Supermarkets, tax, housing and income

Supermarkets continue to reap the benefits from our Christmas spending with two major retailers reporting record sales today. Sainsbury’s said it witnessed Christmas sales of more than £1 billion across the group, adding that like-for-like sales increased 0.1 per cent in the 15 weeks to January 7. According to the BBC, this surpassed analyst expectations. It also emerged that Sainsbury’s Bank plans to start selling mortgages by early 2018. Meanwhile, Lidl said it saw record sales over the Christmas period. In a sign that shoppers are visiting budget supermarkets to buy luxury items, Lidl said that lobsters were one of the best-sellers. The German chain said group sales increased 10 per cent during December. Tax Money Mail claims that HMRC officials are spying on eBay and Airbnb customers’ accounts to ‘obtain their names, addresses, bank account numbers and details of what they buy and sell online’.

Back in September, HM Revenue & Customs quietly acquired powers ‘which allow it to snoop on anyone who uses so-called marketplace websites that connect buyers and sellers’.

Trade

Sterling fell 0.5 per cent against the dollar this morning after data from the Office for National Statistics revealed that Britain’s trade deficit had widened by £2.6 billion on a record rise in imports from both EU and non-EU countries during November. Housing The Guardian reports on slump in shares in Foxtons after it revealed a sharp dip in profits. The estate agent also warned that ‘housing sales would fall in the year ahead if demand for properties remained at the current level’. This compounds fears about the health of the housing market in the capital and signals a significant change in fortunes for Foxtons. In other housing news, The Times reports that Bovis Homes, one of the UK’s biggest housebuilders, ‘offered its customers as much as £3,000 to complete on homes that were not finished in what analysts claim was a failed attempt to meet City targets before the end of the financial year’. Spare cash

January is tough. Now new research from SunLife suggests that people living alone are hit the hardest, both financially and emotionally, while empty nesters are the happiest.

SunLife’s Cash Happy report (which studies the day to day finances of 3,000 UK households, mapping income – and how it is used – against happiness) has found that while there is a strong link between happiness and how much we earn, there is a stronger link between happiness and how much ‘spare cash’ we have.

The company calculates that the average UK household has an income of £2,083 a month. Once all the expenses are paid for, that leaves £102 a week on average in spare cash. While people living alone earn on average more than half the average household income (£1,242 a month) they have much less left over each week – just £44, which is less than half the average household.

Retirement

Half of people aged 55 and over in the UK have no idea when they’ll be able to retire, according to research from financial services specialists Momentum UK. Despite being within a decade of state retirement age, in a study of 2,000 UK adults, just 49 per cent of the over-55s knew at what age they could afford to stop working.

Since the introduction of pension freedoms in April 2015, thousands of people aged 55 and over have taken advantage of the new rules to take cash from their pension pots. But according to the study, just 41 per cent of over-55s know how much they will actually need in their pension pot to support a comfortable lifestyle in retirement. And many (62 per cent) within this age group have little idea how much money they will be able to pass on to their next of kin when they die.