Simon Watson Financial Consultant

16/02/2023

Planning for Tax Year End 📆

Join our guest speaker Tony Wickenden, a taxation expert for St. James’s Place as he reviews the end of a tumultuous tax year.
Tony will examine the (much changed) tax context in which your financial planning takes place and outline the opportunities that can arise from informed advice and insightful planning, both for investors and business owners.

Register Here - https://sjp-co-uk.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_AC8nvaAvSymgoSsWRDU5qA

The value of an investment with St. James's Place will be directly linked to the performance of the funds you select, and the value can therefore go down as well as up. You may get back less than you invested.

17/11/2022

❗️Autumn Statement ❗️
Jeremy Hunt has just outlined the Autumn budget. Whilst there is a lot of information and changes, I have summarised some of the key points below 👇🏻

- Energy bill aid for household extended beyond April for a further year ⚡️
- National living wage to rise by 9.7% from April to an hourly rate of £10.42 💷
- Pension credit to rise by 10.1%, worth up to £1,470 for a couple and £960 for a single pensioner 📈
- The threshold for higher rate tax (45%) will be reduced from £150,000 to £125,140 💰
- Dividend allowance will be cut from £2,000 to £1,000 next year and then to £500 from April 2024 💸
- The annual exempt amount for capital gains tax will be cut from £12,300 to £6,000 next year and then to £3,000 from April 2024 📉
- Windfall tax on major oil and gas producers raised to 35% from 25%. A 45% energy profits levy rate to be imposed on electricity generators to raise a combined £14 billion next year 🏛️

Further details can of the Autumn statement can be found on our website -

https://ghfinancialsolutions.co.uk/article/detail/sjpp/what-does-the-autumn-statement-2022-mean-for-you.html

What are your thoughts on the Autumn statement and how will it affect you? 🧐

03/11/2022

The Bank of England today has increased interest rates by 0.75%, pushing the base rate to 3%, the highest it’s been since 2008. 📅

Mortgage tracker deals are set to roughly rise by £40 per month for every £100,000 worth of mortgage (£480 per annum). 📈

Let me know your thoughts on the Bank of England decision and how you think it will effect you in the coming months 🤔👇🏻

27/10/2022

We know family is the most important thing in your life. So, it’s good to know that, with the right advice, transferring wealth to loved ones can be easy - as well as rewarding. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

Whether it’s helping your children onto the housing ladder, contributing to your grandchildren’s savings pots or a parents care fees, we can help you share your wealth whilst you’re still able to see the joy that it brings. 💰

Plan for tomorrow, enjoy today. Contact us now for a no obligation chat. 💬

www.ghfinancialsolutions.co.uk



GH Financial Solutions is an Appointed Representative of and represents only St.James’s Place Wealth Management plc (which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority)

20/10/2022

How do you invest to turn your goals into reality? 💰
Investing for your journey involves taking the long-term view 🗓️
By staying the course, taking risk and benefiting from compound interest, you can give yourself the best chance of achieving your goals. 📈

18/10/2022

The new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has delivered the emergency statement to Parliament yesterday.
With all these changes to the budget it can be hard to keep up to date! 🤔
Which is why I have summarised the key changes below -

- The basic rate of income tax will remain at 20% 💷

- Review of the energy support scheme will commence, but the cap, which was previously promised for 24 months, will only be in place until April 2023 ⚡

- Dividend tax will not be reducing back to the pre-April 2022 rates in April 2023, remaining at 8.75% (basic rate), 33.75% (higher rate) and 39.35% (additional rate) 📊

- Reintroduction of the increase in Corporation tax from 19% to 25% for those companies with profits in excess of £250,000 and a sliding scale for those with profits over £50,000 📈

- IR35 rules remain, just as they did in the mini-budget. However, the u-turn in this area means that again the responsibility for monitoring compliance with them will fall to the businesses and not revert back to the individuals 📃

- VAT-free shopping scheme for non-Uk visitors to Great Britain will not be proceeding, saving around £2 billion a year 👕

- Freezing of alcohol duty from February 2023 for a year has also been scrapped 🍺

- Reductions in National insurance by 1.25% will still come into being in November, with the scrapping of the Health and Social Care Levy in April 2023 📉

Let me know what your thoughts are on this latest decision from the government and how will it affect you? 👇

Further details on the latest announcement can be found in the below article.

Today, the newly appointed Chancellor of The Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, stood up to try and calm market fears following his predecessor’s mini-budget. He announced significant u-turns and commented that more changes would come.

13/10/2022

What’s your biggest money mistake? 🧐

02/03/2022

💷 If I told you had money invested with a company that you could access, would you just leave it there? 🤔

There are thousands of pension schemes in the UK that are left unclaimed every year. A whopping 19.4 billion funds are unclaimed in the UK at this very moment! 🤯

If you think you may have an old pension scheme or you can’t remember the company it’s with. You can head over to the Gov. website and use their pension locator form.
What have you got to lose 🤷‍♂️

10/02/2022

💰 One of the most important first steps on route to your financial freedom is understanding how much you spend each month 🤔

It Sounds obvious, but the amount of people I see week in and week out that are completely unaware of how much they spend each month is alarming. 🚨

The majority of people I sit down with and go through their monthly expenditure are spending anywhere between £100-£1,000 more than they realise!! 😰

With my budget template you are able to breakdown your monthly expenditure, right through from essential expenditure (bills) to discretionary expenditure (eating out, memberships ect). ✅

Take your first step towards financial well-being and get to grips with your spending!

Let me know how you get on and drop me a message to receive your budget planner! 🖊

19/07/2021

💭 Gaining an understanding of what factors impact your net worth is a great start in improving your financial situation. 🏡 💷

16/07/2021

🤔 What is compound interest?

💭 Imagine you save £1,000 and earn interest on that saving of 2%.
At the end of the year you will receive £20 in interest.
This £20 is added to your original £1,000 savings, making a new total of £1,020.
Now if you were to earn a further 2% interest the following year, you would receive £20.40 (£1,020 x 2% = £20.40).
This is then added to your £1,020, making a new total of £1,040.40.
The cycle then repeats again and again, so that by the end of year 10, your savings have grown to £1,218.98. 🤯

14/07/2021

💭 Ever wonder what affect inflation is having on your money?
Did you know back in 1971 a burger from McDonald’s cost just 18p!? 🤯

📈 Even though this is an extreme example, it demonstrates the effect inflation has on your spending power.
Most frustratingly prices will increase, but your savings may not follow, meaning you are losing spending power of your cash.

Are your savings keeping pace with inflation? How do we counter these increasing prices? How do we afford more burgers? 😅
These are the points we need to consider to ensure our cash is working hard for ourselves.