Jim's story
Hi I’m Jim, I’m from Northamptonshire and I work for the Chartered Insurance Institute, which is the professional body for insurance.
Before I had an IFA I did everything myself, so I would self-invest into an ISA, generally badly and manage to lose a lot of money now and again, because I didn’t know where I was putting my money. But since I’ve had a financial adviser, basically what he’s done is he’s tightened everything up and told me where I should be putting my money. He’s opened up a new ISA for me and a new pension, so that he can control where I invest my money – so I don’t go so wrong as I used to!
Really what I was looking for was somebody who could help me with my hopes, dreams and plans of where my finances needed to go. I sort of knew where I wanted to go and by when, but what I didn’t know how to do was how to shape it, where to put the money and how to use the right vehicles in which I should be putting my money in order to reach the goal: to retire at an earlier age than 65.
With Jason, there is no technical jargon, he comes down to my level and explains everything in layman’s terms. That’s part of the beauty – the fact he sat and listened to me at the outset. And then when he was relaying back to me when he thought I should do, it was all very easy to understand. Kid gloves stuff… I think you should do this, this and this. So there was no technical jargon, there was no tying to baffle me with science. He just laid it out as to “if you do this, this and this, you should be able to achieve your goal” and it was very understandable and very simple.
What I love about Jason as my IFA is the fact that everything he does, I understand. But also what I love is he’s always on the end of a phone. If I’ve got a question or I need to send him an email, he always responds the same day, or certainly the day after. And if I’ve got some hare-brained idea where I say I want to go here there or anywhere and invest in something, he will either say “yeah, have a go at it, but only use so much of your money” or “I wouldn’t do that” or he just really keeps me on track and points me in the right direction, which is a really great thing to get from an IFA.
I do think Insight Wealth offer a good proposition for money. The charges are probably in line with the rest of the marketplace, but with Insight Wealth, you feel like you’re getting a real personal service. It’s about me, it’s not about them making money. It’s about what I want to achieve, and how they can help me reach that ambition.
If anybody’s looking for an IFA, I would certainly go to Insight Wealth. If like me, when you started out, you didn’t really know what you were talking about. Because what they do is they just talk to you in plain English, in layman’s terms. There’s no jargon. There’s no technology they will talk to you – and listen to you, more than talk to you, about what your aspirations are, what you’re trying to achieve. And then what they’ll do is build up what you want to do and build a portfolio around what you’re trying to achieve. So they listen – you don’t just walk in and get dictated to.
Having previously managed his own finances for several years, Jim was looking for some help in avoiding the mistakes he had sometimes encountered. We were there to give him guidance.