It's time to start digging up those Squirrelled Nuts!!!!

Secret2ndAccount

zagfles said:

Secret2ndAccount said:

Sea_Shell said:

Zero winnings on the PB's again for the second month (on £40k) 

Shoving it all in Marcus would have guaranteed £20.   Ho Hum.

As each month passes, surely we get more and more likely to win something....eventually!!

Savings market is not as hopeless as it was. If you prefer the guaranteed return, you do now have options.
You can now get 0.7% for instant access, and 1.1% for 120 day notice. Put 15k in the instant access, and 25k in the 120 day, and you now have an interest rate over 0.9%, which beats the Premium Bonds as long as you don't pay tax on your savings income. 

With RPI at 6% and CPI at 4.2% that is pretty hopeless. 3-5% pa real terms loss on your cash savings.

Much more hopeless than it was a year ago when RPI/CPI were 1.3%/0.7%, when even zero interest would have been better than around 1% is now.

I've maxed out my SIPP contributions for years. Maxed out my ISA for over a decade. I have unwrapped stock investments in the UK and the USA. A certain amount of cash, I feel, I am stuck with. We all have to have some cash, whatever the rate of inflation.
A year ago, PB's paid 0.9%. Savings accounts paid less - they were hopeless. One year on, PB's are still at 0.9%, but the savings accts have moved on. It's pretty much a wash now between PB's and savings. Hence less hopeless.

I am celebrating my 40k of National Savings Certificates, paying CPI on cash! Sure glad I hung on to those.

zagfles

Secret2ndAccount said:

zagfles said:

Secret2ndAccount said:

Sea_Shell said:

Zero winnings on the PB's again for the second month (on £40k) 

Shoving it all in Marcus would have guaranteed £20.   Ho Hum.

As each month passes, surely we get more and more likely to win something....eventually!!

Savings market is not as hopeless as it was. If you prefer the guaranteed return, you do now have options.
You can now get 0.7% for instant access, and 1.1% for 120 day notice. Put 15k in the instant access, and 25k in the 120 day, and you now have an interest rate over 0.9%, which beats the Premium Bonds as long as you don't pay tax on your savings income. 

With RPI at 6% and CPI at 4.2% that is pretty hopeless. 3-5% pa real terms loss on your cash savings.

Much more hopeless than it was a year ago when RPI/CPI were 1.3%/0.7%, when even zero interest would have been better than around 1% is now.

I've maxed out my SIPP contributions for years. Maxed out my ISA for over a decade. I have unwrapped stock investments in the UK and the USA. A certain amount of cash, I feel, I am stuck with. We all have to have some cash, whatever the rate of inflation.
A year ago, PB's paid 0.9%. Savings accounts paid less - they were hopeless. One year on, PB's are still at 0.9%, but the savings accts have moved on. It's pretty much a wash now between PB's and savings. Hence less hopeless.

I am celebrating my 40k of National Savings Certificates, paying CPI on cash! Sure glad I hung on to those.

There were decent longer term fixes a couple of years ago, got a 5 year fix at 2.5% and a cash ISA at 2.1% which were a bit of a gamble at the time...

Dead_keen

DreZZ said:

I signed up to Pete Matthew's Meaningful Academy - Retirement Planning online course and access to Voyant Go is included for a year.  It will be £120 to renew the Voyant subscription for another year.  Because the application it is web based the software is constantly updated as soon as tax rates or allowances change.  When I registered for the course my postcode set up Voyant to calculate Scottish tax rates.   I will be renewing the subscription when it is due.

Thanks.  I'll have a look at Pete Matthew's site in a bit.  Out of interest, I'm not convinced that the tax bit is quite that good.  For example, it does not show the increase in the dividend tax rates that have been announced.  Also, I can't see that you can change assumptions as to future tax rate (e.g. what happens if basic rate goes up a bit).  There's also a bit of confusion about "nominal" and "real" tax paid in that when you look at the tax analysis page for a year. On the "Cumulative Tax Summary" bit, the tax paid numbers don't change whether you click "Real Money" or not (although the cumulative amount seems to be a "real" adjusted amount since if you add last year's cumulative to this year's tax, it is less just a straightforward addition).

Also, I can't see how to get it to choose to pay income tax early. For example, if you put a higher growth rate in then you end up paying LTA tax at age 75 but it doesn't seem to allow drawing out money from your pension early to use up prior year's personal allowances (or basic rate band).  That might be my lack of skills though - if I try to add in a pension withdrawal I get "You will lose any work that you have done so far. Are you sure?" and so I haven't played with that enough.

DreZZ

I think any of these complex software based tools that don't show their back office calculations need to be treated with caution.  I have had a few glitches where the program seemed to be struggling with consistency - just making one or two changes then reverting to original inputs and the answer was different.  I have on several occasions found it best to log out of the software and log back in - then the calculations seemed to resolve themselves.  Sure to be some glitches in the coding - like all complex software.  As the professional adviser version which Voyant Go is based on has many hundreds of companies depending on it I hope the developer will keep abreast of issues.  

