Planning for Tomorrow – March 2020

The end of the 2019/20 tax year is fast approaching, and there are a number of valuable allowances and reliefs that will be lost if they are not used before the deadline.

Planning for retirement can be both exciting and daunting. It’s essential to structure your affairs to make sure you have enough money when you eventually retire. To give your pension pot a boost, one option to consider if your pension savings are more than your annual allowance is to take advantage of the ‘carry forward’ rules for unused annual allowances from previous years and still receive tax relief.

Portfolio diversification is the foundational concept of investing. It’s a risk management strategy of combining a variety of assets to reduce the overall risk of an investment portfolio.

Are you worried about leaving an inheritance to your loved ones and then having them pay tax on your legacy? No one likes to think about a time when they won’t be here, but unfortunately the reality is that some people aren’t prepared financially.

The questions our clients almost always ask us are: ‘Will I be able to retire when I want to? Will I run out of money? How can I guarantee the kind of retirement I want?’

Divorce is an emotional and stressful period for those who have to go through it. However, it’s important that people realise that a pension is a valuable asset when considering how they split their money.

In his 2015 Spring Budget, then-chancellor George Osborne introduced sweeping changes to the way that pensions are taxed. The new pension freedom rules have led to the over-55s being faced with a variety of different choices when taking and investing their nest eggs.

We all want to ensure we have sufficient funds when we retire so we can spend our time the way that we want to. But how realistic are your current retirement plans?

Young women are putting their future retirement security at risk by opting out of their workplace pension[1]. The analysis shows a worrying spike in opt-outs, with 10.5% of women aged 22–29 opting out of their workplace pension. This compares to 8.1% of men in the same age group.

Buying a property is usually the biggest financial obligation many of us will take on in our lifetime, and it’s an obvious moment to pause and consider our protection needs.

If you’re investing – especially for major goals years away, such as retirement – you can’t afford to ignore the corrosive effect rising prices can have on the value of your assets.

An increasing number of people aged over 65 are using equity release products to pay off debts and mortgages. Many people in the UK might be ‘property rich’ but want or need more than they have saved to enjoy the lifestyle they want. And with more people living longer, there are, on average, more years to fund.

The world of work has changed enormously over the past 20 years. Being self-employed, freelance or working on a contract basis has become the norm for all sorts of professions.

It’s often a common fallacy that only those that are wealthy have any need for professional financial advice. Regardless of how careful you are with your money, dealing with the tricky intricacies of taxation, investments and financial regulations can be difficult for even the most money-conscious of earners.

Building wealth for the future is important, but increasingly people want their investments to do more than make money. Investing ethically means different things to different people.

A new UK-wide strategy to transform the country’s financial well-being in a decade has been launched by the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) under its government mandate.

Employee health and well-being is high on many businesses’ agendas and is no longer merely an afterthought when addressing sickness absence. There is an obvious link between a happy, healthy workforce and improved productivity.

Whatever you’re putting money aside for, there’s likely to be a role for Individual Saving Accounts, or ‘ISAs’. An ISA is a way of holding savings or investments without paying personal tax on interest received or on the growth of your investment.