You might be tempted to think of self-employment as being your own boss.  That’s true, but you are also your own HR department and finance department as well.  Those in formal employment may have access to in-work benefits in the case of ill health and a formal redundancy process, with appropriate payoff, if they find themselves surplus to requirements at their place of employment.  Those in self-employment, however, need to take care of themselves and there are some key points they should consider. Pricing for goods and services needs to be sufficient to make it possible for you to earn a decent living This may seem like stating the obvious but it’s one of the most fundamental lessons any (potential) freelancer has to learn and learn quickly.  If you price your time at the sort of rate you would expect to be paid if you were in employment then there is a distinct possibility that you will find yourself financially worse off because you have failed to allow for the fact that your hourly rate in employment is calculated not just taking into consideration statutory deductions such as tax and national insurance, but also the cost of providing in-work benefits.  You may find that this fact is counterbalanced by the fact that you no longer have to support the cost of travelling to work, but this is not guaranteed.  You may also find that you are quite happy to accept a reduction in take-home pay in return for a better quality of life, however, you are only going to have a better quality of life if you can manage to pay your bills month after month, otherwise, you are simply going to have a whole lot of stress.  In short, when it comes to freelancing, pricing matters a lot and should be amongst your first considerations. Insurance can give you great peace of mind, provided that you use it strategically One of the first points to remember about insurance is that you may need to update your policies to reflect your change in employment status.  For example, if you are planning to work from home then your home contents insurer will probably want to know about it.  They may well be perfectly happy to continue your cover, possibly even at the same rate, but they are likely to want to know about it and there may be implications for people in certain types of job, for example, if you are planning to have clients come to your home. Personal insurance can protect you and your loved ones against life’s misfortunes There are all kinds of insurance policies you can take out as a self-employed worker.  Common ones include income protection insurance, critical illness cover, health insurance, dental insurance and pet insurance.  You may also want to look at extending cover to other members of your family who might otherwise have been covered by your (former) in-work benefits, for example minor children. Professional insurance may be a legal requirement and if not can still be good to have Depending on the nature of your business, you may find it useful to take out professional indemnity insurance and/or public liability insurance.  You may also want to take out insurance to protect your business assets, such as your electronics equipment and, possibly even more importantly, the data it contains.  Cyber liability insurance has been around for some years now and given the environment in which we now live and the extent to which so many people do so much business online, it could be a very worthwhile investment since it is entirely possible that the data stored in your electronic devices is far more valuable than the devices themselves.

Home insurance comes in two basic forms, buildings and contents.  In principle it sounds simple and in practice it isn’t particularly complicated, but there are seven key points you need to take into consideration when buying it. Your policy needs to be up to date to be useful It’s easy to lose track of what you actually have in your house because you’re so busy with life in general, but look on insurance purchase/renewal time as an opportunity to take stock of your possessions and make sure that they are all covered in one way or another.  This could also be a good opportunity to make sure that you have clear details of any important items in your home so that in the event of a burglary you can provide both police and your insurer with clear and accurate details of them. You need to be clear on your insurer’s definition of valuables If your home contents insurance policy has references to “valuables” then there should also be a definition of what your particular insurer considers valuables to be and you should familiarize yourself with it so you are sure you know where you stand. Make sure you are clear on policy exclusions/limitations Insurance fraud is a reality and insurers are well aware of this.  This does not mean that they will not pay out on legitimate claims, however it does mean that they may write policies in such a way that there are exclusions on the cover they provide, that their liability is limited in certain areas and/or that cover is only applicable when you have declared yourself as having certain items. Check if your policy extends to your garden Garden outbuildings such as garages and sheds do not necessarily have the same degree of security as a family home and as such they can be relatively easy targets for thieves, a fact of which insurance companies are well aware.  Your home insurance policy may not extend to your garden at all and if it does its cover may be limited.  This may not bother you if your garden is essentially a patch of lawn but if it’s your pride and joy, then you may want to take out specific garden insurance. Check if the policy comes with accidental damage automatically included. You might think that any home contents insurance policy should automatically cover you for accidental damage, but again, your insurer may disagree.  If your home insurer offers accidental damage cover as an additional extra, then do your sums before paying up.  Essentially have a think about the items in your home which are most at risk and then decide whether they need to be insured at all or whether you could just replace them in the event of damage.  If you do decide they need to be insured then have a look at insurance policies for the items in question and see if they offer better value than your main insurer’s offering. Check your insurer’s policy on flood damage This is obviously most important to those who live in flood-prone areas, but even if your local area has never flooded before (or not for years), it’s still useful to know as, in principle, floods can happen anywhere, particularly if the UK is deluged with storms and snow. Make sure you haven’t over-insured Over-insurance won’t bring you any extra benefit in the event of a claim, but it will usually cost you extra in terms of premiums.  Given that money not spent buys are much as money earned, it makes sense to ensure that your insurance cover is adequate but not excessive. For General Insurance we act as introducers only.

