling, but we’ve got four grandchildren at the moment. So, we want to spend time with them and do more things together because we still do quite a lot of things separately – work determines that. We’ve got a very lovely house that we’re very blessed to have. So we want spend time there and do stuff with that.

Neil  
Nick is passionate. He clearly loves playing with the figures and working things out. He’s very welcoming when we come to the meetings. It’s great to come to the office and have a meeting with him rather than one on screen. He’s very friendly and we just have a great relationship now.

Leslie  
One of the best bits of advice that Nick has given is when he talks about the cupboard, the fridge and the freezer. It’s about how you should have your money for every day, for general use, and then long-term investments. And that makes sense to me, I can cope with that.

Neil  
When Nick’s not around Julia is very helpful. She emails quite regularly, she’s got action lists that she sends us to make sure we’re on top of what we need to do. So we’re always confident that there’s someone there to help us.

Leslie  
Nick helped me get over my nervousness about talking about money by just making it seem every day. I don’t know why I find talking about money embarrassing, I just do. Maybe it’s the way I’ve been brought up, but he puts you at ease. He talks about money as an everyday thing – it’s just something that you have get on and deal with. He talks about if Neil died yesterday, you would have X amount of money; if I died tomorrow, X amount. Even those words are quite shocking sometimes but they’re fact, and he makes all those difficult conversations reality, which makes them easier to live with.

Neil  
I’d certainly recommend Nick and One Life. He’s been great for us, very positive all along. If you’re thinking about it, definitely go and speak to Nick, and have a trial with him.