“After I spoke to my financial adviser I slept like a baby. I woke up every hour and cried.” Finding a financial adviser – one that doesn’t make you sleep like a baby – can be like finding a needle in haystack. Even figuring out what you need to look for when deciding how to …
The last post was all about whether or not financial advisers were able to help improve the performance of your investment portfolio. But a good adviser can do much more than simply manage your portfolio. All advisers worth their salt offer a variety of non-investing services, aimed at improving your wider financial life beyond your …
One of the great things about running an investing blog is receiving questions from readers. Helping out readers is not only rewarding, but it’s also an excellent source for article ideas. As an example, I recently heard from a reader whose employer offered them an AVC pension scheme, and they were wondering whether it was …
This week I thought I’d give some love to another type of pension scheme which tends to fly under the radar – alongside the AVC pension which I recently created a separate guide for. It’s known as a SSAS pension, and it’s rarely talked about. But for those who can make use of it, it …
My last post was all about why you should consider crafting an Investment Policy Statement (IPS). Here, I’ll show you how to create an IPS, and share my own. I’m sharing mine in the hopes it might prove a useful starting point for those readers looking to create their own. I remember I found it …
People have been creating investment plans for a long time. It looks like the first on record dates back roughly 4,000 years ago, and was created by an ancient Sumerian wanting to figure out how much milk and cheese his cows would produce over the next ten years. It forecasts the growth of a herd …
I tend to receive a smattering of ISA questions throughout the year, then a deluge of them leading up to the tax year-end in April. One I seem to get regularly is “How many ISAs can I have?”, but there are several related questions which I thought I’d group together and answer in a single …
This post explores the average UK savings by age groups. It also looks at the average amounts in UK pension accounts, and the average UK net worth by age. I’ve included links to the source data, and included my own highlights below each chart. All data is taken from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), …
This post explores a variety of statistics around salary data in the UK, including the average UK salary by age. As salaries vary depending on the cost of living in each region, I’ve included a breakdown of the average salaries by age in each region. As there’s most variation within London, I’ve included a special …
This post is all about me. I always thought writing a blog required a double-whammy of intellectual arrogance – firstly in assuming that anyone would want to hear what I have to say, and secondly that I could write about it in a way people wanted to read. This post adds an additional layer of …
If someone asked you which was more important: the amount you invest each month, or the rate of return on your investments – what would you say? In my experience, most people tend to say their returns. And that’s understandable given how much time investors devote to eking out a few extra basis points of …
In contrast to the “How much do I need to start investing?” question, the “Am I ready to invest?” question is one I don’t get asked as often as I should do. To preface this post, I should note that I’m not a financial advisor (I’m an investment manager) and you shouldn’t be taking this …
