Ian and Anne Donald.

Ian

My name is Ian Donald. I’ve been a client of Meaningful FP since day one, because before that, I was a client of Aaron’s. I’ve known Aaron for somewhere in the region of 20 years.

The timing was good. It was at a major inflexion point in my life: a big career change, I was approaching the point where the mortgage was going to be paid off, and my girls were approaching university age. So, I had some big questions that needed answering around tax planning, inheritance, and retirement pensions. All mysterious areas to me, and I needed somebody to help me navigate through that.

Anne

Aaron’s very approachable. If you ask a silly question, you don’t feel stupid. Pensions are a minefield to me, almost like a foreign language, I have no idea, and he just asked what I wanted and needed for the future, and therefore the best way of managing my pensions according to what my expenditure would be over the years. He got to know us so well as a family and what our needs were. He knows us so well that if we ask for money or ask for any advice, he knows what our requirements are.

Ian

Like many people, over the years I’d accumulated various workplace pensions, and he helped consolidate them into one place to make them more manageable. Then we started to look much more towards the future. We’ve got a grandchild now, so we were thinking about future proofing and the inheritance side of things and tax planning, and we got more involved in that kind of thing. Most recently, we’ve just moved house, and we were looking at ways of releasing some cash to help the children. We were in contact all the way through that process to make sure we’re making the right decision and setting things up in terms of ownership, etc.

Anne

Every year, he asks us what our needs are financially, and he’s so good at explaining, “We’re going to spend this money here. We’ve got money for that.” So, whenever we ask for anything, we know we’re safe. We always worry that we don’t have enough money, and he’s always reassuring us that we do have enough money and we can meet our needs, and if we have any specific large expenditure, I’ll talk to him, and he’ll say, “Yes, you can” or tell us how to spend it and how to work it out, tax wise, including Inheritance Tax and all of those sort of issues, he will work around for us.

Ian

The best thing I find about working with Aaron is the way he’s opened up the whole area of financial planning, making me take stock of what I want out of life, not just simply where I want my pension to go, but actually, he’s challenged me to think about what I want to do with life, what’s important, what I want, and what’s possible. You always think, “Oh, I can’t do that. I can’t do that.” He’s challenged that thinking, and says, “Well, actually, what is possible? And how are you going to achieve it?” And that’s been something I’ve really enjoyed. It’s been very liberating.

Anne

I would definitely recommend Aaron because he has given us so much advice on issues that I wouldn’t know about. He is very approachable, and we have regular meetings with him, so should our circumstances change, he can help us through those changes. So yes, I’d definitely recommend him.