… And we’re not talking about investments. Since the New Year began, there seems to be a multitude of reports about how people are more unhappy than ever before. I know that many people will have the ‘New Year blues’ but I don’t see how they can say that people are at their most unhappy. […]
The beginning of a new year seems a sensible time to recommend a personal growth book for the book of the month. But this is a personal growth book unlike any you may have read before. The Inside-Out Revolution by Michael Neill sets out a philosophy that attempts to deal with the rushed and hurried […]
It has been reported that £10,000 held in a high street savings account will be worth £9669 in two years’ time, effectively costing you £165.50 per year just to hold the cash! This prediction uses an average interest rate of 0.76% for a fixed-rate 2-year account, which means while your money is costing you money, […]
Well they were talking about it, and now they have actually done it. From 31st March 2017, early exit charges on existing pensions for those wanting to access their benefits from the age of 55 will be capped at 1% of the value of the policy. That doesn’t mean pensions with early exit charges of […]
As you are all probably aware, the new allowances for dividends introduced in April this year mean you can earn £5000 of gross dividend income before having to pay tax, no matter what kind of tax payer you are. Earnings above your allowance are then taxed as: 7.5% for Basic Rate tax payers 32.5% for […]
To receive any UK state retirement pension on retirement after 5 April 2016, you need at least ten complete years on your National Insurance Contribution (NIC) record. The full state pension is paid to those who have 35 or more complete NIC years. You may not receive the full pension if you were contracted out […]