If you like reading about the property market, you may have noticed that, over recent years, there has been something of a trend away from “let the buyer beware” and towards seller disclosure.  In fact, buyers can now take legal action against sellers if they can demonstrate that the seller deliberately mislead them.  Of course, they key words in that sentence are “demonstrate” and “deliberately”.  Sellers can only disclose what they know and in law a person is innocent until proven guilty, which means that the onus is on you to prove that the actively failed to disclose something to you, rather than that they simply didn’t know it.  That’s why a property survey can be a wise precaution. Surveyors work directly for buyers Sellers choose the estate agent they want to use to sell their home and the estate agent acts for them, not for the buyer.  Insofar as they legally can, it is the estate agent’s job to highlight a home’s good points and draw attention away from any potential flaws it has.  Buyers choose surveyors and the surveyor works for the buyer.  It is the surveyor’s job to give an accurate and objective report of the condition of the property so that the buyer can make an informed decision as to whether or not its price is reasonable. Surveys versus valuations A survey is undertaken on behalf of the buyer and looks at the condition of the home so that the buyer can make an informed decision as to whether or not the terms of the purchase are reasonable.  A valuation is undertaken on behalf of a potential mortgage lender and simply assesses the value of the home and whether or not the home can be used as collateral for a mortgage.  While you could reasonably see a valuation as being a form of home survey, it has to be clearly understood that it is a very “light touch” survey which offers very little in the way of hard information to the purchaser. Different kinds of surveys Not only is there a difference between a valuation and a survey, there are different kinds of surveys to cover different situations. New-build properties At one end of the survey scale there is a new-build “snagging survey” which basically is intended to catch little bits and pieces which may have been overlooked by developers.  Surveys on new-build properties do not typically need to go into great levels of detail, since new-build properties typically come with guarantees from the builder. Building surveys At the other end of the scale, there are building surveys, which are the most comprehensive type of surveys are really do go into a lot of detail about the condition of the property.  These surveys are strongly recommended for older and/or unusual properties, in order for buyers to be comfortable that there are no nasty surprises waiting to bite them in the wallet later on. Condition reports and HomeBuyer’s reports These two types of survey are somewhere in the middle with condition reports being relatively lightweight and HomeBuyer’s reports being more in depth.  As such the former is more appropriate for newer and/or more standardised properties and the latter for properties which are neither particularly new nor particularly old, but still fairly standard. The value of a proper survey Money saved is worth as much as money earned and spending a little money on a home survey can save you a lot of money later since it will alert you to any issues of which the seller was unaware.  It is also worth noting that if the issue is news to the seller, they may agree that it is reasonable to lower the agreed price so the sale can still go forward, just on a slightly different basis. For surveys we act as introducers only.

