I feel comfortable and relaxed having been through the process. You engendered a feeling of trust in both Angela & I, following my redundancy when I was 58. Over the seven years since that first encounter, that trust and feeling of comfort has grown – there has been no attempt to sell – it has been very much consultancy – understanding the needs and delivering to them, recognising the aspirations for a life style within a budget.

I have seen your role as being rather like an architect. If you simply design a box with a lid to accumulate stuff, without understanding how life is led inside that box, it will never be a home. There is some digging around the roots, what the Japanese term “nemawashi”, to do before there is a real understanding of the requirements. This requires time and patience. You have given the former and demonstrated the latter – thank you.

Your personable nature and integrity make our meetings a pleasure, and we now have a sensible viable retirement plan.

JL Surrey

I really like the technical influence and the reasons you give for doing something. I am surrounded by academic folk who think they know best and do stuff on their own. I have normally known about the recommendation, but valued your how to action and felt secure in knowing that what I thought was the right decision, was in fact correct. This helps me feel in control and confident about my financial arrangements.

You are not assertive, which is what I like, you don’t do “tell” and you give the impression that you know what you are doing and this gives me confidence. I thought your original report was too long. But I do really like your meeting summaries, each one was an accurate summary of the principle points that came from our meetings, no one else has ever done that before.

I also felt confident that whilst you live a good life style and own a boat, you do not live in a massive house or show off your money, otherwise I might have felt that you were simply earning money for your self rather than your clients.

You are a true adviser.

JC Berkshire

It’s an excellent service. I enjoy the discipline and our face-to-face meetings once a year. As a bit of a control freak, I feel I should be doing more to understand all the figures, but I really find the detail a bit boring. I could do the research myself as I do for everything else, but I don’t really understand it enough and wouldn’t have much confidence in the results. Financial decisions are all long-term; everything else in life is short-term, so our relationship and continuation has been a big reassurance. You stop me making mistakes. I also appreciate the way you blend the emotional side to a decision being made with the factual.

I have introduced my three best friends to you, my mother and my sister. These introductions take some courage, as the liability that exists if the relationship goes wrong is huge.

What more can I say about trusting you?

AG Wimbledon

I have trusted your guidance and enjoyed the process we have been through together. I now feel reduced anxiety, even though investment values have fallen but realise that the banking crisis is to blame, and peace of mind. I find your service very upbeat and always leave our annual planning meeting on a high.

You are charming.

PR London

You have been extremely helpful. With the state the country and the world are in at the moment nothing feels under control. If it had been we might have avoided this economic mess. However, speaking for ourselves, we feel that our finances are much more under control since we moved to James Harvey Associates. We have gained from the ability to communicate our needs and desires and know we can have discussions as and when we need them. Following our annual review we found your advice to be both helpful and informative.

We feel very happy recommending you to others.

J&J Guildford

The surprising result is the benefit.  One client, who had driven for about an hour, wrote afterwards:

My wife and I had the best conversation ever on the drive home

“All the points that were raised we discussed further and we really communicated in a way that would not have happened had the meeting been held in our house or my office.  If we had tried to have the same discussion at home it would have lasted two minutes, due to all the distractions and the fact that you can’t get out of a car at 70mph on the motorway – you have to talk!”

This is an understandable feeling but pure observation shows it not to be true.

Take the weekly shopping trip

If the weekly shop is done without a list, then items will be forgotten. Creating a shopping list in a vacuum can be difficult but if it is clear which meals are to be catered for, how many are to be catered for, then the generating of a shopping list becomes easier and the whole process more effective and satisfying.

Stress and trauma is taken away as everything has been considered. All can sit and enjoy

So it is with financial life planning, having some idea of what the game plan is, what does it look life if it were good, what does it look like if it were bad, gives us an objective. Yes, the objective will change and for good reason, we are humans our life expectations will vary, but folk who do put some planning to work, say afterwards there is a sense of control and peace that comes from it.