A financial planner shares how Crown's Money Management program helped a long-term client named Jeff take control of his finances. Scott Parry's involvement in a key meeting convinced Jeff to adopt the solution, which led to improved financial outcomes.
Jeff and Robyn are clients that we've been looking after for at least 10 years, and during that time they've had a substantial mortgage. In fact, Jeff's beyond normal retirement age now and still working. We've been working with them to try and get them to contain their expenditure and reduce that mortgage, and nothing that we've done over that journey has helped. In fact, on any number of occasions, they've come in and asked for additional withdrawals from Jeff super to pay off an increase in credit card debt that they haven't been able to manage. And on at least one occasion, they refinanced their loan and drawn capital back down on the loan over that time frame. Generally, they come to see me, and particularly when Jeff comes to see me, there's a great feeling of guilt that we're still in the same situation and he just hasn't really known what to do to do with it, despite the many suggestions that I've made. And I guess if I had to sort of put some sort of analogy, has been a bit like a hamster on a spinning wheel, just absolutely going nowhere. About 12 months ago, I introduced Jeff to the concept of crowd money management. And I have to say his initial reaction was that he was very reluctant to go down that path because he felt that he didn't want to lose control or have somebody else telling him what he could spend. He did have most of his mortgages on a fixed term, and when that fixed term came up and he phoned me to get my advice about whether he should fix again, I asked him to come back in so that we could talk about the Crown Money Management solution again. And I had Scott Parry come and sit down with Jeff as well. The meeting was really, really good. Jeff suddenly, I think, could see that this may be a way forward. Scott was really good in terms of selling the concept, and the fact that I was in the room gave Geoff a lot of confidence that this was something that may be in their interests. So they've since put that solution in place and they're already starting to see the benefits. They've paid off the principal in the last six months, four times as much as they paid off the principal in the previous six months. Got further work to do with Jeff and Robyn. They had been during that whole period. They were also on maximum allocated pension payments from Jeff super, and we've just turned those off. So now, not only will that mortgage continue to fall, but Jeff super will no longer be cannibalised by the extra withdrawals that he's been making. The last time I saw them, there was a really good feeling, actually, that they finally were in control of their finances.
