Over the years I have often heard the phrase ‘Our Business is our Pension’. This is usually said with great pride, in fact, as I write this, a vision of a business owner with his thumbs in his braces (about chest height) with his chest puffed out has just entered my head, and now, no doubt yours! I am sure this is said with great sincerity, as well as pride, as most

Saving up for your retirement is of the utmost importance because unfortunately  the government pension plan is not enough for most people to live comfortably on.

There has been enough press coverage on Pensions recently to make even the most financially savvy amongst us glaze over. What makes this worse is most of it is headline attention grabbing misinformation.

When I

Wear Sunscreen I recently heard the 1999 hit “Wear Sunscreen” by Baz Luhrmann on Radio 2, I had forgotten how cheesy and yet how poignant it was. When looking for the transcript I discovered that he hadn’t written the words, they were in fact by Mary Schmich, a columnist on the Chicago Tribune, a fact I had not known at the time. It was a speech she had written which had

Live for today, or save for the future. It’s so hard to find the right balance. We seem to have had a spate of ill health and death amongst my family and friends recently and it certainly focuses the mind. After an evening reminiscing with old friends over a couple of glasses of red, there was definitely a sense of Carpe Diem. I’m constantly bombarded with messages shared

I went to a 100th birthday party last week. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS)  I’ll be going to a few more in the years ahead. They recently published research which shows that of all those who celebrate their 65th birthday this year 85,000 of them can expect to go on to celebrate their 100th birthday. This compares to the figure of around 14,000

It may not always be obvious to clients what goes on behind the scenes here at FMB. How do we make the decisions on a day to day basis about the best places for clients to put their hard earned wealth? We would always maintain that the most important part of our process is the PLAN. The bit that is completely personal to you. Which decisions you should make and when you

We're sure you are well aware that next month both employee and employer contributions to auto-enrolment pension schemes are set to rise.

Employer duties have been introduced gradually. The initial  minimum contribution was introduced at 2 per cent of a worker's pay. This will rise gradually to 8 per cent. The dates for the increases to 5 per cent and 8 per cent are April