LV_426

DreZZ said:

I think any of these complex software based tools that don't show their back office calculations need to be treated with caution.  I have had a few glitches where the program seemed to be struggling with consistency - just making one or two changes then reverting to original inputs and the answer was different.  I have on several occasions found it best to log out of the software and log back in - then the calculations seemed to resolve themselves.  Sure to be some glitches in the coding - like all complex software.  As the professional adviser version which Voyant Go is based on has many hundreds of companies depending on it I hope the developer will keep abreast of issues.  

Bearing in mind that Voyant is widely used by financial advisors and costs around £150/month, I'd be very surprised if it had serious undetected bugs.

zagfles

LV_426 said:

DreZZ said:

I think any of these complex software based tools that don't show their back office calculations need to be treated with caution.  I have had a few glitches where the program seemed to be struggling with consistency - just making one or two changes then reverting to original inputs and the answer was different.  I have on several occasions found it best to log out of the software and log back in - then the calculations seemed to resolve themselves.  Sure to be some glitches in the coding - like all complex software.  As the professional adviser version which Voyant Go is based on has many hundreds of companies depending on it I hope the developer will keep abreast of issues.  

Bearing in mind that Voyant is widely used by financial advisors and costs around £150/month, I'd be very surprised if it had serious undetected bugs.

Or it might explain the rubbish we sometimes see from financial advisors here

Sea_Shell

I'll stick to a wet finger in the air!!

If any software told me I'd made a huge mistake...I might have to get a job!!!😱

Better not risk it 😉

Dead_keen

Dead_keen said:

DreZZ said:

I signed up to Pete Matthew's Meaningful Academy - Retirement Planning online course and access to Voyant Go is included for a year.  It will be £120 to renew the Voyant subscription for another year.  Because the application it is web based the software is constantly updated as soon as tax rates or allowances change.  When I registered for the course my postcode set up Voyant to calculate Scottish tax rates.   I will be renewing the subscription when it is due.

Thanks.  I'll have a look at Pete Matthew's site in a bit.  Out of interest, I'm not convinced that the tax bit is quite that good.  For example, it does not show the increase in the dividend tax rates that have been announced.  Also, I can't see that you can change assumptions as to future tax rate (e.g. what happens if basic rate goes up a bit).  There's also a bit of confusion about "nominal" and "real" tax paid in that when you look at the tax analysis page for a year. On the "Cumulative Tax Summary" bit, the tax paid numbers don't change whether you click "Real Money" or not (although the cumulative amount seems to be a "real" adjusted amount since if you add last year's cumulative to this year's tax, it is less just a straightforward addition).

Also, I can't see how to get it to choose to pay income tax early. For example, if you put a higher growth rate in then you end up paying LTA tax at age 75 but it doesn't seem to allow drawing out money from your pension early to use up prior year's personal allowances (or basic rate band).  That might be my lack of skills though - if I try to add in a pension withdrawal I get "You will lose any work that you have done so far. Are you sure?" and so I haven't played with that enough.

I've had a look at the Meaningful Academy but I don't think it is for me.  But that's not to say I disrespect it in anyway.

I've played with Voyant a bit more and so getting the hang of it more.  As well as my tax-related comments, I've noticed that the default assumption is that tax bands are indexed by more than inflation (so 4% pa increase compared with 2.5% pa inflation).  So this means that if you play with meaningful amounts of income where you pay lots of tax (e.g. by changing by changing the growth assumption so it is nice and high, we can all dream) then for the same "real" drawings you may end up paying only half the tax in later years that you would pay in later years (which doesn't seem realistic).  That's not a fault of the calculations, just (in my view) a very optimistic default assumption. 

I can't see that I'd ever want to have access on a regular basis (I have my spreadsheets that do the same thing - including goal seek and monte carlo for investment returns).  But I could see it being very useful for people wondering if they could retire and how much they could spend if they did.

LV_426

Dead_keen said:

I can't see that I'd ever want to have access on a regular basis (I have my spreadsheets that do the same thing - including goal seek and monte carlo for investment returns).  But I could see it being very useful for people wondering if they could retire and how much they could spend if they did.

Exactly how I used it - to answer my questions about when I could realistically retire. And it did that extremely well. 

cfw1994

LV_426 said:

Dead_keen said:

I can't see that I'd ever want to have access on a regular basis (I have my spreadsheets that do the same thing - including goal seek and monte carlo for investment returns).  But I could see it being very useful for people wondering if they could retire and how much they could spend if they did.

Exactly how I used it - to answer my questions about when I could realistically retire. And it did that extremely well. 

I’m a bit nervous to dive into that….it might tell me I went 2 years too soon 🤣