40 Berners Street Fax 020 7907 4525
London W1T 3NA info@inspiredadvice.co.uk
Copyright © Inspired Advice Limited Registered office 12 Old Bond Street, Mayfair, London W1S 4PW Registered in England and Wales No 06164688
Inspired Advice Limited is an appointed representative of 2020 Financial Services Ltd which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority
February 2009 - Good, Old Fashioned Principles for 2009
January 2009 - Bring Your Own Lunch Mini Meetings!!
December 2008 - Tricky 2008, trickier 2009?
October 2008 – Born Between April 1955 and April 1960?
February 2009 (Back To Top)
Good, Old Fashioned Principles for 2009
There is no doubt that 2009 will be a difficult year for many. That doesn’t mean that we should financially hibernate until Spring 2010! This year should be seen as a chance to get your financial affairs in order using the principles of save & mend.
Firstly to save you will need to list all your weekly, monthly and annual outgoings. The more thoroughly you do this the better. Then work through your list and see which costs can be eliminated or reduced. Sometimes there will be obvious savings such as making a coffee when you get to work rather than buying one a few minutes before you arrive. Others will take a bit more research, for example reviewing your electricity provider or mobile phone call plan. If you send us your list of outgoings we can reply with suggested ways to reduce your costs.
We can help you directly with the following:
Your mortgage rate and set up
Credit card and loans – including the potential of having them completely cleared using legislation.
Life, critical illness, income protection and private medical insurance – we can look at the whole market and see if you could be paying less for better cover.
General Insurances
Secondly to mend you should be looking at to put yourself in a stronger, more organised position. Have you got everything in place? We all have a To Do list in our heads (or maybe even on the fridge) that can include things like ‘Make a Will’, ‘Get Some Mortgage Cover’, etc. We will be able to provide you with a summary of the areas you should be looking at.
Thirdly, you should then use any spare monthly money to save in the most appropriate ways depending on your circumstances and goals. We can offer practice guidance on what would be best for you and how best to go about setting it up.
We would be happy to meet with you to explain all of this in more detail and to get you started. Alternatively, we can send you further information and we’ll be available at any stage to provide whatever support you may need. Please call us on 020 7907 4520 or use our contact form for more information.
January 2009 (Back To Top)
Bring Your Own Lunch Mini Meetings!!
Why not do something useful with your lunch hour? Come over to our office on your lunch hour for a free 40 minute initial financial review meeting while you tuck into your sandwiches, salad or whatever you fancy. We will even make you a nice cup of tea of coffee to have with it!
We will explain what we do and chat to you about how we might be able to help you improve your finances. If you prefer we can concentrate on a specific area that you are concerned about. After the meeting we will send you a summary with a list of any action points we highlighted. You then decide if you would like us to help you further.
These meetings start at 12.10pm, 13.10pm and 14.10pm. If you’d prefer a different start time or longer/shorter meeting let us know and we’ll see what we can do. Please call us on 020 7907 4520 or email lunchminimeetings@inspiredadvice.co.uk to book or for more information.
December 2008 (Back To Top)
Tricky 2008, trickier 2009?
It hasn’t been the best of years for most people due to the effect of the credit crunch and volatile markets. 2009 is likely to be a difficult year too.
It is worth remembering that money invested in equities on a monthly basis can actually benefit from market volatility – please read this piece on pound cost averaging. It is also important to ensure you review the risk profile of your pensions and investment funds regularly to make sure they are in line with their your own views on risk.
We can discuss any aspect of this with you and aim to have you in the strongest position to come out of the other end of the current downturn. We are able to help establish a personalised risk level for you and use this to review your existing funds.
Please call us on 020 7907 4520 or use our contact form for more information.
November 2008 (Back To Top)
Green Advice
Our industry has been talking for years about the concept of a paperless office, needless to say it has never quite materialised!
We try wherever possible to limit our paper use and only print off the bear minimum but there still seems to be way too much. The use of email to send pdf documents helps and we are trying to encourage the insurance companies to limit the amount of paper based information they send us – especially the unnecessary duplicates of everything!
These are the other things we are doing to limit our firm’s impact on the environment…..
• Business cards printed on 100% recycled card
• Letter headed paper printed on 100% on recycled paper
• All general paper, envelopes and brochures are sent for recycling with ‘The Laundry’
• All confidential paperwork is recycled using TheFirstMile’s secure shredding service
• We have our toner cartridges refilled and inkjet cartridges recycled
• We have signed up to the ride to work scheme and all cycle into the office (most days!)
• We have a ‘bag for life’ to use when we pop out of the office for sandwiches!!
Please let us know if there are any other suggestions for us to implement!
We also have access to a wide range of investment and pension funds which invest based on ethical and environmental criteria. If you would be interested in more information on this area please get in touch.
October 2008 (Back To Top)
Born between April 1955 and April 1960?
If so you could be affected by the upcoming change to the minimum retirement age. It is currently possible to access tax free cash and income from pension schemes once you reach age 50. However, on 6th April 2010 the minimum age will change to age 55. For example, if you turn 50 this year you will be able to access your pension funds up to April 2010. If you chose not to do so then you would be unable to have access again until you reach age 55 in 2013.
Since 2006 it has become possible to release up to 25% of your pension funds as a tax free lump sum without the need to draw a retirement income. This could be done via a pension drawdown arrangement. The remaining pension fund would remain invested and you could choose whether or not to take a pension income from it. You could ‘recycle’ such pension income into a new pension plan to gain another tax free cash chunk. You would need to carefully consider all the issues involved including the effect on death benefits before taking such action.
There have generally been a lot of changes within the pension world over the last few years so you should ensure your current arrangements are set up in the best way possible. It is also an ideal time to review your pension funds to see if they still match your attitude to risk and timescale to retirement.
Please call us on 020 7907 4520 or use our contact form for more information. These details are based on our current understanding of the situation and are liable to change.