Insurance might not be the first topic which comes to mind when you are trying to make light-hearted conversation, but it may well be the first topic which comes to mind when you are dealing with a challenging situation. It can be difficult to make generic comments about insurance because we’re all individuals and as such have our own individual needs, but it’s actually fairly easy to dispel some objections to taking out insurance. It costs too much There are various factors involved in the price of insurance but perhaps the most obvious is risk. In short, the more likely it is that you will need to claim on your insurance policy, the more that insurance policy is likely to cost. Obviously, there may be times when you and insurance companies have a different idea of how big a risk you are, for example, you think that your local area is a flood risk but insurance companies may disagree. In general, however, if you could reasonably view yourself as a low risk for insurance companies, then you can expect to pay relatively low premiums and while the opposite is also true, if you know you are a high risk then there is even more of an argument for having insurance to cover the risk. It’s also worth noting that in many cases you will have some degree of control over the cost of your insurance, for example if you are looking for health insurance then smokers can expect to pay more than non-smokers, hence, there is yet another benefit to stopping smoking. Even when there is little you can do to change your level of risk (and hence make yourself a more attractive customer), you may still be able to influence the cost of your insurance premium in other ways, such as by agreeing to pay a higher excess in exchange for a lower price. There’s no real benefit to it As a minimum, insurance can bring you peace of mind. It can also help you to manage your cash flow. Insurance premiums are predictable monthly payments and insurance policies will state the excess you have to pay on any given claim. After this, however, any costs which fall under the remit of your policy will be covered by your insurance company. You won’t have to find yourself scrambling for cash or trying to get finance to cover the expense. The basic rule of thumb with insurance is that the more something matters to you, the more effort you should make to protect it. For example, a solid pet insurance policy may mean the difference between being able to afford treatment for a beloved pet or having it put to sleep. Mobile phone insurance, by contrast, may or may not be worthwhile depending on your mobile. If you have a top-of-the-range handset, it may indeed be worth protecting, but if you’re happy with a cheap-and-cheerful one then you may be perfectly happy with the idea of just going out to buy a new handset if necessary. Insurance companies won’t actually pay out unless they absolutely have to This is probably true but also rather misleading. No company is going to make payments unless they have a genuine reason to do so, but any company which understands the importance of good customer service is most certainly going to pay out if a customer has a genuine claim on them. At the end of the day, insurance fraud is real and so it’s understandable that insurance companies tend to want some kind of substantiation of claims. At the same time, however, if an insurance company were to get a reputation for unreasonably denying genuine claims, then it would probably soon find itself in trouble with both the regulators and the media.

Switch on daytime TV and it probably won’t be too long before you run into an advert for some kind of insurance and if it’s life insurance there’s a good chance it will make the point that life insurance gives you the peace of mind of knowing that your loved ones will be in the best possible position to cope with your death.  This is actually a very fair point and the absolute best way to set up a life insurance policy is to place in in a trust. Trust(s) and protection In very simple terms, when you die your estate is yours to dispose of as you wish (with a very few niche exceptions), but the transfer of ownership may be subject to legal formalities and tax.  This can make it time-consuming and frustrating for your heirs to get access to money they may need to get on with their own lives.  Writing a life insurance policy into a trust essentially ring-fences it from the estate as a whole, so it can be paid out much more quickly.  As an added bonus, this means the proceeds of the policy will be excluded from the calculation of the value of the estate as a whole.  In fact, you could even use life insurance as a means to pay the anticipated IHT bill, although this is an option for which professional advice is particularly recommended. The importance of keeping your protection up-to-date Keeping your protection up-to-date doesn’t just mean remembering to pay your premiums.  It means making time to think about the nature of your cover, how much it is and who will benefit from it and making sure your cover always reflects your current situation rather than the situation when you took it out, however long ago that was.  Similar comments apply to your will.  Hopefully by now at least the majority of people understand the importance of making a will and this would be a good moment to emphasise that there are certain requirements to be met if a will is to be legally valid and so even though there are “will-making kits” you can use to draw up your will yourself, this is an area in which professional advice can easily pay for itself. Planning ahead can make life easier for everyone The Swedish have a tradition called “death cleaning”, which may sound rather gloomy, but is actually a very positive concept, which we might call “setting your personal business in order”.  Instead of leaving this until a time when you begin to feel yourself failing (we hope this will never come but need to be realistic), treat decluttering and organising your life and assets as part of an ongoing process, ideally in partnership with your intended heirs.  This gives you the opportunity to move on assets during your lifetime (remembering that you will almost certainly have to give up the beneficial interest in them) so that, hopefully, they will have ceased to form part of your estate upon your death (or at least qualify for some level of IHT relief).  You may have noticed that we used the term “assets” rather than possessions.  This is because these days some of your assets may be digital, for example social-media accounts, and you will need to think about what will happen with these.  As a minimum, you will want to think about the many online accounts you probably have these days and decide which of them are important enough that your next of kin/executor needs to have their details and how you are going to communicate them securely. For pension and investments advice we act as introducers only. For will writing we act as introducers only.

