The Lifestyle Blog | Regentia Lifestyle Planning

09 Jan Tight turnaround for year end tax planning before Spring Budget

Posted at 12:23h in Financial News by Gemma Bellaby 0 Comments

The Treasury has announced the date of the next Budget. On 15 December, the US Federal Reserve (Fed) raised its key short term interest rate by 0.25%, to a range between 0.5% and 0.75%. It had made the same increase 12 months previously. When the...

02 Jan Auto-enrolment: seven million and counting

Posted at 12:08h in Financial News by Gemma Bellaby 0 Comments

Automatic enrolment has reached a new landmark, but the path from 2017 onwards could be challenging. When automatic enrolment (AE) into workplace pensions started in October 2012, there were some doubts about how successful it would be. A little over four years later, few would...

19 Dec Attention staff: the cafeteria is closing

Posted at 10:02h in Financial News by Gemma Bellaby 0 Comments

The Autumn Statement confirmed plans to limit the scope for salary sacrifice arrangements. In recent years, the number of employers offering ‘cafeteria’ remuneration has steadily increased. Under the system, employees can swap pay for benefits, which can range from anything from mobile phones through to...

12 Dec Deposit protection limits to rise next year

Posted at 11:40h in Financial News by Gemma Bellaby 0 Comments

It looks likely that the deposit protection limit will rise at the end of January. At the start of 2016, the maximum amount of a bank or building society deposit covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) was cut from £85,000 to £75,000. The...

05 Dec Putting a price on unpaid work

Posted at 11:33h in Financial News by Gemma Bellaby 0 Comments

The Office for National Statistics has been examining the value of unpaid work. Every three months the news headlines draw attention to how much UK gross domestic product (GDP) has changed over the past quarter – the last reading was +0.5%, better than many experts had...

01 Dec The Trump card has been dealt

Posted at 10:25h in Financial News by Gemma Bellaby 0 Comments

What are the investment consequences of the surprise US election result? The arrival of Donald Trump marks a change of direction for the US government from the near status quo that Hillary Clinton was offering. Quite what the new direction is remains unclear. On the one...