Moneyblog

With the savings of the nation languishing around 1%, it’s no surprise that UK consumers are turning to increasingly creative ways to make their money work that little bit harder. Even with the arrival of a plethora of savings-focused banks such as RCI Bank, the savings horizon remains bleak for those yearning for the good old days of a 5% savings rate with FSCS protection. This backdrop has helped to fuel the rise of more consumer-friendly and increasingly mainstream financial investment opportunities. This includes everything from investing in property, via firms like LendInvest, and Kuflink, investing in corporate bonds via firms like WiseAlpha, or even investing in personal loans via

Buy-to-let property is still a popular investment choice for those who can afford it. Here are the best 5-year fixed rate mortgages on the market at the moment. Data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk

On Friday, RBS announced plans to close 259 of its bank branches. That’s a quarter of its outposts. 62 of the closures are Royal Bank of Scotland branches, while the other 197 are NatWest. This isn’t the only announcement of bank closures in the past couple of days, either. Lloyds are also closing 49 branches, and Yorkshire Building Society are closing 13 – but the RBS closures are certainly the most dramatic, and the ones that will affect the most people. Of course, yet again the reason given to the public for these closures is that the bank branches are underused. It’s the standard argument; more customers are using online

‘Industrial strategy’ must be added to this column’s collection of phrases which automatically lower the spirits. Others include ‘replacement bus service’, ‘all the toys’ and ‘smart casual’. There is literally no need for any government to have one — what industrial strategy built Silicon Valley? — and it is literally impossible to remember, when one has been announced, what it is. (If you doubt me, try reading Greg Clark’s ‘Our vision to make Britain fit for the future’ in Tuesday’s Daily Telegraph.) Its sole raison d’être is presentational: it is (sadly) considered better to claim you have a plan than to explain why you don’t. So the highest true praise for any

Thinking about what to write this week, I suggested to my editor: ‘what about an article about a Santa Rally?’. I got an excited response of ‘How fun!’. The truth of the matter is that a Santa Rally can ‘be fun’ if you are an investor benefiting from a stock market rally at the end of December – or alternatively it can be rather underwhelming (if it doesn’t happen, that is). Every year, every investor hopes for a rally to lift their portfolio. Sadly, along with other stock market superstitions – ‘Sell in May and Go Away’ or ‘Beware of the Ides of March’ – this rarely happens… until now.

It’s not even December, and already it’s almost impossible to read a personal finance article that doesn’t include the words ‘in the run up to Christmas’. My social media feeds are full of photos of friends’ decorated firs and the caption ‘We’ve treed!’ The other thing that is guaranteed to happen around this time of year is that, possibly for the first time since you were a child, you’ve started to wonder if you need an advent calendar. Not one with tiny chocolate robins and angels in it, but a luxury calendar, filled with toys or booze or make-up, depending on your age and preferences. What started as a bit

If you have a certain amount of savings money going spare, investing a lump sum in a fixed rate account will guarantee good returns – just as long as you can wait patiently for it to mature! Here are some of the best fixed rate bonds on the market at the moment Data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk

Every time I write about Bitcoin you can probably take it as a major sell signal. The last time I did so was in January 2014, at which point Bitcoin was trading around the $935 mark. Had you been inspired by my golden words and invested immediately in BTC (as we aficionados call it), here’s what would have happened: within a few months their value would have more than halved. ‘Bloody hell!’ you might have said. ‘This is an idiot’s game. Clearly there is no future in this stupid crypto-currency malarkey.’ But investment’s all about timing, isn’t it? Had you hung on a bit, watched it drift to its 2015

Now the hubbub has subsided after last week’s sale of Leonardo’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ at Christie’s New York for $450 million, we can assess whether the record-shattering price was an indicator of an impending turn in the boom-bust cycle or merely an extreme example of art market operators conspiring to ease the burden of the super-rich. Yes, the era of cheap money and asset-price inflation has gone on too long and there are signals everywhere, from the madness of Bitcoin to the nervousness of IPO markets, that a downturn is due. But my own conclusion is that the Leonardo sale was less of a bellwether and more of a freak show.