When you think about security for businesses what springs to mind?  Do you think about physical security, cyber security or financial security?  The truth is that all three are component parts of one whole, which means that missing out on any one of them could put your business into serious danger. Physical security Effective physical security protects both your data and your staff, both of which are vital for your ability to keep going as a business.  What’s more, it often dovetails with health and safety considerations (particularly the latter part) and hence keeping on top of it is also a good idea from the point of view of protecting against liability claims, which can cause all kinds of problems for a business.  Proper management of both physical security and health and safety is also likely to be a prerequisite for certain types of insurance cover to be valid.  It is also worth noting that, although it is not, strictly speaking, part of physical security, actively looking for ways to make your workplace a healthy and attractive one, can do a lot for staff morale and hence can help to improve both attendance and productivity. Data security Data security may be the hottest topic in business right now, thanks to a combination of the publicity around GDPR and the fact that the newspapers seem to be carrying a never-ending stream of headlines relating to data-security breaches some of which relate to major organisations, which really had no excuse whatsoever for sloppy data security.  Admittedly not all of these breaches have been major enough to make front-page news, but even the more minor ones can hardly have been good news for the companies’ relationship with their customers.  By this point in time, GDPR should be in a business-as-usual phase and all companies, large and small, should be fully compliant with it.  If you’re not, then resist the temptation to keep your head down and hope that you’re too small to be worth targeting.  You need to deal with it. Financial security At the end of the day, financial security depends on making sure your income covers your outgoings plus a reasonable profit.  This makes perfect sense in theory and the success of various businesses means that it can work perfectly well in practice, but small businesses often face two big problems.  The first is that the term “cash flow” does not often represent the reality of life for many SMEs since it implies that income arrives smoothly and steadily from one period to the next, whereas it can be highly seasonal (e.g. dependent on Christmas sales).  The second is that with the best will in the world, it may be a long time, if ever, before the company has sufficient cash reserves to finance major investments, let alone deal with unexpected setbacks. There are various ways to manage the issue of erratic cash flow and, in particular, to finance the development of a growing company.  Dealing with unexpected events is the realm of insurance.  This topic may not be cheerful and is highly unlikely to be considered glamourous, but having the right insurance cover in place could, literally, save your business.  When thinking about insurance, your first point to check is what the law requires you to have, since this is absolutely non-negotiable.  The next step is to think about protecting your most important assets and these days, while that may include some physical assets, it is at least as likely to include data and people.  This is why more niche policies, such as key person insurance, shareholder protection insurance and business loan protection insurance could all be a vital support to your business is you were hit by the death of a crucial employee.  It is also a good idea to look at critical illness cover, at least for the most important people on the payroll.

