The growth of self-employment has become one of the stories of the UK economic recovery. While the share of total UK employment accounted for by self-employment has risen for decades, bucking the trend internationally, its pace has accelerated since 2008. While the number of employee jobs has only recently regained its pre-recession level, the number […]
Latest News from Radcliffe Cooper
This section is regularly updated to bring you news of important developments in financial planning matters.
Some months I sit down to write this report and think to myself, ‘Not much happened really…’ And then you get a month like the one that’s just finished where pretty much everything happened! Elections were held across Europe – and the big story was the rise and rise of the extremist parties, with UKIP […]
The month got off to a gloomy start, especially if you are a Guardian reader. Five signs the global recovery may be an illusion was the headline on one of its main analysis articles, which pointed out that the world of 2014 was not very dissimilar to the world of 2004 – when (we now […]
As the weather turns and we move toward the Summer months, it’s natural for all of us to look forward to forthcoming holidays and some time away somewhere nice! Foreign finance is a notoriously troublesome area, with poor exchange rates on overseas credit card transactions being just one of several fairly recent high profile examples […]
Even if you live in a cave on top of a mountain a very long way from anywhere, it won’t have escaped your attention that the referendum on Scottish independence is drawing inexorably closer. Voting will take place on September 18th – little more than five months from now – and at the moment the […]
In one of the most significant changes announced during George Osborne’s 2014 Budget, the rules governing ISAs will dramatically change in July of this year. Below, we break down exactly how the new rules will impact savers and allow you to shelter more from the taxman. New ISAs New ISAs, or NISAs, will be introduced […]
We started last month’s bulletin in the Crimea, with Russian troops in de facto control of the peninsula. The question now is what happens in the Eastern Ukraine? In the UK, the big event was George Osborne’s Budget speech on Wednesday, March 19th. The Chancellor confounded those who had been expecting a ‘steady as you […]
Hopefully you don’t keep all of your savings stuffed in or under the mattress of your bed but if you do happen to keep a ‘rainy day’ store of £50 notes, you had better check your bed linen, otherwise you may find that the value of your assets suddenly goes down in the not too […]
Britons spend more time planning their next holiday, haircut and shopping excursions than they do making preparations for their financial future, according to a new study by Scottish Widows, examining the long-term worries of the nation. The survey of 2,000 people conducted by One-Poll in December 2013 and January 2014, indicates that we may be […]
The Chancellor may have gone for the popular phrase from Chancellors of yore by taking ‘a penny off a pint’, but what were the real big announcements during The Budget 2014? We summarise the 8 main points: 1. Changes to pensions mean many more options than just buying an annuity In measures to be introduced […]