News and Views

My fiancée Cholpon sold her car, a BMW 520 Diesel M Sport, for £6,800 a few weeks ago. She was wondering what to do with the proceeds when I suggested investing the money into two Junior ISAs for her young children to fund their future University education. Of course...

The global stock of negative-yielding debt is now in excess of $17 trillion as rising market volatility lends extra force to this year’s unprecedented bond rally. Thirty percent of all investment-grade securities now bear sub-zero yields, meaning that investors who...

Ever been puzzled by the term quantitative easing or QE for short? Well you are not the only one. It is of course a euphemism for the printing of money or to be more exact, digitally creating money. Quantitative easing is an unconventional monetary policy in which a...

In 1966 Robert F. Kennedy delivered a speech that included an instance, “There is a Chinese curse which says “May he live in interesting times.” Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative...

Dan Sullivan is a highly renowned Canadian coach, most of whose clients are financial advisers from primarily English speaking countries. Dan has been coaching for decades. He wrote a short book called “The Good That Financial Advisers Do”. I have unashamedly listed...

Bonds mean different things to different people. The reason for this is because there is a myriad of investments known as bonds. For example there are Building Society bonds, bank bonds, government bonds, corporate bonds and investment bonds to name but a few. What I...

Due to the changes in pensions and trusts legislation, over the last few years, it is much less clear cut whether or not to make a death benefit nomination to put your personal pension into trust. Prior to these legislative changes life was very simple. If you had a...

Students in England are going to graduate with average debts of £50,800, after interest rates were raised on student loans to 6.1%, according to an Institute for Fiscal Studies report conducted in 2017. I suspect the figure has since risen to an estimated...

By now most of us have heard of the Bank of Mum and Dad (BOMAD). Increasingly parents are lending or gifting money to their children typically to put towards their first property purchase. Legal & General recently confirmed that the Bank of Mum and Dad is now the...

A client of ours, Philip, prematurely died a year ago at just age 66.  He was single at the time of his death having become diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia only a couple of years earlier.  This disease is a rare form of dementia which is even worse than...

In April 2006 so-called pensions simplification was introduced by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, under the Labour government of Tony Blair.  Unfortunately, the changes introduced to pensions were anything but simple.  It may as well have been...

Do you have death in service benefit from your employer? If so, have you made a death benefit nomination?  Do you have life insurance?  If so, is it in trust? The benefits of trusts have diminished significantly in recent years, but they remain an excellent tool to...

As the title of this blog suggests the long-awaited review of Inheritance Tax is nigh.  Or is it? Forgive me for being a cynic but as far as I am concerned The Office of Tax Simplification, OTS, is an oxymoron if ever I have heard one.  There is no way a public-sector...

  The law of trusts has existed since the 12th century from the time of the crusades. When a landowner left England to fight in the Crusades he would transfer legal ownership of his lands in his absence to another person to manage on the understanding that they would...

A client of ours, Kim Stopher, has suffered from oesophagus cancer for a while and has recently been told he only has about 6 months to live. He had a final salary pension scheme with Invensys worth £374,000.  When he first realised his life expectancy may be as short...

  Invesco carried out a large survey of advised investors in 2018 to find out more about their attitudes to investment.  It produced some interesting results as follows. Investors considered themselves to be higher risk takers 71% considered themselves to be...

There is a concept known as behavioural finance which governs the way you make investment decisions.  It’s really the combination of economics, psychology and sociology which provides explanations for why people make irrational investment decisions. Fortunately, there...

Warren Buffet, the world’s most successful investor and third richest man in the world, recently said that he expected returns from shares over the next 10 years to be very modest.  When such an esteemed investor as this makes such a forecast you have to take it very...