New office; new beginning?

Thursday 29 May 2008

In Autumn 2007 we became aware of this new development, located next to Esholt Hall on the site of the old Home Farm Saw Mill.  This is a unique very quiet, nature reserve like location, which over the next 5 years will undergo significant renewal and redevelopment, with much of the old Yorkshire Water Authority infrastructure being removed.  This is a beautiful setting for Coleman Clough and we hope that many of you will come and visit us here in the coming months.

This move is one of the most exciting developments since Coleman Clough Investment Management was formed by the merger of R & R Clough & Co and Brian Coleman Independent Financial Adviser in 1995.

Since 1998 Coleman Clough Investment Management has expanded to ensure we can provide our clients with the top quality service they require.  In 1998 we were joined by Jan Smith and then in 2004 by Mike Bethell.

In 2003 Coleman Clough moved from Bingley to larger offices in Baildon.  But then almost immediately acquired the life and pensions division of Farley’s Insurance Bradford.  As a consequence we increased our professional advisers with the addition of Robert Watkins and Philip Hardaker.

Now that we are getting settled in our new offices we hope that this new beginning for us will coincide with forging deeper relationships with our clients.

Please contact us if you would like to review you investments or any advice on:

Pensions, SIPPs and Income drawdown

Life insurance and critical illness

Tax efficient Investments

Mortgages

Inheritance tax planning

Roy Clough
Principle

Equity Release

Thursday 29 May 2008

With an ageing population the UK Retirement Market is undergoing a profound and permanent transition.  There are now more people over 60 in the UK population than people under the age of 20.

And the characteristics of customers coming into retirement is changing with the “baby-boomer” generation needing innovative products to help fund the lifestyles they have become used to.

This generation is broadly characterised by the following attributes, they are:

Home owners with low or non existent mortgages / loans

They enjoy better health and are more physically active than previous generations of retired people

They are better acquainted with the finer things in life such as foreign travel and exotic holidays

Aware, maybe for the first time, that in retirement they will be asset rich, but income poor as pension income in retirement is often less than originally anticipated.  This is due to a number of factors including the closure of many final salary schemes, early retirement, job changes and lower investment returns

Equity Release is a maturing market and a genuine solution for many people who wish to maintain their active lifestyles in retirement.  By taking advantage of their thigh property values, they in effect take an income directly out of their property.

However, it is important that all options are considered in detail and that advice is provided by an independent and appropriately qualified adviser.

Coleman Clough are fully authorised by the Financial Services Authority and qualified to give advice in this area.  So if releasing equity from your property in the form of a lump sum or regular income would be of interest to you please do not hesitate to contact us.  The initial discussion is free of charge and without obligation.

New Premises

Tuesday 20 November 2007

Fixed Rate Mortgages

Tuesday 20 November 2007

Scary Numbers

Tuesday 15 May 2007

I notice that a recent Which? Survey has established that people think that the Basic State Pension is a bit on the low side. The £84.25 that a single person gets for turning up at retirement these days isn't seen as anywhere like enough by the people who were surveyed by the magazine. In fact they thought £312 a week would be a bit more like it from the comfortable retirement point of view.

I've used my calculator and worked out that that's £16,224 a year. So, given that so many people were asked, that figure seems to be a reasonable benchmark to describe a comfortable level of retirement income. A single person with no savings at all and just relying on the Basic State Pension would get their weekly income bumped up to £114.05 a week through Pension Credit, but that's still a fair bit short of the 'comfortable' target of £312 a week. In fact £114.05 a week amounts to £5930.60 a year, which is £10,293.40 short of what people said in response to this survey they want to retire on.

So where will people get an extra annual income of over £10,000 a year from? Well, that's where pensions come in; and always have. It's easy to forget, if we're not careful, that the pension industry that we've got here in this country has put together more funded pension assets than all of the other twenty-six European Union states have between them.2 That's pretty good I'd say, but private pensions and company pensions have not managed to spread to everyone in the workforce; millions of people today either have no pension savings at all or what little they do have will be insufficient to provide them with a comfortable retirement.

That's what our pension crisis is all about really.

But we've got more to think about in our busy lives than pensions. For a start we've got a fair bit of debt around and managing that day to day leaves loads of people with nothing over to save for the future. And then there are houses to buy and children to educate and and and.....

If people are only going to make one major lifetime purchase it's obviously more likely to be a house than a pension. That's why so many people these days refer to their houses as their pensions; they figure they'll just get some of the equity out of their houses one day when they need extra income in retirement. So I would think many wouldn't be fazed by being £10,000 or so short of a comfortable pension. Why should they be when they've got a pile of money tied up in their property?

I think the average house in the UK these days costs around £200,000.3 Scarily enough that's just about the amount of money you'd need to buy an annuity of £10,000 a year for life once you've hit retirement age. So, to get £10,000 a year out of their property the average person living in the average house wouldn't be downsizing as such; they'd be selling up. That's something that's not widely understood I think.