magazine archive
magazine archive
Money Matters
Protecting your pension income from inflation
Thursday 20 May 2021Markets are getting increasingly worried about inflation, with the US recently registering consumer price rises of 4.2% in a year. Here in the UK, CPI still stands at just under 1%, but inflation expectations are mounting, thanks to the strong economic rebound expected in 2020. Indeed looking at...
Five things UK investors can learn from Warren Buffett
Thursday 06 May 2021‘Woodstock for capitalists’, aka the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting, took place on 1 May, and tens of thousands of investors across the globe tuned into the livestream to hear some pearls of wisdom from Berkshire’s chairman and chief executive, Warren Buffett. He is well known for a...
The times when it pays to take financial advice
Thursday 29 Apr 2021It’s never been easier to be a DIY investor with all the tools and information now available online. The internet has democratised information, and many people have consequently become their own financial advisers. This saves on charges, with advice usually costing upwards of £500, depending on the...
FTSE 250 hits new record high: why mid caps are winners
Thursday 15 Apr 2021The FTSE 250 index of medium-sized UK-listed companies hit a record high in early April, after a strong bounce back from the pandemic crash, a recovery which started as far back as March of last year. The strong performance has been credited to a resurgence in the UK economy thanks to a successful...
Give your portfolio a spring clean
Thursday 08 Apr 2021This time last year, the UK had just entered what turned out to be the first of a series of lockdowns, and the nation was digesting a very restrictive new normal. Today, vaccines have provided hope that soon the worst of the pandemic will be in the rear-view mirror, and expectation that the global...
Doing the maths: the benefits of using the new ISA allowance immediately
Thursday 01 Apr 2021Right now, many investors will be rushing to make their ISA contribution for the current tax year before the 5 April deadline. But there is a breed of investor who always gets their ISA contributions in at the beginning of the tax year, and they will be calmly waiting for the 6 April to roll around...
It could be time for ISA investors to think small
Thursday 25 Mar 2021If you think back to when ISAs were first launched in 1999, it wasn’t exactly an auspicious time to start investing. The tech bubble was about to burst, the split cap investment trust scandal was about to explode, and stocks were about to fall into a three-year bear market. But despite that, the...
Should you overpay your mortgage with spare cash?
Thursday 18 Mar 2021One of the few silver linings from lockdown has been the savings people have amassed. The Bank of England reckons households have built up £125 billion of excess savings and will only spend 5% of that money when the economy opens up. That leaves a lot of money still sloshing around in bank accounts...
How to beat the chancellor’s stealth tax raid
Thursday 11 Mar 2021Well, we knew it was coming, and now the chancellor has laid out how he’s going to repair the Treasury’s battered finances in his March budget. One of the key measures is freezing the personal tax-free allowance, and the higher rate threshold, which will mean individuals paying £19 billion over the...
The big risks facing bonds
Thursday 04 Mar 2021Bond investors have had a pretty painful start to 2021, and if the global vaccine roll-out prompts a sharp economic recovery, price falls clocked up this year could be just the beginning. Some bond funds have lost 8% so far in the year to date, and while that might not sound so bad to hardened...