Jane Senior & Phil Whitehurst

Phil:

Hi, I’m Phil Whitehurst and this is my wife, Jane Senior. We’ve been clients of Advice Matters for as long as they’ve been set up. Before that, we had a relationship with Chris Wheatman, one of the partners of Advice Matters.

Jane:

Over the years Chris has helped us with different aspects, particularly when we were looking to buy a house and were looking at pension provision. He’s also helped us to understand how to make our money work for us when we had enough money, as well as when we haven’t. So, he’s been involved in choices that we’ve made.

Phil:

The last year has been life-changing for us for a number of reasons – moving house, inheritance issues, Covid, all these kinds of things. But Chris and Advice Matters have steered us successfully to selling our house, buying a new house, and thinking about our investments going forward.

Jane:

When we’ve got Chris in our corner, it gives me a lot of reassurance to know that there’s somebody else involved in the decision-making process to help us with industry-specific information. Also, I quite like to discuss some of the implications of what I see going on around me, such as Brexit, or the best way to manage pension drawdown, and Chris is great at helping to explore some of these issues. This enables me to talk to our accountant and they work really closely together. Chris is very good at collaborating with the other key people in our business and also in our personal life.

The best thing for me about working with Chris is his flexibility. His business model allows people to take the level of support or advice that they need at the time. We have two nephews and a niece who are just starting out in the workplace. We’ve been able to set up conversations between them and Chris to discuss how they should start to consider their pensions. Which is really the last thing on a 21-year-old’s mind! That’s been really reassuring for us and they’ve enjoyed speaking to him. He’s able to work with young people, as well as people like ourselves who are just moving into retirement.

Phil:

The three words I would use to describe Chris are: integrity, caution, and flexibility. Integrity is really important; if somebody is looking after our money or guiding us, I want to feel that we can trust that Chris is that person. Caution is really important, too. I can often come out with lots of crazy ideas about where we should be putting our investments and our money. And Chris is always the steady guiding hand that brings me back to reality. Flexibility is important as well. The work that we’re in changes quickly, and requires different perspectives. Chris has a very flexible approach and style in looking at how we manage our investments and our money.

I would recommend Chris to other people – we’ve actually recommended him to our nephews and nieces to discuss going out into the world of work, managing their savings and so on. We would recommended Chris to anyone.