Joanna Grankin

Working with Josh means I feel hugely more secure about my financial future.

My name is Joanna Grankin and I’ve been a client of The Orchard Practice for around three years.

We got in touch with The Orchard Practice, because my husband and I had in effect been winging our finances all our married life and knew that it probably wasn’t the best way to manage moving forward.

The problem is we’re not, we weren’t, very good at saving. We were very good at spending, but not so good at saving. We found that we would get to a point in our lives where we needed a little bit of a boost and we were stuck. Whether it was a household issue or something else.

We also were very aware that we wanted to make sure we were planning for retirement as well. My husband had a pretty decent pension through work, but I certainly didn’t. I was very conscious of the fact that if I didn’t put something in place now, it was going to be too late.

We were recommended to The Orchard Practice by some friends who had used Josh for a couple of years and rated him really highly. Our friends are very sensible, very good financial planners. So we felt that if they were recommending Josh that would be good, they wouldn’t be using anyone who wasn’t top notch.

Working with Josh at The Orchard Practice now means that I feel massively more secure about my future, certainly with regards to the pension. There was always a concern about what was I going to do if I stopped working? Where is the income going to come from? I feel so much happier and secure knowing that there’s a pot, which I’ll be able to take out of when I finally no longer work, and that it will be enough that we can live relatively comfortably, maybe not too extravagant, but comfortably so that we don’t have to worry about retiring.

The three words I would use to describe Josh and The Orchard Practice our confidence giving, calm and responsible. I think that certainly calm was really, really important to us because we did feel a little bit insecure going to meet Josh and first time thinking oh my goodness, he may be judging us, because we’ve made quite bad decisions in the past. But he was so calming and reassuring that we knew that actually it didn’t really matter what was done in the past; what mattered was going to be what he put in place in the future.

The best thing about working with Josh and The Orchard Practice is knowing that he will be on hand to help if we have any queries at any time during the year. We have yearly financial planning update meetings with him, which means that we know that if anything in our lives, a change of circumstances, our plan is being adapted accordingly. But knowing that if things change, and we need support straight away, for example, when I was made redundant, Josh is there on hand to guide and support. So, he is always a real help.

I would definitely recommend using The Orchard Practice to people. Josh is so reassuring, so kind. He gives you so much confidence in the work that he’s doing and gives us the confidence to know that we’re making the right decisions for our money for the future.