Watty's Awakening

rtandon27

I'm rather pleased with the purple haired lady - the man with the attitude can find business elsewhere! - he should not get his back up at legitimate questions!

Humdinger1

Purple hair! And a woman!! Ideal, and more fool snotty man. Not a good fit indeed but he may never understand why. Not till he goes bust, anyway. So glad that Wattydog is helping. Dogs always want to help. Thrilled to hear about your improvements @Watty1 love Humdinger xx

TallGirl

So glad you have chosen one and glad it was not the one with that stupid answer. As I said before you pay so much for the initial assessment and advice you do want it to be ongoing and useful or you have to start again with a new person and pay twice in effect as they will need to go through everything again and advice you. Love all the changes to the house so important to make it yours finally.

WelshmansDaughter

When it comes to mailboxes, the bigger the better.

Watty1

Initial meeting with purple haired lady was really interesting. It was the free analysis of where I am with everything (I actually thought I paid for that) and then the next stage has associated costs with recommendations of where the money should be moved to and so on. I think it was fact finding on both sides, do I have sufficient funds for them to work with and do I want to work with them.

The summary - I've done really well since leaving PPH. When I left PPH I was MF but had no other money than my pension pot which I knew was insufficient but now is enough to meet my needs until a point in the future where I will sell the house and downsize and use the equity for the last part of my life.

She ran models based on if I sell the business or not. To my surprise selling it does not make that much of a difference other than I most likely would not need to downsize. There are two ways to look at this, I concluded. I could sell the business and "splash the cash" for a bit or continue to my frugal (read frugal for me) life and not need to sell up until later. But since leaving PPH I find I do not really want "things" and my animals are important so three weeks to three months travelling somewhere glorious sounds lovely but I would worry about leaving them so I would not enjoy myself far from home . So sufficient cash is enough cash for me.

I'm meeting the potential purchaser on Friday. The projections were helpful. I remain ambivalent. When the discussions started I wanted out, as my health got worse, I wanted out even more. She has now wasted so much of my time and I've rethought how I could run things. I will see what she says on Friday.

The takeaway for me really was that every time I've looked in the food cupboard and thought how can I use this up, every time I've bought an item of clothing in the charity shop, the furniture I found on Marketplace rather than buying new to furnish the house after PPH left, the few nights I just slept on a mattress on the floor because that was all he left, the seeds some of you were kind enough to send me to fill the borders of my garden, the long hours working rather than having fun all of those things got me to this point.

Now each one seems small on its own but the final outcome of all of those small things is that I have a secure financial future. This diary really has helped keep me on track. What I do from now just builds on that.

Watty1

That was a long post, summary, keeping at the small MSE things makes a huge difference in the long term, purple haired lady proved that point yesterday.

TallGirl

Sounds like the meeting went well glad she was also checking you out to see if she could work with you and add value to what you need not just get another customer. Well done on how far you have come it is truly amazing.

greenbee

I have to say I'm having second thoughts about the IFA I've been working with. I've done a risk profile, given her an overview of my expenses and investments, and the last meeting was just her going through everything we'd already discussed. She's not local (and came highly recommended) so said she could work via Teams, but so far it has been phonecalls, so no sharing of screens/info.

What I specifically wanted help with was working out what my current portfolio would allow me to do, how much I need to continue to invest to able to retire at any given age, and to work out how much I actually need to earn. She keeps asking me how much I'm earning - and doesn't seem to understand that being unemployed means £95/week :) And that I can't look for another job until I know how much I need to earn. So I've been reluctant to sign the paperwork - also a lot of the information seems to be requested as hard copy. And I'm not sure I'm ready to sign to give her access to all my many pensions until she's given me an idea of where we might go. There doesn't seem to be an option to pay a fee for scenario modelling which is what I really need. I guess I need to draft something in an email and send it over. But I do need to stop stalling.

And actually, looking at the fee structure, I don't think I can afford it while I'm not earning. I do wish they'd be up front about how much things are going to cost before asking for information. Interestingly, the fee she mentioned only applies to ongoing management - the cost of the initial analysis work is much more expensive due to the tiered structure. So I think I've worked out what I need to do. Thanks for being the catalyst to make me think it through! I guess I'll have to do the maths myself.

beanielou

What a lovely post Watty.

Watty1

@greenbee I did find a company that does just modelling and only that which might be more what you need, I'll see if I can find the information and ping it over to you in a PM. Might take me a day or so