The Budget announced unprecedented flexibility and choice in how people can use their pension savings in the future. From 6 April 2015, people over 55 can choose to withdraw their pension savings as they wish, although this will be subject to their marginal rate of income tax in that year. Continue reading “Budget tax trap on pension withdrawals”
The Budget 2014 announced unprecedented flexibility and choice in how people can use their pension savings in the future. From 6 April 2015, people over 55 can choose to withdraw their pension savings as they wish, although this will be subject to their marginal rate of income tax in that year. Continue reading “Future pension savings”
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has confirmed that new proposals for a single nil rate Inheritance Tax (IHT) band for trusts will not be applied to existing trust arrangements, where no further assets are added or variations made to that trust. Continue reading “Wealth planning strategy comes under scrutiny”
Over the course of your working life, the chances are you’ll change jobs a few times, picking up different pension pots along the way. Continue reading “Managing your pension pots”
Almost half (47%) of Britons are up and down when it comes to money, making shrewd savings one moment to justify overspending the next, according to research from Standard Life by YouGov Plc. Continue reading “Yo-yo effect”
The number of people saving adequately for retirement at 53% is the highest it has been since 2009 and the biggest ever year-on-year rise, up from 45% in 2013, as the impact of auto enrolment and improvements in the wider economic environment begin to take effect. Continue reading “Tracking retirement savings trends”
More than one in three people approaching retirement are unaware of the pensions reforms announced in the March Budget, according to new research[1] from MetLife. Continue reading “Are you aware of the Budget changes?”
It has been a long wait, but animal spirits are finally stirring again. Not just in financial markets, where the bull market has been underway for more than five years now, but in the real world of corporate activity. Continue reading “On the look-out for opportunities”
Forget the bank of Mum and Dad – today’s young people are now receiving help from the bank of Gran and Grandad, with millions of grandparents offering financial support to their grandchildren. Continue reading “Bank of Gran and Grandad”
Investors like to sort things into neat categories; it helps make sense of a highly complex world. Categories like ‘Emerging Markets’, ‘BRICs’ and the ‘Fragile Five’ have all been invented as easy-to-understand groupings of supposedly similar countries. Yet we have to be careful of such generalisations, because the more research you do, the more you realise that there are often more differences than similarities between these groupings. Continue reading “Investing in a highly complex world”
