Martin and Jenny

When Martin and Jenny read an article we had published about comprehensive financial planning they were in their early sixties and had spent many years developing their family business. They now owned their premises and a shop next door which they let, but as Jenny’s father had just died and left them a house and an investment portfolio they wanted to sell the business and start to enjoy the sale proceeds.

Over the years they had accumulated considerable assets in a variety of PEPs, ISAs and pension plans. They wanted someone to sort everything out, work out whether they would have enough to live on and help them to try and avoid their children having to pay such a large sum in inheritance tax, as had just been paid on Jenny’s dad’s estate.

One daughter, Meg, had worked with them but had since married and had no interest in continuing the business. The other daughter, Annie, lived very happily with her man in a sort of ‘commune’. She had two children from an earlier relationship but apparently little need for worldly goods.

Meg, who had worked hard to help her parents’ business, and was struggling with her accountant husband to put two children through private schooling, did not always see eye to eye with her sister.

Two years later Martin and Jenny are happily retired, have more spendable income than they had thought was possible and have already established a substantial and immediate saving in inheritance tax and capital gains tax. They have helped Meg by arranging to pre-pay her children’s school fees and sorted out a trust, over which they have control, for Annie and her children.

What’s more, instead of the hotch-potch of financial arrangements they had accumulated they both now fully understand what they’ve got and why they’ve got them.

The names and circumstances of this case study have been changed to protect our clients' identity.

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