As the old joke goes - parents keep photos in their wallets because it fills up the space where their cash used to be.  All joking aside, one of the many shocks of new parenthood is discovering that children typically need more money than sleep.  Sadly nobody has invented a method to save up sleep for later use, but you can save up money for your child’s future and here are some tips on how to do so. Start as early as possible Hopefully you will already have some general savings tucked away.  As soon as you even start thinking about trying for a baby, you will want to do everything you can to maximise these, even if you have no plans to start a family for some years.  Time flies and children are expensive.  Besides which, if you change your mind, or come into an unexpected windfall, you can always put your excess funds to an alternative use. Leave most of your baby buying until after the birth This may seem like an odd piece of advice, given that we emphasised the usefulness of starting your savings early.  The point here is that new parents, especially first-time parents, can find themselves buying all sorts of “essential” items only to discover later that actually they didn’t need them at all.  Your basic essentials are: a place for your baby to sleep (and appropriate bedding); a pram; (usually) a car carrier; feeding equipment; a stash of clothes and nappies; basic toiletries and a few first-aid items.  That’s really it, although you could add a baby monitor to the list.  They’re not technically essential but they’re so useful many people want one and it can be reassuring to know that it’s ready for the baby to come home.  These are worth shopping for in advance, especially if you’re on a budget since it gives you the most chance of picking up a bargain either in a shop (real-world or online) or on the preloved market.  For everything else, wait until there is a clear sign that you need it before you part with your cash for it. Look for child-friendly savings accounts Junior ISAs are a tax-efficient way to save for your child’s future, however, there are a couple of points you need to understand about them.  The first point is that once money has been paid into them, it remains locked away until your child reaches the age of 18.  The second is that once your child reaches the age of 18, the money is theirs to spend as they please and legally there is absolutely nothing you can do about it if they choose to spend it on a round-the-world holiday rather than going to university.  An alternative would be to use standard savings accounts and accept the tax liability as the price of a greater degree of control.  You could put one account in your child’s name to give them ownership of some of their savings and keep another account in your own name, which you aim to grow on their behalf. Give your child financial lessons from an early age Managing your finances is essentially the art and science of balancing living in the present with preparing for the future.  By teaching your child about money early and steadily increasing the amount of responsibility they have for their own financial standing, you are not only giving them an excellent preparation for adult life, but you are also protecting yourself against having to deal with unreasonable financial demands, which could potentially impact on your own financial (and mental) health both now and in the future. For investments advice we act as introducers only.

The UK media recently had something of a reporting frenzy when companies with more than 250 employees were forced to reveal their pay data split by gender.  Many well-known names revealed that men were paid more than women, in some cases to a significant degree. Understanding the facts behind the numbers As is often the case with statistical data, it’s important to put the headline figures into context.  The pay data did not compare men and women in the same occupation (or even similar occupations).  The figures were aggregated across each organisation, hence what the really revealed was the extent to which men occupy the higher-earning roles in companies.  While it’s probably fair to say that there may still be some degree of old-fashioned gender bias behind this, in some companies at least, there is also the fact that, up until recently, the UK only had maternity leave not paternity leave, which meant that in many cases financial common sense determined that it was the female half of a parental couple who took time off work when a baby came on the scene.  Only time will tell whether shared parental leave (and other social developments) will erase this earnings gap in future, but for the present, a more pressing question is what to do to ensure that women can also enjoy a comfortable retirement. Start saving early It’s fine to make the most of your pre-child years and to enjoy the lack of either parental supervision or parental responsibility, but from a financial perspective, it’s best to balance this freedom with the knowledge that you (hopefully) will have a long life ahead of you and that a bit of forward thinking now can bring all kinds of benefits in later years.  Even though your young adult years are the years in which you are at your lowest point on your career ladder, with the result that you may only be able to make what seem like very small savings, remember that those savings will have decades to grow. Prioritise making pensions contributions when you have a family Obviously you have to be in work to be part of a workplace pension scheme, but there’s nothing to stop you opening a private pension when you are out of work.  What’s more, if you’re married or in a civil partnership, your partner may be able to make contributions towards it on which they can claim tax relief.  It may be worth having your partner make these contributions, even if it reduced the value of their own pension, since pensions are treated as taxable income, hence it can be more tax efficient to have two people in a lower tax band rather than one paying no tax and another in a high tax band.  This is an issue on which it is recommended to take professional advice.  Regardless of whether or not you are married, you may wish to register for benefits which confer national insurance contributions, such as (currently) Child Allowance, even if you do not qualify for financial support, so that you continue to build up entitlement to the state pension, which may not be what you want to live on in your retirement but is certainly better than nothing. Think carefully about how to use your pension savings when you reach retirement age The pensions freedoms introduced in 2015 have brought pensions savers vastly more choice and while choice can be good it can also be confusing, especially when you’re dealing with a topic as complex as retirement income.  Because of this, it’s strongly recommended to get professional advice so you can be sure you’re taking the decision which will give you the most comfortable retirement possible on your level of savings. For pension, investments advice and tax planning we act as introducers only.

