I am so glad I came to see you when I did

 

"Many congratulations to you and your team.

In the short time I have been with you I have been very impressed with the service I've received so far. I note in your review the comments about the short term dip in the investment funds last year, also how well you feel OMW funds perform. I have to say I no way expected it to perform to the level it has so far, even more so as I took a low risk option. In only five months, not only has it recovered the expenses in setting the plan up, your initial fee, but also a tidy increase in the amount I deposited in the account when set up, truly astounding in my view, but then again I have never understood financial affairs. The bottom line is even though I retired two years before I really wanted, I am so glad I came to see you when I did, my retirement so far has been better than I ever dreamed of."

Martin Charles

 

 

Very helpful & would definitely recommend

 

"My wife and I have been looking / dreaming of taking early retirement for some time, during this time we have looked at our finances and felt we were “in a good place” but always felt that we needed to be reassured that our thoughts were valid or that we were just day dreaming. 
We were recommended to “Oyster Financial Planning” by a friend and after the initial introductory meeting we agreed that the “Aspire Lifestyle Financial Planning” process matched our needs.
The Aspire process needed us to ask ourselves some quite challenging questions about our aspirations / dreams and we also needed to conduct a thorough review of our current and possible future expenditure.  Both of these were very helpful and reinforced our thoughts.
From the Aspire process we now have reassurance that our thoughts were correct. Michael has now tailored our investments so that they will meet / exceed our lifestyle aspirations for the future. We have found Michael & all at Oyster friendly very helpful and would definitely recommend Oyster to friends, family & work colleagues."

Gerry & Anne
 

 

Best Life Experiences

 

“Michael, and the tools used at Oyster, provide a forum for Lorraine and I to discuss future plans and lifestyle choices in an informed way that we would have difficult visualising ourselves. In these days of personal choice there are an infinite variety of possibilities to consider, from the highest level of how long and how hard to work down to the detail of savings and investment alternatives, it would become almost impossible to plan. Without Michael’s help, we would just not have been able to make the comparisons; weighing up property purchases in Canada, moving house in the UK, or deciding on a plan for retirement. If it had not been for the work we have done with him, we would certainly have been more conservative in our choices and could easily have missed out on some of our best life experiences. Thank you Michael.”

Richard & Lorraine

 

Would recommend friends and family, no qualms!

For the past several years Michael Osman of Oyster has been talking us through the Lifestyle Planning process that calculates what will happen in the future to our investments, savings, etc. The ‘bucket’ of money that will hopefully last us until the age of 90 is estimated based on answers we gave to Michael re our income and expenditure both now, and also after 75, when we will be slowing down a little. These are updated annually. He advised us to stay in low-risk investments and over the past 10 years these have averaged ~5% growth per year, which is excellent.

We found this to be a very valuable exercise as it puts into perspective what the savings will amount to, barring unforeseen circumstances. Michael has run several scenarios for us and these have helped us to understand what would be possible, and more importantly, impossible. Having shown us how our savings will grow he then moved onto asking us to consider what we might like to do with these savings, given certain scenarios. We have found this exercise to be invaluable too. What we then did was to move onto exploring with Michael which of our hopes/dreams we can afford. This gives much more confidence in making any decision in the future, while securing our sons’ education and early adulthood financial needs. In fact, we bought a holiday home in France in late 2010 and Michael was extremely helpful in suggesting which of our funds we should use and which ones we should ‘ring fence’. We have had many holidays both in the house and from the house to other parts of Europe over the last 7 years. We are also starting to plan with Oyster beyond when we might sell the house in France and release those funds for future holidays and living expenses back here in the UK.

We would certainly recommend the Lifestyle Planning process and Oyster to friends and family without any qualms at all, in fact we did this recently with two of our friends and they are both now customers of Oyster. We will obviously stay with Oyster and hopefully enjoy the service Michael gives for many more years to come.

Peter and Marian Capper

 

Start Living the Future

“I have always been very cautious about my personal finance, but to the extent that my fear of future insecurity was preventing me from finding enjoyment in what might be possible in the present. Meeting Michael took away that fear, with an innovative practical and visual illustration of what the future could deliver, easily modified should life’s journey take an unexpected turn. For me, financial planning is no longer something to fear or misunderstand, and I have actually started to enjoy the fruit of almost 40 years of working and saving! Step one is having a fab oak frame garden room designed and built, complete with the wood burning stove I have wanted for 20 years!

Michael has also been wonderfully supportive when unexpected difficulties arose, and has always been there to offer advice and help whenever I needed it, with genuine care and kindness.
So, as they say, you can’t take it with you! Start living the future you have worked hard for….. Try listening to pearls of wisdom from Oyster Financial Planning – it could change your life!”

Denise

 

 

Friendly but very professional

“I met Michael in the middle of 2014, I was in Financial difficulty due to illness, He sorted out all of my problems. I was very impressed by his friendly but very professional way he conducted business. He has a lot of other ventures going on in the community. I would recommend him to anyone that needs help financially, a very satisfied D Pearson”

D Pearson

 

Concerns about Retirement

“After meeting Michael for a chat over our concerns towards our retirement your professionalism helped us understand the breakdown of our financial situation giving us a lot more confidence in planning for possibilities in the near future, especially regarding imminent retirement. Your time was very much appreciated my us. Thank You.”

Bert & Bridget Cook