Tim & Joy Foster

Business owners & executives

Joy: Hi, I’m Joy Foster. And this is my husband, Tim.

Tim: And we’ve been working with Expert Wealth for a couple of years now.

Joy: I wanted some help with planning the longer term vision for our family financially. We had been married at that point for 10 years, and things had been ticking along, but we didn’t have a longer term vision or plan for our finances, and also for what we wanted to do with our family longer term. So that was the real reason I called Jonathan. I kind of dragged Tim along with me, but I think Tim has valued the sessions we had with Jonathan.
It never feels like financial counselling, it feels more like life counselling. And out of that life picture, you’re able to start to think about what you want to do with your finances. So I feel really lucky that we found Jonathan and have been working with him for a couple of years.

Tim: I went to Expert Wealth because my wife told me I had to! And I say that jokingly, but actually it was something that we had to do together. Without it being something we argued about, finance was something that we didn’t necessarily agree on the longer term future. So actually, what we’ve got through working with Jonathan is the chance and a forum to discuss it, to plan and to actually come to some sort of mutual agreement as to where we want to go to.

Joy: I chose Expert Wealth over other financial advisers for two reasons. One, I knew the work that Jonathan’s wife, Nancy Hunt, was doing through the Nasio Trust. And so I also knew that Jonathan had a bit of a background that was connected to faith, which was important to me. I really wanted a financial adviser who saw the situation holistically, not just as “here are numbers and here’s what you’ve got to do”, but really looking at the picture of your life from, let’s say, a more faith based background. And that was important to me, that was my number one reason.
I also just knew he was an amazing person, and the way that he gave back to the community said a lot about how he cared about his finances. And we were that type of person as well; we weren’t about ‘get rich quick’, and we’re definitely not about ‘let’s have as much money as we possibly can’. It was really about being smart with the money that we were bringing into our family and into our household, but really thinking also about philanthropy, and about the bigger picture for how we want to make the world a better place.

I think that Expert Wealth really gets that. They get the whole picture in a way that probably most other financial advisers we’ve talked to, or worked with, just don’t think that way. So I really appreciate Jonathan’s way of thinking and how he brings the whole picture together. One of the things that Jonathan did with us on the very first meeting was really get us to think about what we wanted to do with our lives. He asked you questions like, ‘if you died tomorrow, are you going to be happy with what you did with your life?’ Those are not questions that a normal financial adviser asks. It was really interesting, because we came away from the first meeting and Tim did some thinking about what he wanted to do with his career. And actually, just in the last few months, his career has changed trajectory. That’s very much related to the conversation where he was being asked ‘what do you really want? And what do you really want to pursue?’ Once he started thinking about what he wanted to pursue, he really leaned into that.

And equally for me, I run my own business. It really got me thinking about how big I wanted my business to be, because I think a lot of women don’t think big enough. He just got me into a place where I was dreaming about the size of the business I wanted, and what opportunities the dream job and the dream business could really give us for our family and for our life. We are actually living that out right now in a way that is quite magical. I think it just starts with planting that seed of ‘what do you really want, what are your dreams?’ and then leaning into those. So I’m very, very grateful that he helped us have some of those hard conversations to get to that point.

Tim: It was great to have the conversations about where we wanted to go. And for me, I guess the real beauty was understanding what I had to do in order to get to where I wanted to go to.

Joy: I think the thing that’s changed for me in the last year since working with Jonathan is just looking at the bigger picture, and really saying ‘what do we want as a family? What do we really want?’ and starting to lean into that vision. Not just having the vision be something that we occasionally talk about, but actually being something that we’re really actively working towards.
It’s been fun as well having the kids in on the conversation! We’ll be in the car and we’ll be talking about things and we’ll be dreaming, and it’s a lot of fun to say: okay, well, what if we did this? And what if we did that? So we started to have a lot more visual conversations with the kids about what life would look like if we really leaned into our dreams. I think that’s a gift to give to your kids.
It’s certainly a gift that Jonathan gave to us as adults; to really rethink what we wanted for the second half of our lives. Because let’s face it, the first half is almost done, and now we’re gonna focus on the second half! So it’s a really great opportunity to realise that actually, there’s a whole life out there still to find and discover. And I think that’s just something that he gave us.

Tim: The best bit for me about working with Expert Wealth has been the journey that they helped us go on. We were people who had ideas, yeah, but actually what they gave us was a hand to hold to help us along the way.

Joy: Would we recommend Jonathan 100%. He is a great friend. He is a wise adviser. He’s, you know, a counsellor. He’s amazing. So yes, we would recommend him wholeheartedly.

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