
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Bigger ISAs for over 50s

Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Will I get a mortgage?

It depends on how a lender sees you as a financial risk. It's much more difficult than the pre-credit crunch days of 2 years ago.
The outcome will depend on
1 Your salary
2 Your outgoings
3 Existing credit commitments
4 Past credit history
5 Size of deposit you can put up
#4 is particularly important. People always look surprised when I reveal to them a lender will be reluctant to give them them £150 000 because they struggled in the past to pay a relatively small credit card or mobile phone bill!
Big salary, low level of outgoings, decent sized deposit.....no problem
Low salary, big outgoings, big debts, no deposit...no comment.
It's worth remembering, the credit crunch began when US banks lent to people who could not afford to make repayments....
Posted by Sean Wilson, APFS, Independent Financial Advisers (IFA), Swindon, Wiltshire.
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Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Vulture & Zombie Pensions

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Monday, August 10, 2009
Northern Rock...the mess continues

Thursday, June 25, 2009
Dead Cat Bounce
What is dead cat bounce? A term much used in financial circles these days.It means that after a large fall in a share price or stock market it can be expected to recover.
It comes from the idea that "even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height".
Posted by Sean Wilson, APFS, Independent Financial Advisers (IFA), Swindon, Wiltshire.
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Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Disappearing Banks
In the aftermath of banking collapses & mergers, there will quite a few bank closures on high streets of Swindon & beyond.Cheltenham & Gloucester will disappear as a high street presence with the closure of 164 branches with the loss of 833 jobs.
The new Lloyds Banking group now owns the former Halifax Bank of Scotland branches too.
Santander, the Spanish bank now owns Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley. It is likely that the branches in each town will be merged into one.
In Swindon, we have already seen the closure of Portman and Woolwich branches due to mergers in recent years.
Posted by Sean Wilson, APFS, Independent Financial Advisers (IFA), Swindon, Wiltshire.
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Tuesday, June 09, 2009
"An End to Boom & Bust"....
It was Gordon Brown's famous pronouncement in 1997 & over 100 times since. It worked until 2002, the economy was doing well and he kept spending under control as chancellor. 25% of the tax the Treasury received in Corporation Tax (the tax companies pay on profits) was from the City of LondonAfter that things started to unravel, public spending increased dramatically partly because of the cost of wars in Iraq & Afghanistan.
In 2007, the economy started to falter and the model started to falter....
Posted by Sean Wilson, APFS, Independent Financial Advisers (IFA), Swindon, Wiltshire.

