What will you get for £168?

Recent research has revealed how much it costs to make sure your wishes are met on death. Do you have a will? If you have, is it up to date? If you do not have a will, then your estate will be distributed under the laws of intestacy, which differ between England & Wales,…

Watch the dividend

Dividend growth is slowing in the UK. Shortly after the end of each quarter, Capita, one of the UK’s largest share registrars, publishes a dividend monitor. This gives a useful snapshot of the dividend payments from UK-listed companies over the previous three months. The latest edition, covering the first quarter of 2016, makes interesting reading…

Offshore funds and onshore myths

The ‘Panama Papers’ have created a media frenzy about offshore investment. Not everything you read was necessarily accurate Offshore investment made front page headlines last month, with the leak of 11.5 million documents from a law firm in Panama. The fact that there was link to the Prime Minister gave the story legs, but unfortunately…

Inflation picks up – just a little

The March inflation number was the highest since December 2014. UK inflation picked up in March, reaching the dizzy heights of 0.5% on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and 1.6% on the Retail Prices Index (RPI – which is no longer an official statistic, despite being widely used by government). The CPI figure is still…

National Savings wields the axe

National Savings & Investments (NS&I) are cutting interest rates. National Savings & Investments (NS&I) has announced that it will be cutting interest on five of its variable rate products, mostly from June. It blames the cuts in part on the fact that for 2016/17 the Treasury has set NS&I a lower net funding target than…