Do we teach our children enough about the importance of saving rather than spending? How can we educate young people so they that they try and start saving as early as they can, with whatever spare cash they may have? A recent experience has taught me that youngsters have far more potential to be habitual savers than we elders might realise. There is hope for a new generation of savers yet.

June 2021

Is now the winter of our discontent? On the face of it, there is plenty to be gloomy about. After months of lockdown and restrictions on our freedoms of movement, crushing economic consequences and health concerns for family and friends, it would be forgivable to feel down and glum.

October 2020

I am teaching my daughter to drive. Or rather, I am trying not to shout and/or burst into tears at every junction, roundabout and parking space.

September 2020

I was talking to a friend of mine over the weekend who gave an interesting (if unfortunate in her case) apocryphal story about the immediate affect of the Chancellor’s Stamp Duty holiday.

July 2020

The Family Building Society believes that the Covid-19 crisis allows the Treasury to develop further its leading role in radical economic policy-making.

July 2020

Covid-19 has hit the over 65s hard. It has also cut the ground from under the feet of the under 25s in particular but also Generation Y. And we are all going to be poorer for a long time.

June 2020

We are emerging from this global crisis, of that there is no doubt. Economies around the world are beginning to take the padlocks off and opening the doors of business again.

June 2020

Churchills famous words resonate around us now. Our greatest leader was talking in 1942 of the hard-won victory in North Africa over massed German forces. Britain and its Commonwealth Allies had battled hard to show what Churchill argued was not the Beginning of the End of the Second World War but was the first sign that it could be won.

June 2020

So sang the late, great post-punk storyteller Ian Dury. He was himself a man who faced challenges. Though he never allowed his physical handicap – polio – or his cultural one, namely an inability to sing very well, to stop him from reaching pop superstardom.


April 2020

A startling study released last week shows those educated to degree-level are more at risk of pension fraud than those without the qualification. A survey from the Financial Conduct Authority and the Pension Regulator shows fraudsters offering ‘free pension reviews’ with unsolicited phone calls target those with larger pension pots.

November 2019

It’s perhaps one of the great first-world questions of our time. Not, will I need a visa to go to France next year, nor, will my adult kids ever leave home, nor, why are avocados so expensive these days, but: How much cheaper is it to pay off a mortgage than rent for 30 years?

November 2019

It seems the UK government might have another little headache on its hands. And this is one which might benefit us all as pressure continues to build on the power-that-be to reform the moribund Stamp Duty regime.

October 2019

In our enlightened age where we are more sensitive about conditions which were previously cured with a swift ‘pull your socks up’ – a new syndrome has been identified. It is called Empty Nest Syndrome.

October 2019

The Earth is spherical, concrete is hard and there’s no rhyme for orange. And in further unsurprising news, the Bank of Mum and Dad is now a top ten lender in the UK, dishing out £6.3bn in the last year to help get their children on the housing ladder.

October 2019

In this digital era where dialogue tends to be undertaken in silence with two thumbs and a mobile phone, one wonders if the true art of conversation – like rhetoric – is being forgotten.

October 2019

Cue sound of stomping upstairs. Cue stomping. Loud teenage female voice: “If you hate me so much why did you bother having me!” Slam of door vibrates through house. “You’re still not borrowing the car!” Roll forward 15 years. “But Dad! I thought it was a gift! The money for the house, I mean (tears). You never said it was a loan and now you want it back with interest!” Ooops. The joys of parenthood huh?

October 2019

Even if you didn’t have the extreme misfortune to have booked a late summer holiday with Thomas Cook, you will no doubt still be wincing slightly at the forgotten credit card bills from foreign restaurants, cafes and adventures.

September 2019

It used to be said by insurance salesmen of the old school, that the way to sell life assurance was to ‘scare ‘em to death’. So if the salesman was talking to a couple, he’d start talking to the woman. Often the man would interject fairly quickly. The salesman would say to the woman, “No, imagine that he’s dead”. The man would often just keep going. At this point the salesman would get out a small coffin and say, “No, you’re in there!”

August 2019