The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has announced this week that ‘Everyone who will be able to take advantage of the new reforms will be able to access free and impartial guidance’ with respect to their retirement options. This was previously announced by the Chancellor to the House of Commons in his budget statement
Read MoreToday, the Bank of England (BoE) released its latest quarterly Inflation Report, which updates its projections for inflation and the wider UK economy. Overall, the report did not make significant changes to either the Bank’s inflation forecasts or its expectations for UK economic growth. It did, however, reflect on market expectations that the UK interest
Read More2014 is likely to be a year of transition for both the developed and the emerging world. In the developed economies, there are somewhat tentative signs that economic recovery is gathering pace with monetary policy in the United States becoming less available. This is the so-called tapering process. In the emerging world, by contrast, economic
Read MoreWith so many pressures on us and information being available on managing your finances from seemingly everyone, including the proverbial ‘man down the pub’, we took some time to identify some of the key areas that could be improved when we are planning our finances. Have a look through and see how many apply to
Read MoreIt was only relatively recently, in April 2006, that HM Treasury brought in legislation to simplify the many different pension regimes that existed at the time. This was done partly to ensure that from the 6th April 2006, all pensions accrued their benefits within set limits, removing the bewildering array of different rules and caveats
Read MoreYou may be aware from media or other communications of a radical change in the way that investment fund managers’ report their charges for investing your money. We felt it was important to explain what was happening in simple English, so here goes……. What’s happened? Traditionally, when you invested into an investment fund, you will
Read MoreWhat are economic cycles and how do they affect me? One of the frequent themes that impacts upon the tactics and longer term strategy when investing, is identifying where we are in the economic cycle. Despite the turmoil and in some instances, capitulation over recent years, the economic cycles are a known and lucid part
Read MoreSeptember 1995……….. eBay was founded, a new optical disc computer storage format was released, later to be called a DVD, NATO airstrikes continued against Bosnian Serb forces after repeated attempts at a solution to the Bosnian war failed, Oasis released their second album (What’s the story) Morning Glory?, and in the financial centre of the
Read MoreAs a new tax year rolls around, you should note that there are quite a few changes to the allowances you can claim to help improve the tax efficiency of your financial affairs. Of course, to our clients we are on hand to advise about these and ensure that in combination they work to the
Read MoreFollowing the recent announcements in the media, the news that employers will have to pay into a pension scheme for their employees may come as a bit of a shock. The Government has introduced auto-enrolment and the National Employment Savings Trust or NEST for short. Preparedness and planning is the key to ensuring that this
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