New Year’s debt resolutions 2020
THERE is perhaps nothing more sobering as January’s credit card bill, especially now we can ‘tap’ our way through bars at Christmas. I’ll dedicate this column to debt and managing it with further resolutions for next week. As I explain to my daughters, you can spend your life in ‘control time’ or ‘reaction time’. Which is […]
Sterling bubbles and your post-election finances
WITH an election out of the way, what is the potential change for sterling and how will that affect your finances? Much razzmatazz in the press greeted UK readers after the Conservative victory in the election. Headlines of ‘sterling sky rockets against the euro’ were pretty mainstream. Currencies, and in particular sterling, map political uncertainty and […]
Investment inequality: 33 per cent fall or 65 per cent rise?
FOR whatever money we have left after the multiple upfront or Ninja taxation, we all want to make the rest work as much as possible to give us as many options in retirement/ later life. How have stock markets performed to help your pensions/ investments? Well, it very much depends on how you look at […]
Is your pension running at 77 per cent for 514 per cent?
IS your pension running at 77 per cent for 514 per cent? In a world of never-ending austerity, making each pound stretch the best it can is everything. It truly baffles me how far we have come with efficiencies of computers, cars, trains and manufacturing, yet prices just seem to keep rising. It’s almost by design. […]
How will the UK election impact your money?
IT’S election time. How will the UK election impact your money? Gone are the days when my three available channels and a broomstick as a remote control meant there was no way to avoid a party-political broadcast. It meant as much to me as a cardboard licking competition as a child, but undoubtedly this one is […]
UK election: Salmon or damp squid?
I SPENT a couple of weeks in Japan at the rugby world cup, and over the last year have visited a number of other countries. And without fail, the message coming through loud and clear regarding the UK is: ‘What on earth is going on’? When you are trying to watch a game with a […]
£6.6billion in overcharging closet funds
IF I asked most investors/pension holders what they thought was happening inside their invested money, the answers I’m sure would all correlate. You pay money to have your hard-earned cash managed to minimise risk and maximise return and you expect that. Unfortunately, that is not what happens all the time and investors are estimated to […]
How you can mitigate against paying inheritance tax
INHERITANCE Tax (IHT) is about as popular as a party-political broadcast forced into the middle of your favourite sports programme. After all, a 40 per cent tax on assets you have acquired through blood, sweat and tears seems mildly disappointing. Last year was a great one for inheritance tax collecting in the UK, with an extraordinary […]
Are we moving towards a cashless society?
OVER the last two weeks we covered negative interest rates and how that economic policy might be used to refuel stalling economies. The key to achieving negative interest rates is a cashless society, because without cash, below zero rates become possible. What would a cashless society look like and what are its threats and opportunities? […]
How would negative interest rates impact me?
I WAS going to cover a cashless society this week in relation to the negative interest rate column last week (they sort of go hand in hand), but I’ll just cover what the impact of a negative interest rate policy might be, further to a few questions I was asked. Firstly, the supposed explanation of […]
Who wants to be paid for borrowing money?
YOUR bank contacts you and lets you know that it wants to pay you for having a mortgage. Nice thought? Well, that’s exactly what has happened in Denmark with Jyske Bank, which pays its borrowers 0.5 per cent. Why are they doing that? Why are they paying people for borrowing money? This stems from a […]
Property investment fund opportunity?
BUILDING a property investment/pension portfolio is undoubtedly an art. The psychological magnetism of the fear of losing out, the thought of buying when a fund is ‘hot’ and ‘being with the crowd’, and selling for the opposite reasons, are all barriers to our emotional intelligence, which ensures we lose money. Twenty years ago, I started […]