Paul & Tara, Buckinghamshire

Paul:

Hi, my name is Paul Willmott, and this is my wife, Tara. We’ve been clients of Dukes for about 30 years. Our advisor is Adrian Duke-Cohan, who’s actually been our advisor for the whole of that time.

Tara:

I knew we needed financial advice, so we were advised to work with Adrian. We followed him from his previous company to Dukes. We wanted some financial support and advice for our future, particularly some support at that time.

Paul:

Why did we ask for advice in the first place? It was well over 30 years ago, so we were in the throes of the recession at that time. I was under the possible threat of redundancy. We were seeking advice around pensions and mortgages, negative equity, and property, as it existed then, and how we could position ourselves to actually go and buy the next property, notwithstanding where we were financially at that point in time.

Tara:

Before choosing Dukes, we had another financial advisor and felt that we were being pushed down a route that we didn’t really want to go down. We wanted a more conservative approach at that point, one that was flexible and met our needs, and we weren’t getting that from our existing financial adviser. We wanted somebody who would be able to be flexible with us, but give us some direction, because we were definitely quite naive then when it came to investing money and protecting ourselves and our future. But now we’ve got that support and help.

Paul:

Over the years, our requirements have changed quite a lot. Originally, we were looking at where we were in our careers, the money that we were making, and investing in the long term. As we moved up our career ladders, we earned more money and so were able to look far more flexibly at what was available to us. This was beneficial to us in terms of savings, as well as looking at trust options, such as putting the house in the trust, and what that actually meant to us from a security perspective.

The advice from Dukes is very much directed at our retirement strategy. We have, over the course of the last few years, been really focused on ensuring security in retirement. What we have benefited from more recently is the fact that Dukes have been able to sit us down, go through our aspirations for retirement and tell us that we can retire now if we wish.

Tara:

Sometimes I feel a little bit like a naughty child when I’ve not done something that I should have, such as putting some pension things into the system or filling in a form. But he nudges me to do these things very politely, and it’s good because I do need to be pushed. I need to be told what to do sometimes because life takes over. The main thing is, I feel so happy and confident that we’re going in the right direction, that we’ve done the right things in the past, and that we have protected ourselves to be able to have a comfortable future. We want to retire early and travel around the world, and we now know that we can.

Paul:

What they’ve been able to do is actually sit us down and illustrate how our investments and things like our property can actually fund the future and lifestyle that we want in retirement. I was probably quite concerned whether we’d be able to achieve that before, but now I’m confident that there will be plenty there, beyond both of our devices.

The three words I would use to describe Dukes are competent, trustworthy, and reliable.

Tara:

The best thing about working with Dukes is that Adrian has been able to make it clear to Paul that we’re doing okay and that we can retire early, because Paul never believed it. But seeing it in pictures and in writing has convinced you.

Paul:

Yeah, that’s fair!

I’ve always found them to be responsive, reliable, and very clear with their advice. They know what I want. Over a number of years of working with them, they know where I want to go and what I want to do. I’m quite happy to recommend them and I have done so to friends and colleagues as a consequence.