Helen's story

Hi, my name is Helen Hey. I’ve been a client of Sylvan Financial Management almost since their inception; I think since six months after their inception, and Jane Patrick is my financial planner.

The existing adviser that I had was really following a different mandate, and it wasn’t particularly personal. I’d been moved because of the amount of money that I could invest on a different platform. I was still paying the same fees, but I didn’t feel like I was getting that personal service; I didn’t feel like they were listening.

I’m in my mid-50s, and lots of life changes happen then. Jane has helped me after my mother died with what to do with inheritance money and to try and diversify a little bit into more eco-friendly investments. She’s helped me through redundancy, thinking about what to do with existing pensions and consolidation of that. She’s helped me with retirement planning because I don’t want to work forever, and she’s helped me understand and be confident that I will be able to retire.

For me, the best thing about working with Jane and the team is that they come to me with timely suggestions for moving funds or doing a bit more planning. They see the changes that are happening in the economy, and I don’t have to worry about it and go to them; they come to me proactively and come with suggestions and solutions.

Working with Sylvan Financial Management has enabled me to see the future and to make some really good choices about what I want to do and when I want to do it. I feel a lot more in control of when I want to retire and how I want to retire.

In life, lots of things can be thrown at you. In the last four years, my mother died, I was made redundant, I got divorced, my kids have gone to Uni, and I’ve changed jobs. So, lots of things happen and each step along the way, one of the things that makes you feel confident and able to go and live your life is your financial backing. Sylvan’s financial planners have definitely helped reassure me about my choices and my investments for the future.

When you invest, you want growth, and we’ve certainly achieved that and benchmarked that very positively, from what I can see, against other companies and the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250. As well as feeling in control of your finances and getting that personal approach, ultimately, your money wants to grow because there’s inflation around, as we know at the moment. So, that’s been very successful.

The three words that I’d use to describe Jane are knowledgeable, trustworthy, and accessible.

In the time that I’ve been working with Sylvan, I think the best piece of advice they’ve been able to give me is the retirement planner, punching every scenario into that and thinking about realistically how much money I will need to live off, how long I am going to live and caveating that with a few extra years, but that’s given me so much reassurance as to what I need to do.

I would recommend Jane, Sylvan Financial Management, and their team of planners. I have recommended her to at least two or three of my friends because they are knowledgeable, trustworthy, interested in you as a person and in what you want to achieve, and give good advice in a timely manner that is easily understandable for people who don’t really know what’s happening in the financial sector and don’t understand the jargon. They really help you get closer to what you want to achieve.