FROM THE PAPERS
Synopsis: Short summaries of articles we think you will find useful from some of the weekends broadsheets. At the end of each summary is a link to take you directly to the relevant article. Please see Helpful Hints at the end of the bulletin.
FINANCIAL TIMES
Financial Times:” Charity suggests pension savings as ‘buffer'”. The pension’s auto-enrolment system should be used to help every household to save a £1,000 ‘rainy day’ fund for financial emergencies, a debt charity has urged. Click here.
THE TIMES
The Times:” Pension freedom for the five million?” Britain’s army of pensioners could be granted the right to sell out in the proposed shake-up
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Time to declutter your financial strategy”. Most portfolios — like most homes — acquire clutter that, if not dealt with, will get in the way of an investment strategy. The potential returns on better-performing shares and funds could be dragged down by the poor showing of laggards. The only way to avoid this is regular de-cluttering exercises. Times Money guides you through the process. Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Married couples ‘should get milestone tax breaks'”. Married couples should receive ‘milestone’ tax breaks of increasing value when they reach their fifth, tenth and twentieth wedding anniversaries to reward them for staying together, a former high court judge has said.
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Why the annuities sell-off won’t work”. Could ‘second-hand’ annuity sales be the next endowment scandal? Some financial advisers have warned that the suggestion by Steve Webb, the pension’s minister, that annuity-holders should be able to sell them for a lump sum could disappoint. ‘Many pensioners would welcome the option to be able to cash in their annuities for a cash lump sum. However, the sting in the tail is what value they are likely to be able to get, and in reality this may not be good,’ says Jonathan Watts-Lay, director of Wealth at Work, a financial adviser.
Click here to go directly to the article
THE TELEGRAPH
The Telegraph:” Why second-hand annuities are doomed to fail”. Steve Webb’s hopes for a second-hand annuity market raise the prospect of some chilling outcomes, says Richard Dyson
Click here to go directly to the article
The Telegraph:” HMRC investigations into buy-to-let spark surge in tax receipts”. A crackdown on landlords has resulted in record hauls of capital gains tax for HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)
Click here to go directly to the article
The Telegraph:” £11,000: The cost of a flexible pension on an average £29,000 pot”. A report warns how high charges on pension income products gradually shave a third off an average pot of £29,000 over the course of a retirement
Click here to go directly to the article
HELPFUL HINTS
1. LINKS TO ARTICLES:
We have now provided direct links to the articles referred to in the article. These can be accessed by click on the “To go directly to the article click here” at the end of each article summary
2. REQUIREMENT TO SUBSCRIBE TO SITES:
As some Opus Gold users will be aware, many of the broadsheet newspapers that are traditionally covered in our From the Papers bulletin, are changing (or have changed) their free online access to articles.
Currently the Financial Times and Weekend Financial Times only allows access to view 8 articles a month free, then requiring the user to subscribe to their online service. From 1 July 2010 The Times, Saturday Times and Sunday Times articles are no longer available for free online. Instead a daily or monthly fee will have to be paid to access the articles.
We are aware of the inconvenience this will cause to our users. Unfortunately, due to the stringent copyright rules enforced by the newspapers we are not allowed to copy the articles onto our bulletin to make them available to Opus Gold users, thus our only option is to put a direct link to the article on the newspapers own website.
Although we will continue to produce From the Papers bulletins linking to these articles, users should be aware that access to many will now be blocked unless a personal subscription to the newspapers site is taken.
Once again we apologise for this inconvenience but this is something outside of our control.
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