News & Blog

News & Blog

Bumper Stickers

14 August 2019

I was driving up the A1 the other day and passed a camper van with a bumper sticker that brought a smile to my face on a long journey.   “take it easy, life is short!”  It makes you think, life goes by in the blink of an eye, whic...

TRANSFER OF WEALTH - A CONUMDRUM

07 August 2019

The passing on of wealth down the generations is a complicated affair involving many considerations – it is a balancing act between the needs of the individual who holds the wealth and those of their offspring. It often involves multiple generations at once covering a wide range of demographic...

Financial Wellbeing – will your staff experience the lightbulb moment?

03 July 2019

It has been a while since I last put pen to paper venting my angst about the pension world. I don’t think much has happened since, has it? Brexit seems to have diverted the government away from pensions for a while. So, we are now seeing companies in the secondary auto-enrolment market, mean...

Why should you use a Mortgage Adviser?

01 July 2019

It’s a well-known fact that you can approach a high street bank directly and apply for a mortgage directly with them. However, just because you bank with them, will you truly get the best deal available to you? We are regularly asked what the benefit of u...

Did you know? Inheritance Tax, Pensions and ISAs

05 June 2019

Pensions Pension withdrawals hit a new high in 2018/19 of just over £8bn, which was up £1.5bn from the year before. HMRC have recorded tax from pension receipts being significantly higher than predicted.* One of the problems the government has in relation to pensions is that their two...

How important is Estate Planning?

08 May 2019

It would seem when it comes to planning, UK adults don't do it very well. In a post we published last year, we found that 53% of men (a whopping 3.9 million Dads!) in the UK with dependent children have no life insurance. It's pretty much the same bleak outcome when we look at Estate Planning....

What is your priority?

30 April 2019

I had a slightly concerning (well, to me anyway) phone call the other day. It was from a staff member at a company whose pension we look after, who was in their late twenties. We’d had a meeting last week about the recent increases to Auto Enrolment pension contributions, from 3% to 5% (gro...

Is overpaying your mortgage better than saving?

25 February 2019

It can be challenging to know where to allocate your money. Many variables can change when it comes to deciding on how best to protect and grow your income. Here we take a look at a long-term strategy many people use to put themselves in a better position in the future: overpaying a mortgage. ...

Do your company benefits match your brand?

19 February 2019

Money is a pretty good incentive for getting people out of bed in the morning. As obvious as this is, you may not be surprised to know in 2019 that there are better ways to empower and motivate employees once they are awake. Company benefits can help to make sure you have supercharged, productive&nb...

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF... SIMON BOARDMAN

12 February 2019

Hi Simon. Firstly, tell us a little bit about yourself. I’ve been working in the exciting world of financial services since 1982. Starting from humble beginnings as ‘The Man From The Pru’ moving to Abbey National in 1993, and then Atkinson Smith now Ethos ...