With traditional mortgages, you take out a loan from the bank and you make monthly payments which either pay of the interest and a portion of the capital (repayment mortgages) or simply cover the interest with the capital being repaid at the end of the loan period (interest-only mortgages).  Then there are offset mortgages, which work rather differently. The mechanics of offset mortgages With an offset mortgage, you put as much money as you can into your mortgage account each month thus reducing the balance of the loan as far as possible and thereby minimising the amount of interest you pay on it.  Should you need to, you can choose to withdraw some of this money at a later date, accepting that this will increase the outstanding balance on the mortgage and hence the amount of interest payable on it.  The basic idea behind offset mortgages is that financial institutions typically pay less in interest to savers than they charge in interest to borrowers, which means that, other than having cash available for emergencies, there is very little value in having savings if you also have debt, because the interest you earn on the former will be less than the interest you pay on the latter.  That being so, it makes more sense just to put all your spare funds towards paying off your debt. The case for offset mortgages Unless you can find a savings or investment product which can earn you better returns than you would get from simply reducing the interest payments on your mortgage, then from a purely mathematical perspective, offset mortgages can make a lot of sense, even in a low-interest-rate environment.  As interest-rates go up, the case for offset mortgages becomes even more compelling.  This is because interest income is subject to tax, whereas interest payments on mortgages are unlikely to be tax deductible.  The higher your income (and corresponding tax liability), the more attractive offset mortgages can be. There are two groups of people for whom offset mortgages might be an especially suitable choice.  The first group is the self employed, who may be high earners but do not necessarily earn the same from one month to the next.  Offset mortgages would allow them to make significant overpayments during high-earning months knowing that they would have the option to withdraw some of that money if they needed it later.  The other group is buy-to-let landlords who can no longer claim mortgage interest tax relief and hence have a particular interest in minimising their mortgage interest expense. The case against offset mortgages There are three, main, potential drawbacks to offset mortgages.  The first is that they require discipline.  If you can’t trust yourself not to dip into your mortgage without a very good reason, then you might be better to go for the enforced discipline of a standard repayment mortgage. The second is that offset mortgages are still very much niche products, which means that choice is relatively limited at this time.  It remains to be seen whether or not this will change in the future. The third is that some government schemes may require that you take out a repayment mortgage in order to qualify for them.  Again, it remains to be seen whether or not this will apply into the future. In short Offset mortgages are an interesting development in the mortgage market and may be excellent choices for some people, particularly higher earners.  Lower earners, however, might feel more comfortable with the familiar security of repayment mortgages and keeping their cash and investments within an ISA wrapper for tax efficiency.  As always, if you’re not sure what approach is right for you, it’s recommended to speak to a professional. Your property may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage. For investments advice we act as introducers only.

