Blog
The Personal Finance Society, the largest professional body for individual financial advisers in the UK, held its annual awards ceremony last night. They recognise and celebrate outstanding individuals and firms who strive to deliver exceptional consumer outcomes within the financial planning profession. During these awards, I (Nicholas Grogan) am proud to have been named Investment
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Following the release of the September inflation figures the increases in the State Pension from April 2022 can be calculated The State Pension and new State Pension are usually increased each April by the “Triple Lock” which is the higher of: Annual CPI from the September before the increase; 3-month average wage growth to July
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We are committed to helping our clients better appreciate the value and benefits of financial planning. One of the ways we do this is by using lifetime financial forecasting, which we also refer to as cash-flow modelling. This enables us to help our clients understand their financial planning needs better. This is because it allows
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We personalise the advice we give to our clients as much as possible. Our financial planning process is all about collaboration. We seek to understand where you are, what you want from life, and any concerns you have. Your goals and priorities are unique to you. Once we have done some analysis, we will have
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Our Investment Committee recently convened. Its responsibility is to oversee the investments we recommend. In other words, governance. An essential part of this is to review our investment philosophy which we covered in an earlier post. Our investment philosophy has developed somewhat since then, but the central pillars remain the same. What is your investment
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Economic growth Signs of slower growth than some had originally expected, amid supply constraints and a Covid-19 resurgence, have led to lower growth forecasts for the United States. Expectations are that the US should reach its pre-pandemic growth trend in the first quarter of 2022, rather than late 2021. Across the euro area, hospitalisations appear to have
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In September 2020, annual inflation in the UK was running at 0.5% on the CPI measure and 1.1% using the old RPI yardstick. At the time price rises were the least of our worries. 12 months later and inflation has become a hot topic. The latest (August) figures are 3.2% CPI and 4.8% RPI. The
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Those in control of how to extract money from their business broadly have three main options. These are to take out the money either as salary, dividends or by making employer pension contributions. The Health and Social Care Levy and the increase in dividend tax rates both make the extraction of profits via pension contributions
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The University of Manchester Research has published a report entitled: Pensions and Divorce: Exploratory Analysis of Quantitative Data. The report has found that, within couples, men have substantially more private pension wealth than women. This poses challenges should they divorce. The researchers looked at the pension wealth of almost 30,000 people over the age of
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We have written previously about how employees exchanging part of their salary and/or bonus for increased pension contributions has become common. We explained how this can be far more attractive than the employee making a direct pension contribution on his/her own behalf. Attractions of salary sacrifice Contributions paid out of an employee’s after-tax pay are
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