Allison McRitchie

My name is Alison McRitchie. I’ve been a client with J Edward Sellars since October 2024, and Thomas Harvey has been my adviser.

At the time I started work, I could have retired at 60. Now, 67 is my retirement age, and over the years I continued to think that’s when I’d be giving up work. It was only after I aged over 60 and one of my colleagues was leaving that I started thinking, “Why am I thinking I have to wait until I’m 67 to do this? Why am I not considering that there may be other options?”

Because I’m in a single-income household, I wanted to explore my options for reducing my working hours and understand how much I’d need to earn to take my pension a little bit earlier. So, for me, it was about getting them to juggle all the figures and look at options for me.

On my employer’s website for pensions and payroll, there’s a link for a service that helps you to find independent financial advisers. I clicked on the link, wanting to try and find someone local, and J Edward Sellars came up.

It was always really good and comfortable working with Thomas. Just after I met him for the first time, my dad passed away. I was due to send paperwork back to him, and I said, “There’ll be a delay.” He was so empathetic, and I never felt pressured to pick it up quickly with them. He said, “We’ll come back to it when you’re ready to come back to it.” And that gave me a lot of reassurance that I was with the right people.

I came away from my initial enquiry with a very clear idea of my options over the next few years; I could decide about when I wanted to leave work and what I wanted to do.

Working with Thomas was such a positive experience. After years of putting off talking about pensions because I never thought I’d understand any of it, he was so good, and it’s made such a difference in terms of my confidence levels, so I would have no hesitation in using the service again.

I would definitely recommend J Edward Sellars to anyone, especially if you’re somebody like me, who spent a long time avoiding conversations like that. The way that they approach things has been very beneficial.