It may never have occurred to you that selling a home is rather like putting on a play, but actually it’s quite a good analogy.  You will have an audience (viewers) and they will judge your home on what they see of it during the time they are inside.  So, as a seller who wants to get maximum value from your home, it’s your job to ensure that they enjoy the show.  Here are five tips. Treat the outside of your home as seriously as you treat the inside First impressions start at first sight and regardless of whether you live in a house or a flat, one way or another, your viewer’s first impression is going to be from the outside so make sure it looks good.  For the same reason, do everything you can to make your entryway area look good even if it’s usually a dumping ground for outerwear, bags and anything else. Cleanliness and maintenance inspire confidence Would you buy a meal from a take-away where you could see dust on the tables and chips in the paintwork?  You might if you were desperate but otherwise you might well take the view that if the restaurant didn’t take much care of what you could see, it might not take too much care of what you couldn’t.  The same principle applies to selling a home.  If everything your viewers see is clean and well-maintained then you make it easier for them to believe that the property is in good order overall. Remove decoration and replace with staging Decoration is what you do to personalise your home, staging is what you do to depersonalise your home so that somebody else can picture it as being theirs.  As a minimum, banish anything which could be considered remotely controversial, such as items connected with religion, politics or sport.  Ideally take away anything which could be considered offensive, such as art portraying human nudes.  If this makes your home look bare you can either replace them with cheap and inoffensive alternatives or just explain that you’ve already started packing away.  The former is better but the latter is usually still an improvement on leaving the original items out on view. Invest in extra closed storage for quick cleanups What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve for so do not let visitors see your clutter.  If you’re still living in your home, then you’re going to be walking a fine line between actually having a home and having an asset to be sold.  This goes at least double if you have children.  Make life easier for everyone by investing in some attractive closed-storage pieces which are designated to be kept empty most of the time, but which can be used, literally, as catch-alls when you have viewings.  Even if you have plenty of advance notice of these, it can be reassuring to know that you have an escape route if you can’t manage (or can’t face) a full-on, pre-visit tidying session. Never underestimate the importance of clean air This tip is times one hundred if you smoke.  You may not notice the smell you create but if you have non-smoking visitors they certainly will, so smoke outside until your house is sold (and make sure not to leave any butts).  If you have pets, keep litter trays scrupulously clean and remove dog mess as soon as its left.  Do your best to keep your house well aired, even if the weather is cold.  Do not, however, go overboard with scents, even natural ones, it’s best not to use them at all as you won’t know how your visitors will feel about them, even popular ones.  Similarly avoid real flowers in case your viewers have allergies.

People who are not used to being on boats may find that the constant up-and-down motion makes them feel seasick.  Those who are used to boats, however, just accept this movement as a fact of life.  In much the same way, people who don’t really understand the stock market may fear its volatility, whereas more experienced investors just see it for what it is, daily movements which may, or may not, follow the long-term trend they predict for a company.  Here are three points you need to understand about stock-market volatility The smallest companies can be the most volatile Think about going into the ocean in a little canoe.  You probably wouldn’t last very long because the giant waves would toss you about all over the place.  Make the same journey in a modern ocean-going liner and you’d probably barely feel those exact-same waves.  The same sort of idea applies to the stock market.  Smaller companies can go forwards or backwards in leaps and bounds depending on how the market feels about their situation.  Changes which might barely register at a FTSE100 company can have a huge influence on how a start-up is perceived.  Astute investors learn to focus on the facts rather than the hype and look for solid value and future prospects. Some companies operate in highly-cyclical industry sectors Possibly the classic example of this is the property market, which is often perceived as having four distinct phases, which are given different names depending on what sources you read.  Essentially however, the cycle begins with phase one in which property prices are at rock bottom and adventurous investors on a buying spree.  Phase two sees prices begin to rise and investors become more confident.  Phase three sees a buying frenzy during which experienced investors stay on the sidelines and inexperienced ones drive prices to peak levels.  Phase four is the cool down, in which buyers of all degrees of experience recognise that enough is enough with the result that sellers have to reduce prices in order to make sales.  