My wife and I first met Grant when he did a presentation at my wife's place of work 17 years ago. At that time, we considered ourselves somewhat knowledgeable investors who had been working with various stock brokers/investment firms for a number of years. The thing for us was, that after all those years, it seemed that the stock brokers were always making commissions for trading on our behalf when our portfolio was not making any money or actually losing money. If the markets were going up, they would have us buying more, and got a commission. If the markets were going down they would have you "average down", and got a commission. We did not seem to be making any headway. We knew from the time we started working that we would be self-funding our retirement. My wife hated to open the monthly statement that the brokerage firm generated, because one month it would look like we were on track to retire and the next month, it looked like we would be working into our 90's before retirement.
We arranged to meet Grant and his partner at the time, "Cub". After this initial meeting it was clear to us that we really did not have a "plan" to meet our investment goals. We were really just kidding ourselves. Grant put together a full financial plan for us to review. After reviewing the plan, we transferred our investments to Grant to manage. The initial "hook" if I can use that phrase, was when Grant explained the way he worked. If the markets went up based on the investments we had agreed to be in, he made money along with us. If the markets went down based on the investments we had agreed to be in, he lost money. His compensation was tied directly to the success of our investments. He had "skin in the game" and was thus directly invested in our success, unlike the brokerage houses or banks that made money on the buying or selling of stocks or mutual funds on our behalf, regardless of whether our portfolio was actually making any returns on our investments.
Since that time, we meet with Grant often. He is always ready and able to explain to us where we are, what his thoughts are on which way we might to go, and how we would get there. After that first presentation, our overall goal has always been to be able to retire with a reasonable income and to be able to maintain our capital base if not to increase it. Now after my being retired for 8 years and my wife retired for 6 years, with Grant's advice, we are doing exactly what we had planned for. We have been drawing a comfortable income that allows us to travel and do all the things that we want to achieve in retirement while at the same time, maintaining our initial capital. Grant has stated numerous times, one of his goals is that he does not want us to worrying about our investments every day but that we should be out enjoying all that we have been able to accomplish. His financial advice has very much allowed us to do just that.
We have recommended Grant to a friend of ours as well to my mother, who are by all accounts just as happy with Grant and the services that he provides as we are. One of our daughter's and her husband are also with Grant and well on their way to a self-funded retirement also. I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone to go and meet with Grant and find out for yourselves what we have experienced from his excellent knowledge, concern, compassion and service. We look forward to many years to come working with Grant.
