Pensions : The Money Principle

Category: Pensions

What do you do about saving these days?

Published Mar 5, 2013 | By John | Posted in Investments, Pensions, Savings | 14 Comments

As regular readers will know, we are looking to build an investment portfolio and are therefore becoming interested in the science and practice of storing money – that is, investing. So let me dream for a little, imagine that we have already amassed a stash and want to put it [...] Continue Reading...

Tax Avoidance for the masses (well some of them anyway)

Published Feb 28, 2013 | By John | Posted in Budgeting, Financial Health, Pensions | 5 Comments

One Saturday a few months ago we were out shopping in the village and bumped into a good friend of ours who has four children - we know quite a few such families. The brief conversation got round to the (then) imminent withdrawl of Child Benefit from the ‘better off’ [...] Continue Reading...

What you need to know about the new UK pension legislation

Published Feb 4, 2013 | By Maria | Posted in Guest posts, Pensions | 2 Comments

Employers have new duties to comply with starting from October 2012. Changes have been made to the UK pension legislation, introducing auto enrolment. This is a new scheme which involves the employer automatically enrolling their employees into a pension scheme which both employer and employee contribute to. There are certain [...] Continue Reading...

How much do you need? A retirement calculator

Published Nov 25, 2012 | By John | Posted in Financial Health, Investments, Pensions, Savings | 20 Comments

Yesterday Maria published a post suggesting that, for a fulfilled life in our pre-dotage before we are off to the commune, we will need to amass some £2.5 million ($4 million) of savings and investments over the next 5 years. This will enable us to travel around, spend time in [...] Continue Reading...

Are you saving too much: our ‘enough’

Published Nov 24, 2012 | By Maria | Posted in Financial Health, Pensions, Savings | 13 Comments

Couple of days ago I was talking to a colleague and a friend. In between the usual corridor gossip and, well let's face it, moaning about the changing conditions of our jobs (academics are really getting shafted currently; this is beyond a joke) I mentioned that I am quite Zen [...] Continue Reading...

Are you saving too much: where is your ‘enough’?

Published Nov 20, 2012 | By Maria | Posted in Pensions, Savings | 5 Comments

I know, I know! In a realm where saving is a major virtue - bordering on dogma - this question may sound as heresy. Nevertheless, it keeps popping up in my mind lately: can we be saving too much? Surprisingly, or not, my answer is: yes, we can be saving [...] Continue Reading...

Are You Saving Up For Your Retirement: Infographic and Analysis

Published Oct 26, 2012 | By Guest Post | Posted in Guest posts, Pensions, Savings | 3 Comments

An Uncertain Future? The issue of retirement has been complicated in the last year or so by government changes to the age of retirement. Men retiring at 65 and women at 60 will soon be a thing of the past. Current legislation states that from 2044 neither [...] Continue Reading...

Borrowing from the future and the change in pension regulation in the UK

Published Aug 24, 2012 | By Maria | Posted in Big picture, Pensions | 3 Comments

What do you see when you look into your future? Do you see a contented older person who travels the world, snowboards in their 70s, patronises the opera and the concert halls, and lives in a lovely place with flowers (whatever you may consider to be 'lovely')? Or do you [...] Continue Reading...

An accident of birth

Published Feb 20, 2012 | By John | Posted in Financial Health, Pensions, Property | 5 Comments

I am a baby boomer. I make no apology or claim no benefit for this. It is because I was born at a certain time – it is an accident of birth. Like many of my generation, I have concerns and worries. Health, wealth, happiness, offspring and so on. Some [...] Continue Reading...

No education means extermination: my most idiotic financial mistake

Published Feb 7, 2012 | By Maria | Posted in Financial Health, Investments, Pensions, WTFIFL | 20 Comments

Have you heard about the Darwin Awards? No, I didn’t think so! Not to worry; neither had I till Harri Pierce from Totally Money invited contributions to their Personal Finance Darwin Awards 2012. Just so that you all know what I am getting myself in for (although it is about [...] Continue Reading...

Would I still be working when I am sixty four?

Published Jan 16, 2012 | By Maria | Posted in Financial Health, Investments, Pensions | 22 Comments

I have a problem. Well, it is not an immediate one but the time has come when thinking about stopping work and what I am going to be surviving on is only natural. Would I still be working when I am sixty four? Not if I could help it! But [...] Continue Reading...

Principled money posts of the week #5: pensions, saying ‘no’ and choose Scrooge not Santa

Published Dec 11, 2011 | By Maria | Posted in Pensions, Websites | 5 Comments

Another weekend brings entirely different concerns. There is a joke about the UK, which many British people don’t seem to know or remember. It is about the newspapers, several decades ago, publishing a report according to which ‘...because of the fog the Continent is isolated’. It seldom occurs to many [...] Continue Reading...

The Money Principle

... Stuff hedonism, take charge!