Tips for when you’re coming up to retirement
FOR many of us the ‘coming up to retirement’ has many stress points to it. It is filled with many financial questions, but the emotional ones are those that can paralyse us, and we really need to pay attention to those, long before retirement. The same applies with having to finish work early, let alone […]
Tax really does kill
IT was ‘death by taxes’ last week, and a nod of the head to all the secondary charges we never had before (city car parking, hospital car park charges, council tax et al). Taxes are not the problem, as shown in a survey demonstrating that over two thirds of us would pay more tax to […]
Taxed to death
I’VE always thought it strange that after all the extraordinary technological advances in the world, our tax rate still increases, as does inflation and so interest rates. Surely with such speed of advances, we wouldn’t need as much, and services would be cheaper and quicker? Remember when they first introduced an answer machine for your […]
Making good financial decisions
APATHY has always been the biggest risk to any investor or saver. I was once asked by an independent financial adviser (IFA) why I gave away all the tips and inside research so freely in columns. I explained that I have never seen an IFA as competition. The more people see an IFA, the better […]
‘The inflation hoodwink’
THIS should be my last column on the current inflation hoodwinking, which I hope has been helpful. It has, and will be used for political measures, so watch out for that in the near future. It’s an easy trick to use, and easily missed, so bear this in mind when you are looking at your […]
Inflation – a deeper story
LAST week, we covered inflation and some of the drivers for it, mainly corporate greed. ‘History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes’ is a phrase we can use when looking at inflation ‘stories’ and, in particular, who gets blamed for it. There is often a bogey man, but the accounts of the energy companies, […]
What is inflation and why does it matter?
FOR the most part, society looks at this as being ‘out of their control’ and the numbers are as meaningful or interesting as a party-political broadcast, whilst eating last night’s cold chips. But inflation really does matter. It wipes out your financial security and it hurts us all, well not necessarily all. Read on, I’ll […]
Pension drawdown or an annuity?
FOLLOWING last week’s column on targeted pension strategies, in which I mentioned annuities, I thought I would cover the difference between annuities and pension drawdown. When I was a young lad in this role, everyone took out an annuity. Today, those accessing their pension plans for the first time is closer to one in 10. This […]
There could be a hefty price to pay for ignoring that pension document in your cupboard
‘IN the olden days’, the general advice regarding a pension fund was to begin reducing the equity proportion of your investment fund as you approached retirement. The reason for this was twofold: equities carried a higher risk than bonds and property; almost all retirees bought an annuity which was then a ‘locked-in’ income. I’ll cover […]
Budget pension changes and tax-free cash
I’LL make no bones about it, if pensions aren’t your thing, this may not float your boat. The government recently announced changes to pensions, to again simplify something they have simplified countless times in a way that makes it impossible for the average person to have even the remotest clue what to do or where […]
Debt ceiling wrestling matches or de-dollarisation
RELUNCTANTLY, I write about the US debt ceiling farce. Why? Because headlines are everywhere describing all the potential chaos around the likelihood for the US to default, and each journalist wants the public to read their wonderful variation. In short, if they defaulted, we are all probably nuked to one degree or another, so describing […]
Eat the egg not the chicken!
WHILE we are still in a ‘cost of living crisis’ and inflation is unnecessarily high, it is worth spring cleaning your expenditure every so often, even if it’s summer. There are tips and attitudes that can really help. Often financial advice looks straight at the money side of things, but that isn’t really in the […]