Did you know that Starbucks, the humble coffee shop, could well be one of the biggest banks in America? Here is the reason: Next to every till conveniently placed next to the place where you pick up your favourite beverage, is the Starbucks gift card. This card can be topped up with cash to spend…
Divorce is never easy, but it can be far more complicated when you are a business owner. The divorce process is not designed to damage a business. Indeed, the income produced by the business is usually the main source of income and is needed to fund child maintenance and spousal maintenance payments, so damaging the…
The Prime Minister has announced a 1.25% increase to dividend tax rates from April 2022 as part of a package of measures to fund the costs of social care and the NHS over the next 3 years. It is estimated that the tax hike will raise about £600 million of additional revenue for the Government.…
The scale of the climate change challenge is immense and becoming more apparent each year. If we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, then global emissions need to fall 7.6% every year this decade. To put this into perspective upon this, the worldwide lockdowns caused by COVID-19 only saw emissions drop…
Everyone has been talking about it. Cryptocurrency. It has gone mad! Just over a year ago, one Bitcoin was worth just over $10,000. Since then, it has peaked at over $60,000, dropped to nearly $30,000, and, this week, reached a new peak of over $66,000. You can easily be forgiven for feeling like you have…
Inflation is a silent killer – it earns its’ reputation through the slow deterioration of the purchasing power of your money over time. It is also the enemy of your savings because you always need to take it away from any growth to find out the real rate of return. Low inflation is easily overlooked…
If you had invested in a UK Index fund from 1980-2009 you would have achieved a return of some 700% on your investment. However, if you had missed just the best 20 days of stock market performance during that period, that return would have been reduced to just 240%. Getting market timing right is a…
We are delighted to welcome Chris Porter as the latest member of our growing Client Manager team. Chris is coming on board as a Trainee Client Manager, to help deal with our ever-increasing workload Chris has significant financial services experience, having previously worked in Banking and Finance, speciallsing in pension administration for the last 9…
Many people will have come across the headline-grabbing interest rate of 5.6% per annum on some student loans. Many people rightly believe that we should pay off all our debts where possible and should never take out a loan that we know we cannot repay. However, with the average starting salary of graduates stagnant at…
Workers nowadays have, on average, 11 jobs during their working lives. So, it is not uncommon to have built up numerous pensions, which are easy to lose track of overtime. Some might be “Defined Benefit”, also known as Final Salary schemes, which promise a certain level of pension from retirement age, while others – increasingly…
