Gary O’Brien

Senior Chartered Financial Planner

Professional:

Gary is one of the original founding directors of Ardent Financial Planning, helping to set the firm up in 2006. He is a Chartered Financial Planner with nearly 40 years of experience in financial services. His professional passion is to help clients to organise their finances and guide them towards their chosen future lifestyle.

Contact Gary

Qualifications View SPS View Certificate of Excellence

Personal:

Outside of work, Gary’s biggest priority is his family, spending lots of time with his wife Jane and two grown-up children. In his spare time, he enjoys several hobbies and pursuits, including flying aeroplanes, riding motorbikes, learning guitar (still!) and obviously sinking one or two pints with friends.

Accreditations

We’re delighted to say that all our advisers are ‘Top Rated’ on VouchedFor.

To learn more, please visit our blog post all about our inclusion in the latest VouchedFor Top Rated guide by clicking here.

Spotlight questions

On an ideal weekend, you can find me:

Spending plenty of time out somewhere with the family; then some time on one or two hobbies (flying, gym, fishing, watching sport etc).

My favourite holiday destination is:

Somewhere new. The world is a big place so somewhere I’ve never been that gives a good mix of adventure, history and relaxation.

My favourite song to play in the car is:

Any/all 80s clichés. E.g. Summer of 69. Can’t sing ‘em loud enough!

The first album I bought was:

Wombling Songs by the Wombles. (Yes really!)

If I could be any fictional character, I would be:

Virgil Tracy. I already have the eyebrows and I get to fly Thunderbird 2.

If I could turn any activity into an Olympic sport, I would win a medal in:

Playing woeful guitar.

When the dessert menu arrives, I’m looking for:

Treacle tart or sticky toffee pudding

The three qualities that draw me to new people are:

Openness and honesty
Warmth
Sense of humour

My pet peeve is:

When people pay more attention to their mobile phone than the person/people they are actually with.

The best gift I’ve ever received is:

A rejection letter from the British Airways pilot cadet scheme at the age of 20. Devastating at the time but proved to be the biggest motivator of my life.

The three people at my dream dinner party would be:

Jamie Oliver, Mark Knopfler and Jess Ennis-Hill

The three small things that make my day better are:

Some sunshine
Some laughter
A big mug of tea

Three things I haven’t done so far include:

A spacewalk
Learned to crochet
Made a bad cup of tea

Likes

Respect and manners
Challenge and change
Fun and a good laugh
Keeping fit
Tea, lots of tea.

Dislikes

Rudeness
Over complication
Unnecessary delays
Cakes which over promise and under-deliver.
Irresponsible dog owners!

Meet the team

Based in the beautiful historic city of York, Ardent’s team is a professional yet friendly group who are highly qualified in their field. But away from work, they also have interesting lives and hobbies too, so click below to find out more about them.

View the whole team