Richard helped us plan not just our finances, but the life we wanted to live

My name is Peter Richardson. I have been with Betterment Wealth since its inception. More importantly, I’ve been with Richard Fern, my adviser, for more than 12 years now.

My wife and I contacted Richard and sought advice to establish how quickly and whether it was possible for us to retire as early as we wanted to and how we could combine savings, pensions, and potential future earnings to make that dream of early retirement come true.

I knew Richard socially, but I didn’t know what he did until we just sat down and got chatting. His general demeanour, personality, and calmness made it easy to talk to him about what we were trying to achieve. It became obvious to both my wife and me that we could trust someone like Richard to provide the advice and information we needed.

We have been retired for nearly nine years now. My wife is a couple of years younger than I am, but at 56, to be able to stop working and enjoy the lifestyle that we have has been amazing, and Rich has been at the cornerstone of that with the advice he’s given. It’s been easy for us to stay with him because we’ve been so successful and confident with how we’ve approached things and the decisions that we’ve taken.

Richard helped with the transition from working and getting paid to work to being almost paid not to work and being retired with some very simple advice. He asked, “What kind of lifestyle do you want? What kind of expenditure do you expect? How much tax do you want to pay? And what are your future plans – where do you want to see yourself in the next five or ten years? What do you want to do for holidays with the family and with future grandchildren?” His advice has been holistic in terms of how best to enjoy those things, but at the same time, keep secure the investments that you have, therefore giving you that security to enjoy that lifestyle and not thinking, “Well, it’s going to run out at some point.”

Three words I would choose to describe Richard would be, firstly, trustworthy; secondly, extremely professional; and lastly, very competent.

I would happily recommend Richard and Betterment Wealth based on the fact that after 12 years of working with Richard and having him as our adviser, we’ve achieved all that we wanted to achieve, and a little bit more. We sit here now, my wife and I, confident about the future financially; we’re more than secure, we have a fantastic lifestyle, and Rich has been a part of making that happen.