Worldwide Financial Planning

This week we got the welcome news that inflation might have peaked, with the latest figures showing a slight decline.

However, is seems we may never know the true effect of this on the UK economy after it was revealed that there are major flaws in the way the Office of National Statistics calculates growth and inflation.

I kind of hoped January 1st would have a new morning with new leaders in charge of this financial world. I’ve been in denial since.

Instead, in a world where we try and make sense of information to make good financial decisions, the art of seeing through noise has never been so important.

This week, like a many previous weeks, came with a lot of political noise, but largely saw markets continue to rise regardless. Once of the more amusing bits of political theatre the markets ignored was the irritation of the Brexit secretary, seemingly over the EU warning British businesses to prepare for a no-deal Brexit.

Spring clean your financial products to make sure they are still fit for purpose. For example some older pensions have a death benefit that is just a return of your premiums, as opposed to your current value of the pension. One case I saw recently had nearly a £100,000 difference.

Much of the talk of the next few weeks will be if this can last the year as various bits of the investment industry publish their new years forecasts.

It isn’t. No one can value it. It’s valued at what speculators push its value to. It isn’t ‘up’ at that price and it hasn’t ‘risen’ to that price. Someone has simply paid that for it.