Introduction
If you are a government employee getting close to your exit, you have probably wondered what you can actually expect from the person helping you. Not just the paperwork and the numbers, but the relationship itself.
You have probably caught yourself wondering whether your advisor is really thinking about your future, or just about how long you will stay a client. Most government employees never say this out loud, but the question sits there quietly for years, especially as retirement or resignation gets closer and the decisions start to carry real weight.
It becomes even harder to untangle when the advisor in question is someone you have known for a long time. Loyalty and trust are real things, built over years of phone calls and meetings. But loyalty on its own does not always translate into the specific expertise your situation now requires.
This article walks through a real case, one government employee, one exit, and one point four million rand in tax savings, and what it taught me about what an advisor actually owes you, and what you should expect from anyone handling this stage of your life.
What’s Actually Happening
Many government employees stay with the same financial advisor for years, sometimes decades, simply because that relationship is familiar and trusted. That loyalty is understandable, and in most cases, well earned. But not every advisor is familiar with the specific tax rules and exit planning that apply to government employees leaving service.
This creates a quiet gap. The advisor you trust may not be the advisor who is best placed to handle this particular part of your journey, and that gap can cost you real money if it goes unaddressed. It is rarely anyone’s fault. Tax rules for government employees are specific and detailed, and most general financial advisors simply have not had reason to specialise in them.
The result is that many government employees either miss out on savings they were entitled to, or feel they have to choose between loyalty to a long standing advisor and getting the specific help they actually need. As you will see below, that is not always a choice you have to make.
Number 1: Relationships Are Not Meant to Last Forever
For years, I worked from an assumption that most people in this industry share. That a good relationship with a client should last as long as possible. That the goal is to keep that person with you for the long term, and that a client leaving is a sign that something went wrong.
That assumption changed for me after I lost my mother in February 2023. It was sudden, and it forced me to see something clearly that I had always known in theory but never truly accepted. No relationship, no matter how good, lasts forever. Every relationship has a beginning, and at some point, whether through circumstance or simply through life itself, it ends.
Once you accept that, the question changes. It is no longer how long can this relationship last, or how do I keep this person as a client for as many years as possible. It becomes something more honest. What is the best I can actually do for this person, in the time we genuinely have together.
That single shift in thinking is the reason this article exists, and the reason the case below unfolded the way it did.
Number 2: The Old Model Was Never About You
In business, there is a well known concept called lifetime value of a client. It looks at how much a single relationship is worth over many years, and it shapes how much time, attention, and effort a business is willing to invest in you at any given moment.
The problem with this model is that it quietly puts a ceiling on what you receive. If a business expects to earn a certain amount from you over the life of the relationship, it will typically only deliver value up to a point that protects its own margin. Anything beyond that starts to feel, from the business’s perspective, like giving away too much.
This model was built to protect the business, not to serve the government employee sitting across the table from it. It rewards keeping you as a client for as long as possible, rather than rewarding the advisor for doing the best possible work for you in any given moment.
Number 3: A Different Question Changes Everything
Instead of asking how much a relationship is worth over time, I started asking a different question. How can I deliver the most value to this government employee, in the time I actually have with them, regardless of how long or short that time turns out to be.
This single shift removes the ceiling entirely. It stops treating the relationship as a long term investment to be protected, and starts treating each stage of the relationship as its own opportunity to deliver everything that can honestly be delivered, without holding anything back to preserve future income.
It also removes the temptation to hold on to a client simply because letting go feels like a loss. Once you stop measuring success by how long someone stays, a client choosing to move on for their own good reasons stops feeling like a failure, and starts feeling like exactly what it should be, a relationship that did its job.
Number 4: How to Actually Measure Value
Value is simple to measure once you know what to compare. You look at what you paid, against what you actually received in return, and you let that comparison speak for itself rather than relying on how much time was spent or how the fee felt at the time.
As an example, if you paid a hundred rand for advice, and that advice saved you ten thousand rand in tax, most government employees would agree that is strong value, regardless of the size of the fee involved relative to the outcome.
This is the measure that matters. Not the size of the fee on its own. Not how long the relationship runs. Not how many meetings took place. Simply, what did you get back for what you gave, and would you make that trade again if you had the choice.
Number 5: The R1.4 Million Case
A government employee came to me with a specific situation. She had worked with her financial advisor for twenty years, someone she trusted completely and genuinely liked, but he was not familiar with the tax rules that apply specifically to government employees leaving service, or with the wider tax saving opportunities available at that stage.
She asked if I could help with this one part, and then return to her long standing advisor once it was done. That was the arrangement from the very beginning, stated plainly and openly, and I agreed to it without hesitation.
Over the following year, we found over a million rand in tax savings on her exit, and identified a further four hundred thousand rand in ongoing tax savings available to her over time. In total, one point four million rand in tax savings, achieved on that single piece of her financial life while every other policy remained with her existing advisor.
Once the work was complete, she returned to her original advisor, exactly as she had said she would from the outset. Nothing about that outcome surprised me, because it was the arrangement we had agreed to from day one.
Number 6: Letting Go Was the Right Call
When my compliance team raised concerns about this outcome, the question was a fair and reasonable one to ask. Had she simply used the relationship to get what she needed, and then left once there was nothing more to gain.
My answer was no, and it remains no. My responsibility in that relationship was never to keep her as a client indefinitely. It was to deliver the most value I could during the specific time she needed me, for the specific piece of work she asked me to do. Once that work was done, respecting her decision to return to her long standing advisor was simply the right thing to do, and the only outcome consistent with the terms we had agreed at the start.
This is the standard I now hold myself to with every government employee I work with. Not how long will you stay with me, but did I do the very best I could for you while I had the chance to do it.
Your Next Step
If you have read this far, you are likely the kind of government employee who thinks carefully before making decisions about your pension and your exit, rather than reacting to whatever advice happens to be closest at hand or easiest to access.
That is exactly the kind of thinking this stage of your life deserves. Whether you already have a trusted advisor, or you are unsure whether your current advisor understands the specific tax rules that apply to government employees, it is worth understanding what value actually looks like before you make your next decision.
The full video goes deeper into this story, including the exact numbers involved, the internal conversation it created within our own team, and how this shift in thinking now shapes the way we work with every government employee who comes to us, whether for one specific part of their journey or the whole of it.
No panic. No fluff. Just the truth.
Watch the full video and book your VIP consult:
Join The Retire vs Resign Masterclass™
