Death of Bond?

In four days time the investment bond might start its slow lingering death.

As of the new tax year the chancellor has reduced the rate of Capital Gains Tax for everyone down to 18%. This means that unit trusts and OEICs which are subject to this tax now look more attractive than investment bonds which are subject to income tax.

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Dumb advice

The most important question you should ask an adviser is the least commonly discussed. I often find myself in front of a new client asking if there is anything else they would like to know about me before I proceed to ask their inside leg measurement. When they fail yet again to ask me what my qualifications are, I proceed to tell them. No one in their right mind employs an architect without checking that he is qualified to practice and registered with RIBA. If we didn’t ask we could end up with a very shoddy looking house that leaked.

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Are you getting the advice you're paying for?

From a simple economic point of view, fees would seem like the better option to commission. This is partly because different companies offer different rates of commission to advisers. Let’s imagine for a minute that advisers are not motivated by purely selfless goals and like most of us have mortgages to pay and mouths to feed.

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You're wrong, annuities are good value

Annuities offer good value to anyone seeking an income from a modest pension fund. This belief has landed me in hot water with people before now. I remember clearly having a debate on BBC radio with a caller who became more and more irate at this claim despite the fact that I had no axe to grind or gained any benefit from making it.

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Legal Sexism

Despite the big headlines about record settlements in such cases as McCartney/Mills, many women are getting a raw deal from divorce. The biggest issue I have found when dealing with divorcees is that their husband's pension has often not been factored in when agreeing on a split in assets. Even when the pension is factored in women often end up with the marital home as an offset against claiming part of their husband's pension.

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