I'll just leave this here, it may be right...it may be wrong but sometimes there's no smoke without fire, you know 
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It's very important that people read the broadsheet money sections. These papers are expensive but worth their weight in gold. It's quite unlikely that anyone is going to bring back socialism later on so one needs to take charge. Spend less on tat and open up a pension fund!
One of our folie a deux type running gags is based on pointless/the chase quiz programmes. How many times do you hear that people want to waste their money on visiting relations abroad, buy new cars, and other tat? How many times do they say they'll put it in their pension pot or buy an ISA? I rest my case.
Garage Joe posted:One of our folie a deux type running gags is based on pointless/the chase quiz programmes. How many times do you hear that people want to waste their money on visiting relations abroad, buy new cars, and other tat? How many times do they say they'll put it in their pension pot or buy an ISA? I rest my case.
Very true GJ 
My state pension age is already officially 66 and is already known to be 67 within 2 years of that. And even at the stage when they were still discussing when the '67' was to come in it was known that '68 to 70' was waiting to be agreed upon soon after.
Moin! We decided long ago that we would probably not receive a state pension. Although that theory turned out to be wrong, you may notice that they already are referring to it as a benefit. The current government like pensioners because they have a tradition of voting, but future generations may be more cynical. Either way there will be a lot of decision makers who feel that sort of money would be better off shore in a revenue free haven. We remain unconvinced that people see the link between income tax and government spending.
Re the State Pension and future pensioners. The new State pension is £155-65 per week this year. But if you are in a job with a firm's pension and you are contracted out of paying the full national insurance throughout you working life, you'll get the basic State pension of £119-30 per week this year.
http://www.pensionsadvisoryser...n/what-you-might-get
Wth all employers in the process of having to have a pension plan in place, people need to check if the employer is contracted in or out for national insurance purposes.
This has been in the press but everyone needs to be aware of this.
I am not really surprised that they could consider raising the retirement age again in the future. We are living longer so I guess they (whoever they are at the time) need to fund pensions longer. I must say that I currently fall into the group that will retire at 68, but I bet it will rise to 70 before I get there.
I have to say that ISA's (the cash variety) are a bit of a poor investment at the moment given the shockingly low interest rates. I will admit to my 3 year fixed cash ISA at 3% has just matured and in the final year it has made just over £1900 on a sum of £64K. But some of that has now gone to pay off my mortgage, so there is a monthly saving there and that is what it was invested to do ...and fund my new mobile phone.
You can get better rates in ordinary savings accounts now, especially as the first £1000 interest is tax free (I think it is the first £1000).
I think that tax free bag of sand interest is right across the board covering all of your non ISA stuff like acçounts and bonds.
EC, yes £1,000 for standard rate tax payers, £500 for higher rate taxpayers, and nil for anyone who had income over £150k.
For those on lowish income, they might be able to make use of the 0% rate band on interest up to £5,000 and that's in addition to the £1,000. Those exclude interest from ISAs which can be ignored for tax purposes. Retired people are the most likely to benefit. Someone with pension income of £11,000 and interest income of £6,000 would pay no tax - the pension income is covered by their personal allowance, they get the £1,000 savings personal allowance, and the full £5,000 0% band on the rest of their interest. People with non-savings income higher than the personal allowance, the excess reduces the 0% band so that is of no benefit to people with higher income.