Interest rates – when will they rise?

Different people have different predictions about interest rates.
Well, that’s not strictly true, they all know one thing for sure. They will rise.
The difference between them is ‘When they will rise’ and ‘by how much’.
There seems to be more of a consensus now that they will rise gradually when they do, although ‘gradually’ is subjective – [...]

Christmas 1979

Just been watching TV and there was an ad for Ministry of Sound 1980s music that got me thinking.
September 1979 was when I went to secondary school and first became aware of popular music and that Christmas I got a ‘Stereo Radio Cassette’ player and taped the Christmas Top of the Pops. I guess that [...]

Buildings and contents insurance surprise

As the cold snap hits, people’s pipes will be bursting and they’ll be claiming on their buildings and contents insurance.
This reminds me of something.
If you underinsure your house and contents the insurer may decide to only pay out a proportion of your claim.   Now, you’d think that won’t happen, but an IFA friend of [...]

What is an IFA?

IFA – Independent Financial Adviser.
Independent – I work for my customer, not an employer, insurance company, bank or anyone else.
Adviser – I advise you.
Now, I raise this subject following on from the last blog, where I linked you to the John Charcol article. In that, the MD points out that his customers are “choosing” more [...]

Fixed rate mortgages getting less popular.

Interesting article here from John Charcol regarding fixed rate mortgages.
They suggest that more clients are choosing variable rate mortgages now than fixed rates mortgages, in fact, in June 2009, the number of people choosing fixed rates was 83% of their customers, it has dropped now to 21%
That’s quite a swing, I suppose mainly because variable [...]

Income tax/National Insurance – the new “NI tax” rates:

We all know what income tax is, right? It’s a tax on what we earn.
So what is National Insurance? Well that’s a tax on what we earn too.
So, if they both do pretty much the same thing , how does it look if I mix them up and call them the same thing. I’m going [...]

Pensioner gang torture IFA

And you think my job isn’t dangerous…
Click here for amazing story
Feel free to post comments showing how much you appreciate me now, knowing that I put myself in harms way for your benefit!

Govt spend £20m on….what? Grrrrrrr

Mr Darling announced yesterday that he was spending £20m on a government sponsored money guidance service for the public – to educate them/us on finance in the long term.
The government sponsored Financial Services Authority already have this remit as shown in this consultation paper from 1998
They could build a government sponsored website – kind of [...]

Nationwide reduce fixed rates

Following yesterday’s observation that fixed rates seemed to be falling, today Nationwide have reduced their fixed rates by up to 0.24%.
That’s going to be a nice surprise for the customer I spoke to last night – Nationwide were already winning business even with the rates as they were,  so to drop them a bit further [...]

The Fun Theory