Meet Andy and Alana

The mental relief of knowing that we’ve tidied everything up and now have financial peace of mind.

We spent time unravelling the various accounts that had been accrued over a lifetime of working and Jessica was not afraid to challenge me when I’d got a bit ‘stuck in my own mind’ about how I envisaged my retirement would happen.  Mainly, she calculated that I didn’t need to wait for (hope for even?!) redundancy – we could already afford for me to retire whenever I was ready.

This was very freeing as we no longer felt like we were on the treadmill and Jessica helped us understand that what we wanted was achievable.

We feel like we can confidently live our lives knowing that we have a financial plan and the understanding of what we can do with our futures.   The biggest change has been flipping our mindset from being savers to spenders – it’s a difficult thing to change the habit of a lifetime.  I struggled initially given how much we were spending whilst I was working. As Jessica says, it’s about giving ourselves “permission to retire”.

It’s not been the smoothest of retirements given some curve balls that came our way, but Jessica was responsive to changes we needed to take on board, rolled with it and accommodated us brilliantly.

The holistic approach really helped us both understand the bigger picture which has come in very useful given stock market performance over the last few years!  Thankfully, we’re on plan and Jessica keeps us informed whilst also reminding us that we don’t need to worry about short term volatility.

We feel under less pressure and really appreciate the impartial voice which Riverfall provides.  I’ve been recommending them to ex-colleagues as we’ve really seen the benefit, both in terms of our finances and providing clarity and certainty to make plans going forwards.

In hindsight, we’d reached a certain point in our lives and the job had started to get in the way of things we’d rather be doing.  The house was good, I was at the top of my career and the kids were doing just fine; I was running out of reasons to justify the hours I was working.  It’s important to retire TO something and we have plenty of hobbies that keep us busy.

We would both recommend the Riverfall team, they’ve helped us move forwards and enjoy something that always felt like it was permanently remaining years away.