Christmas is close – however, there is an interesting shift in spending patterns with a lot of retailers seeing sales down and discounts starting early – I don’t think anyone should be surprised by that given the political situation – that just seems to be getting messier and messier. Keep your eyes open for a bargain.
Meanwhile I am speaking to clients that are giving…
Homemade gifts – pickles/oils and sauces.
Waiting for the sales to start
Gifting second hand/recycled items
All of these make sense for the environment and of course, save money. As we all know, once a pound is spent, that’s it gone, it never comes back and is not able to be used again by us. If you get in the game of preserving pounds, one at a time your financial life will soon change.
Pension select committee links
Earlier in the year, I submitted my response to a Pension Select Committee. For some reason it rattled big chunks of the advice industry, mainly because I asked for clarity over pension charges. Especially over the disclosure of the true costs.
Remember this – if you have smaller than average pension fund (£30k) and charges of just 2% – lucky you – many pension contracts are far higher, the amount deducted from your pension fund will be £600 per year or £50 per month. Double that to £60k and the costs become close to that of the average UK council tax, treble that to £120k and your charges will be £1800 every year – roughly the lease cost of a new Suzuki Swift .
Go do the maths on your own fund, you’ll be surprised I’m sure.
The link to my response on the subject of pension charges – on the Government portal is here.
http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/work-and-pensions-committee/pension-costs-and-transparency/written/88360.html – the link is not https – I have no idea why.
Pension review offer
If you’d like a review of your existing pension(s) I have a done for you service.https://www.thefinancezone.co.uk/product/pension-finder-and-review-service/ you can order online, it normally takes around four weeks to complete – most pension providers take three weeks to produce the information – this review could be worth thousands of pounds and is currently discounted – until the end of December.
If you would like to do the whole thing yourself I have a template letter, usually £5.99 but at no charge to you. If you want it, drop me an email to richard@thefinancezone.co.uk and I’ll send it back.
Link to previous newsletter covering interest rates
Interest rates continue to be low, for those that missed my comments in the last email it’s linked below.
https://www.moneytrainers.co.uk?newsletters_method=newsletter&id=2
Rule of Seventy Two
I’m sure some of you will have heard of this before, once you start to get your head around how this works for you, you can immediately look at a potential investment and work out how good or how bad it is likely to be – roughly.
All you need do is take the number 72 and divide it by the potential return of any investment and you will end up with a rough number of years it will take for your investment to double.
Compounding interest is a wonderful thing and it is for that reason that I only ever recommend that any investment you make provides an income. Capital growth is never guaranteed and once income is paid it’s yours forever and can never be taken away. Unlike capital growth which will be removed as soon as the market falls.
This just leaves me to wish you a wonderful Christmas break, watch your money – no one else will.
Richard
www.moneytrainers.co.uk
PS there are a number of industry professionals on this list – I’ll be honest, no problems at all with that – but if you use any content without permission I will come knocking – my bots are watching.