Somewhere along the way, investing got a reputation it doesn’t deserve. Bring it up at a dinner party and watch people’s eyes glaze over. There’s a general assumption that it involves red braces, six screens of flashing numbers, and a working knowledge of derivatives markets. It doesn’t. For almost everyone
There’s a particular kind of financial moment that doesn’t get written about nearly as much as it should, mostly because it doesn’t fit neatly into the usual “how to start investing” advice aimed at total beginners. It’s the moment when money arrives, sometimes gradually as you return to work after
If you’ve ever felt like everyone else understands investing except you, it might help to know that isn’t remotely true, it’s just that a lot of people are quietly bluffing. Survey after survey finds the same striking pattern in the UK: women are considerably less likely than men to describe
There’s a pattern in how Britain invests that doesn’t get talked about nearly as much as it should, mostly because on the surface it looks like a modest, sensible difference in approach rather than anything worth a headline. Women, on average, keep more of their money in cash. Men, on
The gender pension gap, explained (and what to do about it) There is a gap in this country that gets far less attention than it deserves, mostly because it doesn’t show up until decades after the decisions that caused it. It’s not the gender pay gap, though the two are
For as long as most of us have been paying into a pension, there has been one quietly brilliant fact sitting underneath the whole system: whatever was left in your pot when you died did not count as part of your estate. No inheritance tax. It sat there, untouched by
The hardest part of retirement investing is not the maths. It is watching your pension pot fall by twenty five percent while you are relying on it to fund your life, and feeling, quite viscerally, that something must be done about it right now. This feeling is not irrational. It
If you have already read the guide to ethical investing in a UK ISA, you have done something most people never get round to. You have looked at what your ISA actually holds, and made a considered choice about it. Well done. Now here is the uncomfortable follow-up question. What
Sustainable investing has become one of the most discussed and least understood ideas in personal finance over the past decade. I’ve seen it evolve and change throughout the latter years of my time in the industry. The terminology shifts every few years. The marketing has run ahead of the substance.
The short answer to “when can I retire” depends on three numbers: how much you have, how much you need to live on each year, and when your other income sources arrive. I get asked this a lot. It is not a question of age. It is a question of
There is a small inconvenience in personal finance that almost no one talks about honestly. The thing that makes the biggest difference to whether you end up with money, more than your salary, more than your fund choice, more than your tax wrapper, is something you cannot buy, cannot accelerate,
The rise of what became known as Ethical Investing was a real feature of the latter years of my career. In the early years folk weren’t sure how important it was going to be, nor was there any early governance on what Ethical Investing actually comprised. What make one product
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