Selling a Business – Alan’s Story

I met AAB Wealth through the Chartered Accountancy firm because they worked on the general auditing and accounting functions for my software firm.

I asked them if they could also look after me personally because I’d started my own tax return, but it was just getting too complicated for me. They basically took it all off my hands, sorted it all out and all I had to do was sign the forms!

Once the tax return was taken care of, they introduced me to the financial planning side of things, and that’s when I started working with the Wealth team.

A new view of retirement

This was the first time I’d actually sat down with someone and they’d asked me how I wanted to spend my money when I’m 90! It made me think in a whole new way about how to sell my business and the need to plan my retirement.

Early on in my business career I’d invested in a Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP), and that was the pension plan ticked off – or so I thought. What I didn’t know until speaking to AAB Wealth was that there were about 101 more things to think about as well.

It’s not until you start to think of it in terms of how much a pint of beer might cost then that you realise you have to really plan things properly. It’s one thing to have the pension organised, but another to see if it’s enough to last until you reach age 90, for example.

The process

You get to answer a set of detailed questions about how much you want to be able to spend on things like regular holidays when you retire. Then you get a plan that shows you your income coming in from various sources and you see how the two lines meet.

The thread running through it all was how to make sure you’d have enough money to live the life you want to, and how you could reduce the tax implications. We also made sure there wouldn’t be any huge tax liabilities to pay on my death.

This was something that I wouldn’t have been able to do myself.

The crucial bit realising that I had more money available than I thought. In fact, I’d be able to have two or three really good holidays a year without it adversely affecting anything.

A feeling of safety

One of things I like about way they work is that because of the fee structure, they don’t charge week by week or individually, so if we speak on phone, we don’t suddenly get a bill.

There’s also a feeling of safety from working with AAB Wealth. Now we have overall peace of mind that we don’t have to keep thinking ‘How much will we have next year?’

It’s more a warm cuddly feeling than a ‘wow’ type of thing with AAB Wealth, it all just happens without you having to worry about it. That’s why we like working with AAB Wealth.