Think Chat

Having been contacted the other day by the Eden Brown Group regarding an investment, I decided to look into it a little more. The guy I spoke to sounded very plausable and I have to admit, I was very interested in what he had to say.

Having looked closer, I realised that these guys are based in Barcelona and I checked their accreditation (Yes, they are BAFIN registered) and were offering me a deal that was pretty hard to decline. However, I'm not that gullible so I asked the chap to call me back the following day, after I'd done a little research.

Inheritance tax is an insidious, loathsome and spiteful tax designed to rob you even as you are knocking at St Peter’s gates.

Under the current legislation, if upon your demise, your estate is worth in excess of £285,000 then the excess is subject to inheritance tax at 40%

Who Is Affected ?

So here we are….like so many others, our endowment will fail to meet the unrealistic projections that we were given at their inception. Perhaps, our circumstances have changed over the years, and we are at a point where we need to raise liquid funds due to either a ‘cash crunch’ or for an upcoming project. Maybe we want to use the funds to pay off some of the outstanding capital on our mortgage. Either way, we have decided that we want to liquidate our endowment policy….the question is: Do I surrender or sell?

Obtaining a mortgage if you are self employed has traditionally been somewhat more difficult than for those in regular employment. Being in this situation myself, I can definitely empathise with the heartache very often involved in finally being accepted by a lender willing to issue a self employed mortgage.

What’s The Problem?

Your credit rating is an indication to a potential lender as to your past reliability with regards to financial products. Before being accepted by any lender for a mortgage, they will check your credit history to ensure that the risk of making the loan is acceptable.

A bridging loan is a form of finance which is intended to solve a temporary shortfall in cash flow without the need for a larger debt consolidation loan. Bridging loans are most commonly used: When you want to purchase a new property before you have been able to sell your existing one. This is one of the most common uses of bridging loans.

If you are one of the many thousands of motorists who have fallen victim to the current fuel contamination fiasco, you will no doubt, be feeling somewhat disgruntled and certainly very angry at being out of pocket. You will have been put through no small inconvenience, due to both repair costs AND follow on expenses such as transport costs. You will even, perhaps, have suffered loss of earnings due to the absence of your vehicle during repair.

Almost all of us aspire to own our own homes one day. Maybe after years of paying out ‘dead’ rent money, or living with our parents, we finally set out along the road to make our dreams a reality. Many of us, at this point, are embarrassed to find that we actually know very little about the process or the likely costs. Apart from deciding which type of mortgage is best for us (which is dealt with in a separate article on this site), here are some of the basic points that we need to know about before we take that important first step:

The Mortgage Deposit

Applying for a mortgage is one of the most momentous decisions that you will probably ever take. Make no mistake as to the full implications of taking on a mortgage – it means that for the next 25 years or perhaps longer, a sizeable portion of your income will be taken up, and the remainder will have to be carefully budgeted, to pay for household bills (Council Tax, Utility bills, Maintenance/Repairs, Relevant Insurances etc), living costs and, of course, leisure. This being said, most of us will have no choice but to get a mortgage, if we wish to purchase a property.

Endowment policies were a very popular and much promoted financial product popular in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. They offered a cheap way of affording the monthly mortgage payments, whilst promising, at the end of their term, a lump sum sufficient to not only repay the capital owed on ones mortgage, but also to provide a handsome surplus of funds.

Overview