Category: Financial planning

National Insurance contributions go towards things like your State Pension but they don’t count towards the costs of social care. This type of care is managed by your local authority and generally comes at a price. That is why you have to apply directly to them if you need help with paying for long-term care.

An April 2015 article reviews the cost of studying at university in the UK, giving food for thought for would-be undergraduates and their families. UK tuition fees are frequently under the media spotlight, following price hikes for home students in recent years. But the overall cost to study in the UK, according to an April

  A recent Standard Life article suggests that in simple terms, you probably shouldn’t be worried about recent market falls. Most of us are investing over the long term, and significant market falls happen periodically. Generally, the wrong thing to do when markets fall by a reasonable margin is to panic and sell out of

Strategic reports provide ‘very little insight’ into future prospects. Many strategic reports contain a mass of annual data and text, which is largely backward looking, finds a PriceWaterhouse (PwC) study. Information disclosed in companies’ annual reports is being buried in a mass of annual data and text, presenting investors with a tough challenge to unearth

A single Lifetime ISA for everyone should be created with all tax reliefs on pension contributions being scrapped, a leading figure at the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) has proposed, according to an article published by the CPS. Research Fellow Michael Johnson said the opportunity has come for a radical overhaul of savings after the

We were recently reminded of Linda Ellis’ poem The Dash, which you can read in full here. The Dash talks about the life of a man who has passed away, being talked about by his friend at the funeral. The friend refers to everything that he had done and achieved during his life as being

An analysis of the Chancellor’s Summer Budget recently published by ‘This is Money’ presents the outcomes for individuals and families in relation to broad categories of ‘Winners’ and ‘Losers’. One category labelled as winners are Taxpayers. The threshold at which workers start paying higher rate tax will rise for the first time in five years,

Inheritance tax, once only paid by the super-rich, has become a middle-class plague as house prices have soared. But millions will now escape this unpopular ‘death duty’ thanks to a chunky new allowance announced by the Chancellor. For all bar the wealthiest, inheritance tax should no longer be a problem. The new rules mean family

New research from Prudential, in the insurer’s ‘Class of’ Study, which tracks the future plans and aspirations of people planning to retire in the next 12 months, has now been released, in the study’s eighth year. This year the research found that for the ‘Class of 2015’ divorcees, the average expected retirement income is £15,700

By now, if you are somewhere in the retirement experience – either approaching it, passing through it or leaving it behind – you will already have experienced firsthand your own childhood and maybe that of your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Now you are heading to experience later life, which for most of us will stretch