Are the giant ‘Technology Trusts’ – Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google – on the road to the monopolists’ breakers yard?  It’s received wisdom they soon will be. As Edward Luce writes in the FT, ‘Big Tech is the new big tobacco in Washington. It is not a question of whether the regulatory backlash will come, but when and how.’  Delving into United States trust-busting history can help answer that question. Back in 1900, the Rockefellers pooled their copper mining interests with my (sadly, distant) cousin Adolph Lewisohn and a few others, founding a vehicle which would control an epic 70 percent of US copper output. And they trumpeted their rationale in

Philip Hammond and this government seem to have something against the UK’s 4.85 million self-employed people. Over the last year they have introduced a whole raft of measures to squeeze the self-employed sector, from damaging reforms to dividends taxes to the disastrous changes to IR35 tax laws in the public sector. Even as the UK prepares to cut itself loose and sail into uncharted waters outside the EU, instead of supporting one of our most productive sectors, the Chancellor seems determined to suffocate it. Most recently, in the run-up to the Autumn Budget, he announced that the scrapping of Class 2 National Insurance Contributions would be delayed – a move

Southern Railway train drivers accepted a 28 per cent pay rise over five years, taking their basic salary for a four-day week to £63,000 and putting them in the top 7 per cent of UK earners. With overtime, they get £75,000, lifting them into the top 5 per cent. How much pre-tax pay is needed to reach each stage of the top 10 per cent?   10% £51,400 9% £54,000 8% £57,000 7% £60,700 6% £65,400 5% £71,700 4% £80,300 3% £92,900 2% £112,000 1% £162,000 Source: ONS

You’re probably sick of hearing that Britain is in the midst of a housing crisis – we’ve all heard it said so many times. Over the last few months, Theresa May has been focusing on the topic; claiming that our housing market is ‘broken’, promising to take ‘personal charge’ of the problem. ‘We must get back into the business of building the good quality new homes for people who need them most,’ she said yesterday. On the face of it, the latest figures released by the ONS seem positive. They show that housing supply in England saw a net increase of 217,350 last year; a 15% increase on the previous

In the argument about tax avoidance, people feel very strongly, yet it is hard to define wrong behaviour. We all know that tax evasion, being illegal, is wrong. But what tax behaviour is legal, yet wrong? Take a deliberately trivial example. Safety riding hats carry no VAT if they are sold as children’s hats. No law says that only children may buy or wear them, and no law limits their size. So it is commonplace for adults, without any dishonesty, to buy children’s riding hats for themselves to avoid the VAT. I struggle to see this as immoral. Is it just a matter of scale, then? Is it all right

Do you know what your partner earns? And if you don’t, is that a problem? If it’s just a matter of whether or not you go Dutch on the next date, then perhaps it’s not all that important. But when it comes to joint bank accounts, or a joint mortgage, then that becomes a whole different ballgame. So it’s intriguing that a recent poll conducted by pensions specialists Portafina suggests that many of us aren’t being entirely honest with our other halves when it comes to our finances. Almost half of those questioned admitted that they didn’t know exactly what their partner earned (with some choosing research their partner’s wage

When choosing a 0% credit card, what you’re ultimately looking for is the card that offers you the longest 0% deal without charging an annual fee. Here are this week’s Best Buys, of 0% introductory purchase credit cards, from data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.

What would a perfect tax system look like? For companies, profit taxes should be competitively low, to encourage inward investment, with generous reliefs for start-ups, research and capital projects; the corporate tax code should be designed to generate rising productivity and prosperity rather than to maximise short-term tax revenues, and companies should acknowledge a duty to contribute wherever their profits arise. For individuals, income tax rates should rise only to the lowest level that maximises revenue collection and thresholds should be high enough to keep low earners out of the net, while pension savers and first-time home-buyers should be incentivised. Citizens and companies alike should be proud to pay fair