One of the least unexpected parts of a Budget, most of which had been flagged up in advance, was tackling the LTA. But has the Chancellor blown up a good idea by going too far?  By Tony Watts OBE One of the major headline announcements of the recent Budget was the scrapping of the lifetime […]

If you’ve found yourself doing a Blondie impression recently, and hanging on the telephone for hours trying to boost your future State Pension, you can relax (for now, anyway). An under-siege (and under-resourced) DWP has bowed to public and media pressure and extended its deadline for workers to significantly boost their state pensions by catching […]

When it comes to financial decision making, it looks as though two heads really are better than one, according to analysis of the latest “HL Savings and Resilience Barometer”. Once the numbers are crunched, it appears that over half of households (51%) where partners take big financial decisions together are on track for a “moderate […]

There is mounting evidence that squeezed savers are being forced to turn to their pension pots to make ends meet during the cost-of-living crisis after the Government has admitted that a quarter of pension savers over 55 contributed above the money purchase annual allowance (MPAA) in 2020/21. Online investment company AJ Bell wrote to the […]

Have you been contemplating helping out a younger member of your family? Then you’re not alone. New research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) shows that £17 billion is gifted or loaned informally each year, almost all from parents to their adult children – mostly to help with buying a house or at the […]

If you have holes in your National Insurance (NI) record, now might be the last chance to fill them – and take advantage of the generous Government scheme which allows people to fill historic gaps, and which will come to an end in just over two months. For those who can benefit, investing in state […]

If employers want to solve their recruitment crisis, then they should be looking hard at the pension they are offering – and the advice they are providing for their staff’s retirement finances. That’s the biggest takeaway from a new survey of HR professionals by Punter Southall Aspire. For the last two years, flexible working has […]

Depending upon the standard of living you are aspiring to in retirement, inflation in 2022 has added between 11 and 20% to the cost, with implications for the pension pots people will need to save. According to the latest inflation update of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association’s Retirement Living Standards, those on the “Minimum” […]

After a year many of us will want to see the back of, we can only hope that 2023 will be a little kinder on our nerves… and our wallets. Financial services company Hargreaves Lansdown has put together a timeline of events that could impact upon savers and taxpayers in the coming 12 months, and […]

Appropriately for the festive season, the media recently has been well and truly stuffed with coverage of the Government’s plans to encourage workers to delay their retirement and/or actually “unretire”. It’s not a new theme, as plenty of commentators (including, ahem, myself) have seen this coming down the tracks for some time now, as an […]