Budget moves – watch out for fancy footwork

As well as the pension changes, the Budget also announced a new breed of tax-free Individual Savings Accounts, which will allow £15,000 in cash or shares, or a mix of the two, to be invested each year. They’ll be launched in July. Check that the charges on the investment ISAs do not outweigh the tax benefits. Remember there will be no tax to pay on gains up to £10,900 even outside an ISA wrapper. And if you want to play safe with a cash ISA remember that banks like to lure in savers with high rates for the first year […]

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Dear Mr.Osborne – just a couple of budget pointers

Dear Mr.Osborne, or may we call you George? We’re sure you’re up to your eyeballs giving your budget speech a few final tweaks before tomorrow and passing a duster over your red briefcase. But we just wanted to send this short note your way. (Please return the carrier pigeon. His name is Stallone and he likes Byron burger crumbs, by the way.) While changes to tobacco and booze taxes will grab headlines (if you change them),  we’re more interested in how you deliver what you have to say and who you really want to pay attention. The fact is that […]

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Supermarket snores – Morrisons’ loss is not our gain

So supermarket chain Morrisons has posted a £176 million loss but promises to turn things  around, including pumping money into savings on the shelves, according to reports on BBC breakfast television this morning. Here at Money Fight Club HQ we tend to take everything that supermarkets say with a pinch of salt (considerably in excess of the recommended daily limit). Supermarkets are not in the business of feeding our families but in the business of making money. Whatever they may say about savings, or online shopping, or convenience stores the only people who grow fat at senior managers and shareholders. […]

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So you want to make complaints about financial services? Yeah, right.

Financial services companies are still not dealing with customer complaints properly.  Just look at the figures for complaints about financial services. The majority of those brought to the Financial Ombudsman decided in favour of the customer in the second half of 2013. Okay, so banks have allocated more than £20 billion to compensate the victims for the outrageous mis-selling of payment protection insurance, but customers are still having to exhaust the banks’ own complaints procedure before they can take their complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). Talk about making us jump through hoops! Financial services complaints Over the full […]

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Supermarket special offers. No more two-for-ones on sneaky please!

Supermarkets are as sneaky as they ever were and, in our opinion, getting worse. The good news is that you’re all getting sick and tired of it. The fake discounts and multi-buys that are more expensive than buying individual packs are finally catching up with them. A survey by Netmums for the Sunday Times found that 80% of customers want better regulation of supermarkets. At Money Fight Club we agree and say you need to go into supermarkets armed and prepared to be ambushed if you don’t keep your wits about you. A basic supermarket self defence weapon is the […]

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FCA credit regulation takeover

In a month’s time the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) will take over the regulation of credit deals for consumers ranging from the downright dodgy payday loans and doorstep lenders to the seemingly more respectable High Street banks and mortgage lenders with their tricks to confuse customers into paying more. FCA credit regulation The FCA has warned them all that it is going to take a tough approach to credit regulation and will clamp down on poor practice. It’s expected to ban misleading advertisements from the payday loan companies. But they are not the only culprits even though their interest rates […]

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Boiler room scams and energy companies who don’t return your cash – as bad as each other?

Two events in today’s news were, in some ways, so very different from each other and in others ways appallingly similar and showed off how badly people are treated when it comes to money matters. In the first event, police arrested over 100 people involved in so called boiler room scams. Their many thousands of victims were tricked into buying worthless shares by slick, slithery con artists with super smooth phone techniques. People have lost millions of pounds to this appalling crime. In a totally unrelated news story, the UK energy regulator, Ofgem, told the big six energy companies to […]

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Our banking standards submission

Money Fight Club has been through a few rounds with the High Street banks as they have invented new ways to part customers from their money over the years. The mis-selling of personal pensions, endowment mortgages, payment protection insurance and interest rate swaps have cost customers billions of pounds and damaged the reputation and the finances of the banks. Now the Banking Standards Review headed up by Sir Richard Lambert, former editor of the Financial Times, has proposed the setting up of an independent body to raise standards and to bring ethics into banking. It does not go far enough, […]

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The great big pensions rip off

We save in a pension fund for years and get a lousy deal on charges and investment performance and then we get to retirement age and get ripped off again. The Financial Conduct Authority has just caught up with one of the scams, which leaves up to 80% of pension savers worse off than they ought to be. The practice currently under scrutiny is the annuity market. When people come to pension age they are offered an annuity – a guaranteed pension for life based on the lump sum they have saved. Currently a 65 year old can expect to […]

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Banking… standards?

The Banking Standards Review from Sir Richard Lambert proposes an independent body that will champion better banking standards. What’s not to like? But before anything can happen it has posed 19 questions on ethics, training, the assessment of a bank’s code of conduct, best practice, competence and much more. Sir Richard wants the body to raise standards of competence and conduct in banking but it is likely to fail abysmally if it becomes a “members organisation for bankers.” How can the markets and more importantly the customers begin to trust banks if their new body is little more than a […]

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