This may also be the time when lenders become more cautious about approving mortgages for high percentages of a property price and regulators may step in to try to keep the market in line.  After a bit of breathing space, the market goes back to phase one and everything starts all over again.  The value of shares in property-related companies can be influenced by the performance of the property-market as a whole and hence rise and fall without any change to the companies’ fundamental value. Volatility can bring useful buying and selling opportunities If you can learn to see volatility for what it is, then you can look for ways to make use of it, in other words you zig when the market is zagging and zag when the market is zigging.  If you think a company is being unfairly punished with a low share price, then you can back your opinion with your funds and grab yourself a bargain.  Similarly, if you think the market is overvaluing a company you own, it may be a good time to evaluate your portfolio as a whole and decide whether that investment is still good for you, personally, over the longer term or whether this surge could be the perfect opportunity for you to rebalance your portfolio.  Alternatively, if you really don’t want to have to deal with volatility any more than is absolutely necessary, you could either aim to minimise your exposure to it by putting your funds in larger companies which tend to have lower volatility and/or look to create “pairs” of companies in which the good trading conditions for one are the bad trading conditions for the other and hence create balance in your portfolio. For investments we act as introducers only

Appreciating the importance of saving for our later years is absolutely nothing new.  A quick look at the literature of centuries gone by easily shows how long people have valued what we would now call retirement savings.  What has changed, drastically, is how long we are likely to have to live off those retirement savings.  So, arguably, it could fairly be said that even though we now have the state pension, it has never been more important to have independent, private savings for retirement. Understanding the state pension You do not “pay for your state pension”, you pay national insurance contributions which are used for various purposes, one of which being to fund the state pension.  The amount of state pension you receive and, crucially, the minimum age at which you can receive it are both set by the government.  It doesn’t matter if you are a higher earner, paying significant contributions, or a non-earner having NI contributions credited as part of your benefits, under the current system, assuming you have been credited with NI contributions for the same period, you will receive the same amount at the same time.  The only control you can exert over your pension is to opt to defer receiving it in order to increase your level of payment. Abolishing the state pension completely would be a politically-charged move, but cannot entirely be ruled out.  Another possibility would be to see the state pension in its current form phased out and incorporated into Universal Credit or Universal Basic Income.  Again, these would be potentially controversial steps but cannot be ruled out. Saving for retirement privately Over recent years, politicians of all shapes and sizes have been quite open about their desire to make pension saving attractive again after scandals (Robert Maxwell, Equitable Life...) shook public confidence in them and frustration at the restrictiveness of annuities was compounded by the low returns they offered.  The introduction of auto-enrolment pension schemes was, from a certain perspective, an astute move, since it forced people to take action if they wanted to opt-out of pension savings rather than forcing them to remember to opt in and it encouraged them to stay put with the offer of “free money” from their employer.  Of course, the money is not really free, since employers will take it into consideration when deciding what salary offer to make, but it is subject to favourable tax treatment, which would not have been the case had it been given as standard income. The sticking point with the auto enrolment scheme, however, is that the minimum level of contributions is set by the government.  Up until April 2018, the employee contribution was only 1%, as of April it became 3% and in April next year it will increase again to 5%.  While these increases may sound small, they can make a significant impact on your take-home pay and there is no guarantee that the increases will stop at that level.  Governments have to balance the current needs of employees (and employers) with balancing their books in future years, which means that they are very likely to do all they can to encourage the maximum level of retirement saving the economy in general will support. Opting out of the auto-enrolment scheme is a serious decision, even if you are at the start of your working life, however it may be the right one if you are struggling to make ends meet in the present and ideally it would only be a short-term move.  If you believe that you are going to need an extended period of breathing space to set your finances in order, then it might be worth asking your employer if they will voluntarily pay their part of the contributions into a private pension for you. For pension and investments advice we act as introducers only.