Tax, costs and inflation
Making the right investment choice is an important part of Financial Planning. Regular readers of our blog will know that...
Risk, reward, volatility & capacity for loss
When we speak to our clients about their investments, savings and retirement planning, we often talk about risk, reward and...
Cash is king
One of the common statements we hear from our clients is that the cash they are holding in their bank...
The future for financial advice in Ireland
I spent a delightful day in Dublin on Thursday courtesy of Friends First, Ireland’s sixth largest insurance firm, who ran...
It pays to do your homework
Like many Financial Planners I want to make sure that when I describe a possible course of action to my...
Smaller pension income & higher tax-free cash?
I had a very interesting conversation yesterday afternoon about commuting pension income for tax-free cash. The lady in question had...
Some simple ways to reduce your Inheritance Tax Bill
The most straightforward way of reducing the ultimate inheritance tax bill on your estate is to reduce the value of...
To take advice or not
We hear many stories of consumers who give up taking advice from their IFA because they have had a ‘lightbulb...
More poor service from dinosaur Aviva
Yesterday I wrote about the poor service of a couple of providers, AVIVA and Capita. Today the former seem to...
They’re GARate (GAR/great, get it?!)
A GAR is a guaranteed annuity rate. Some personal pension plans and older versions of these called Retirement Annuity Contracts...