Early retirement and the NHS pension – Tara’s story

My husband Malcolm and I were looking for a firm who could help to give us a good overview of our finances.

Our needs were two-fold really: we wanted to ensure we could afford to retire when we wanted to, in the style we wanted. Secondly, we wanted to optimise our current investments and our plans for future.

I’m am NHS surgeon, which means that in addition, I was coming up against issues of taxation relating to my public sector pension. Pension caps had been affecting high earners over the last few years, so we needed professional help to navigate us through this.

A clear vision of the future

Initially we had a meeting with Martyn Paterson, and he advised us on everything we needed for a well-rounded financial plan, from protection all the way through to investments and securing our financial future.

Martyn produced a detailed graph of all our outgoings and how that would map out over the years. It enabled us to play with our retirement age, so we reset it from 55 to 50 to see how everything recalculated, and we could see clearly that we could afford to retire earlier than we thought.

We enjoy our jobs so we might not want to retire that early, but at 45, it’s great to know we already have the financial security to do so.

Specialist tax advice

When it came to my pension, we were referred to Carol Brown, a specialist tax adviser within the wider AAB LLP firm.

Carol was very reassuring, but what I found particularly helpful was her honesty – if she didn’t know the answer to something, she’d do her best to find it and come back to me.

I was given enough time to manage decisions and I never had to chase anything. After I’d given Carol everything she needed, I knew I could forget about it and leave it with her.

Professional, approachable and reassuring

Prior to AAB I was using a firm who specialised in medical professionals, but I didn’t feel they’d be able to tailor their advice to my own circumstances. I was also irritated by their lack of efficiency.

My experience with AAB has been much more positive, in fact I’d compare the way they work to that of the top echelons of the legal profession.

They’re professional, approachable and reassuring and you can speak to them at any time.

In particular I feel much calmer about our financial future now because we have someone keeping eye on things. The current pandemic situation, which has cause markets to be very volatile, would have cause me anxiety before, but I can relax now, knowing everything is under control.

“At 45, it’s great to know we already have the financial security to retire at 50 if we want to.”

Tara