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Category: Uncategorized
When you look ahead to 2013, your glass could be half full or half empty. In the UK the lights have just gone out in the last Comet store. And yet Nissan are pumping £250m into Sunderland to build a luxury small car and create hundreds of jobs.
The employment data in the US has been consistently moving in the right direction for the last 27 months. But every 20 months the country finds itself another $1tn dollars in debt.
Category: Uncategorized
There has been a significant growth in the promotion and marketing of short-term ‘Payday’ loan schemes recently. The morality of these schemes remains an open debate, where one side say that such schemes fulfill a need for people in hardship, in a time of recession, whilst from the other side there is powerful argument that such schemes and their widespread promotion make vulnerable people short of cash, even more vulnerable.
Category: Uncategorized
Historically, many people chose to contract out of the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme using a personal pension scheme. Put simply, this meant that the money that would have gone into the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS) went into their personal pensions instead – effectively, they were swapping known benefits from the Government for unknown (but potentially greater) benefits from their own pension scheme.
Category: Uncategorized
The annual allowance for tax-privileged pension saving was reduced from £255,000 to £50,000 in the 2011/12 tax year. Now the lifetime allowance on money that can be accrued in a pension fund and still receive tax relief, for tax years 2012-13 onwards, will be reduced and is set to fall from £1.8 million to £1.5 million from April 2012.
Category: Uncategorized
No-one who is going through a divorce finds the process easy: it’s long, messy and almost always painful. Even if there are no children involved, divorce is a procedure that takes its toll on both sides: the acrimony, the paperwork – and the inevitable meetings with your solicitor.
Category: Uncategorized
In the UK, we may be putting more savings into stocks and shares ISAs than into personal pensions. Reporting on savings trends in the 2010/2011 tax year, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said savers put £14.3bn into personal pensions in that tax year, compared with £15.8bn into stocks and shares ISAs.
