Life

Make confident financial decisions, achieve your goals, and enjoy a more secure financial future

With rising interest rates, the process of getting a mortgage and buying a home is getting trickier. We offer some tips to help you get your foot through the front door, whether you buy now or invest for later.

Many people may not be aware of how their main home and other assets could be affected by inheritance tax (IHT) after they’ve passed away. We explore some of the key things to know about IHT and options you may want to consider to reduce your potential IHT bill.  

We outline seven tips on how to both wrestle back spending, and get your money working harder for you, during a time of rising prices. 

Getting your finances in order can feel like a daunting task, particularly when tax rules are changing. But, as the saying goes, a problem shared is a problem halved. Our qualified financial advisers always take tax considerations into account when making their recommendations to help you make sure you’re on track for the future you want.  

Fresh into the 2023/24 tax year which began today, 6th April, there’s several rule changes – both in terms of allowances and taxation rates – that investors need take note of. Here’s our summary.  

Our guide to the Lifetime ISA gives you the basics on tax-efficient investing that could help you purchase your first home, give your retirement a boost – or both. 

Whether it’s a little bit of money in a birthday card or something more substantial, grandparents often want to help with their grandchildren’s financial futures. Our guide weighs up the differences between traditional ISAs and Junior ISAs, so grandparents can decide which may better suit their grandchild’s needs. 

The 2022/23 tax year ends on Wednesday 5th April, and with it, your annual allowances, which offer several tax benefits. Here are six ways to make the most of them. 

Capital gains tax (CGT) is the tax you pay when you sell, or ‘dispose of’, an asset for a profit – or gain. You used to be able to make thousands of pounds per tax year in capital gains from selling things you owned before paying CGT, and while some assets are free from CGT (more on this later) there have been a series of changes in recent years that seriously curtail the amount of profit – or gain – you can make before you need to start paying tax.

It’s a cliché as old as investing – when it comes to their future money, women simply aren’t prepared to take the risks that men are, and therefore miss out on the potential for investment returns. But is it really as simple as that? We’ve looked at our own data to see how much truth there is in the adage that women are risk averse.