#tax

Your pension may own more British shares than you realise. After a decade of US dominance, is backing home still loyalty, or an expensive habit?

Taking pension cash in your fifties sounds great until HMRC shows up. Here’s how the access age, tax-free lump sum and 40% or 45% tax can shrink your retirement.

Booking on a Tuesday or clearing your cookies won’t get you a cheaper flight. What actually moves the fare is when you book, when you travel and which UK airport you fly from.

Compound interest gets talked up as a miracle, and skipping lattes as the way to tap into it. If you’re over 45, here’s what actually grows your pot.

Loss aversion, overconfidence and the sunk cost fallacy cost more than most fees do. Here’s how to spot your own thinking traps before they reach your pension or ISA.

Keeping everything in cash can feel prudent. Investing everything can feel bold. Neither is a plan. Give each pound a job based on when you will need it.

A £300,000 pension pot sounds substantial. Retiring at 55 is another matter. Here is what the money might cover before and after your State Pension begins.

Spring is the season for Dubrovnik. Walk the walls, hunt down the Game of Thrones locations and see the old Ragusa beneath the fan tourism, all before the summer crowds arrive.

Starting to invest in your fifties? The expensive errors are often mundane: investing money you need soon, concentrating your bets, overlooking charges and getting the tax wrapper wrong.

A Spanish flat can buy you more time in the sun, but purchase tax, annual bills and UK tax rules deserve as much attention as the balcony.

A trading app can turn every price movement into a personal emergency. Here is how to judge the strain, the financial risk and whether it is worth either.

A global tracker, a UK tracker and a technology tracker can behave very differently. Here is how to judge what an index fund actually holds, costs and risks.

Insurance savings are easy to advertise and harder to judge. Here is how to challenge a renewal, spot duplicate cover and avoid an excess you cannot afford.

Temu’s prices are tempting, but a cheap gadget is only a bargain if it works, arrives and is safe. Here’s how to judge the risks before you buy.

Leaving work to trade sounds appealing. Before you hand in your notice, work out the return your household needs, the costs of getting it and the retirement savings at stake.

A second career could buy you freedom, or leave you financing a hobby. Here is how to test the numbers, choose a business structure and protect your retirement.

Buying used is not about making do. It is about paying for the years of use you need, rather than the privilege of being first.

An extra £1,000 a month sounds useful. Here is what the target demands, how UK tax changes the sums, and why rent and dividends are rarely passive.

Financial advice can cost thousands, but avoiding it can be expensive too. Here is how to judge when an adviser earns their fee — and when they do not.

Forget being told to give up coffee. The decisions worth checking are the ones you repeat, renew without noticing or never quite get round to making.

You do not need to memorise dozens of complicated passwords. Secure the accounts that unlock everything else, let a password manager handle the rest, and plan for a lost phone.

AI can spare you dull work or spare you the bother of thinking. The difference lies in which jobs you hand over — and what you check afterwards.

You need neither a taste for stock tips nor a spreadsheet obsession to invest. But the ISA millionaire sums demand time, substantial contributions and a tolerance for setbacks.

A pension pot can look reassuring until you turn it into decades of income. Here is how to test your retirement plan against time, tax and bad markets.

Cancel useful cover, buy the cheapest replacement, invest the difference. Then a claim or breakdown wipes out years of contributions. Which cuts actually last?

Planning to finish work at 65? Under current rules, your State Pension starts at 67, leaving 24 months of bills to cover before it arrives.

If you’re 55 and planning to retire at 65, you may have only another 120 monthly paycheques left. What you do with them could matter more than you think. For many men, the decade before retirement coincides with some of their highest-earning years. Your salary may finally be where you always hoped it would be. […]