How can you be sure that you are currently saving enough to achieve the pension income you want… and, if you are running short, how much extra should you be saving? By Tony Watts OBE A regular item in the financial pages of our newspapers – and sometimes on the front pages – is that […]

  ·        37% of over 50s have made no financial arrangements at all for their funeral ·        Women are more likely to leave financial planning until later in life ·        More than a third of people would have major concerns about how to fund a loved one’s funeral All those ads on daytime television are […]

As with every Budget, comprehending the full impact of the latest one has taken a few days… allowing the dust to settle and the small print to be analysed and understood. So, how did pensions fare? Here are some of the measures which either did… or didn’t… come to pass. First of all, the big […]

New research by retirement financial advice firm Responsible Life shows that 75 per cent of pensioners with their pots invested have insufficient reserves to fall back on should the market encounter a major shock. They polled just over 1,000 UK pensioners and concluded that 45 per cent of those who use drawdown rather than buying an annuity have no reserves to […]

Millions of people in the UK face an impoverished retirement because they are not saving enough, new figures show. The current average annual income that someone currently aged 55 and over can expect on reaching State Pension age is £15,890 – including their state pension. However, according to the online investment site, True Potential Investor, […]

With new vinyl record sales soaring to above four million last year – the highest volume since 1991 – and the value of many vinyl collections tripling in value over the last 10 years is it too late to get on the vinyl bandwagon? Mark Soper explores. Earlier this year, music sales through streaming outsold […]

  By Tony Watts OBE No, nothing to do with the late Queen classic of the same name, but a serious question in the wake of a recent New Scientist survey which asked over 2,000 people if they would take up the offer of immortality if they had the chance. The answer is: just one […]

Just how “retirement ready” are you? And will your retirement income match the average in the region where you live? Financial services provider Hargreaves Lansdown has analysed Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Government data and discovered that households in the South East of the country need to save the most over their working lifetime […]

The Pensions Regulator has sent a warning to some of the UK’s leading pension funds over their concerns that they are being too generous when offering lump sums to people cashing out of “defined benefit” retirement schemes. Their concern is that excessively generous playouts could damage their funds – and so impact upon remaining members. […]

How high a price are older people paying because of loyalty to their suppliers? Over £250 a year according to one recent extended trial. If you’re of a certain vintage, like me, you’ll remember the execrable “Tell Sid” ads back in 1986 advising the public to cash in on the upcoming privatisation of British Gas. […]