testimonialS
I was Hilary’s divorce lawyer, and saw her financial acuity first-hand. She was able to generate detailed financial documents within hours of my requesting them and had a keen understanding of all the financial matters that arose during divorce negotiations. She also has a compassionate and caring nature, and friendly and approachable personality, which enables her to work easily with people. I refer clients to her for help whenever I believe someone could use her skills and benefit from her empathetic, caring personality.
Hilary’s guidance is life-changing! She has helped me with everything from taxes and investments to filling out complicated forms and follow-up calls. She doesn’t stop until she finds the answer and immediately takes the stress out of any situation. She has a gift for explaining things in an easy-to-understand manner and she makes it fun while doing it. I know I can call her with any financial issue and she will be able to fix it. She has made my life so much easier, I don’t know what I’d do without her!
Hilary helped me transfer and consolidate my retirement accounts, which were spread out at different companies because I had switched jobs a few times. I was in a panic because I had ignored dealing with the issues, as many women do, because I found it emotionally and administratively overwhelming. And I did not know where to start. Hilary’s motivation got me through it. Hilary helped me make the calls needed, complete the necessary forms and chase down and follow up on any needed details or logistics. Hilary helped me make wise investments and her energy and good cheer were the positive forces that I needed. I am grateful for her help, support and guidance!
Hilary has changed our family’s financial landscape and my view of it. When I inherited the responsibility of finances for our family of three, the state of affairs was quite confusing. Hilary has streamlined much of it and is working on the rest. She has explained much of the earnings and expenses to me so that I am able to deal with it independently in the future. She is extremely trustworthy — I have entrusted her with all the financial information of our household without any hesitation.
She has actually reduced our overall expenses. She has moved us to a bank which does not charge as many fees as the then current bank. Additionally, she has gone through our spending with a fine toothed comb and eliminated hidden charges and expenses we were not aware of and we did not need.
She has spoken to companies on our behalf to reduce their charges. For instance, when our too large Pepco bill arrived, Hilary called Pepco and had a long conversation with them. This resulted in the future bills to be reduced to about one third of what we are paying. She is in the process of doing the same with ADT.
In addition to her knowledge of finance, Hilary has a kind and deeply empathetic nature. She has found medical professionals for my daughter and me, who were better than the ones we were going to and charged less overall.
Hilary has greatly increased my understanding of our finances and its implications for our future. I now breath much much easier now that she is dealing with our expenses and budgets. Even if you are not facing a tragedy, which I am not, she will still be valuable to consult her on finances and more. Over and above, I have acquired a loyal and trustworthy friend who is given to my life interests.
Working with Hilary has been a great experience. Prior to working with Climbing on Top I had some financial struggles due to trying to grow my business as a full-time entrepreneur with no financing. 4 years later, I had two large tax bills, high balances on every credit card and no savings. Hilary reviewed all my expenses and debts and helped me cash out an old 401k to pay the tax bills and credit cards. After, my credit score went up over 100 points and I felt a lot of relief without the looming debts on me. I plan to continue working with her to grow and invest future money that comes in. I feel confident that 6-12 months from now I will be in a much better financial position because of her.
I have three children, who all wanted to go to college. On my single income, I did not know how I was going to afford to send them to college. So, Hilary took charge and set up a college savings plan for each of my children. She has taken care of those accounts since 2007, and those accounts enabled all of my children to go to college without taking on loans. Around that same time in 2007, she set up a retirement account for me, which has grown about 85% since that time. If Hilary had not encouraged and helped me with these things, I would have simply kept money in a bank and would be in substantial debt having taken out loans for my children. I always tell Hilary that she has been my guardian angel.
