At first glance, recent figures from the housing markets appear wholly positive. During July, Nationwide reported a 1.7% leap in prices. However, the country’s largest building society warned of a “false dawn” when they announced these figures. They highlighted that much of the rise can be attributed to pent up demand and people deciding they …
Introduction What goes down immediately comes back up? If only saving and investing were that simple… That’s what happened in September. In August, we reported that almost all the major markets we cover in this Commentary had fallen. The good news last month was that almost all the markets went back up. There were no …
Introduction The story of the US/China trade dispute was a thread running through much of last year. Some progress was made in resolving the dispute at December’s G20 summit and that appeared to continue in January with China saying it is ‘ready to work’ with the US. Donald Trump confirmed this, describing a telephone conversation …
Innovative Finance ISAs (IFISA) are a little-known type of ISA that can see competitive returns. Here’s a summary of what they are and how they use P2P lending to secure steady rates of growth: P2P lending P2P lending stands for peer to peer. It’s founded on a pretty straightforward idea: you lend your money to …
There’s no reason why being a parent, and particularly being a non-earning parent with commitments to their children, should put you at risk of decreasing your state pension entitlement. Currently, however, there are potentially hundreds of thousands of people in this exact position – although thankfully, there are steps to take so that it can …
A quiet wind down to Christmas? Everyone leaving their offices early and not much happening in the second half of the month? Nothing could be further from the truth: December was one of the most eventful months of the year and while there was some good news, it was eclipsed by falling stock markets as …
So the Chancellor’s last Budget before Brexit has been delivered. In general, it was good news with an end to austerity being heralded and the growth forecast for 2019 increasing. Thinking of budgets got us wondering about the Christmas TV advertising budgets. It’s that time of year when speculation arises – will John Lewis outdo …
With your Christmas preparations, starting soon is the key to saving money. If you leave your shopping to the last minute, not only do you have to face the 23rd December high street chaos, you’ll miss out on the excellent deals that many retailers offer early in the festive shopping season. It’s incredibly easy to …
This year Chancellor Philip Hammond delivered his autumn budget a few weeks earlier than usual. Normally the budget is released in mid-November, but this year he gave the budget on 29 October. In the run up to Brexit, Hammond didn’t release any huge announcements. Perhaps he wants to leave plenty of room to accommodate for …
There was scarcely a mention of the ‘P’ word in October’s Budget speech (believe us, we were listening closely for it!). Instead, Hammond used the Budget speech as an opportunity to unveil his ‘rabbit in the hat’ changes to income tax thresholds, an increase in NHS mental health funding and a ban on future PFI …
