As you may have noticed from previous posts, I’m a leftie when it comes to politics and as for the Brexit vote, well… I certainly didn’t contribute to the fact we now have to leave the E.U. I was a firm ‘remainer’ and I wrote a post about my feelings at the time… Not that it did much good of course.
The fact that we are now leaving the European Union worries me on lots of levels. Financially being the most practical. My local beach front in Cromer, Norfolk, was recently over hauled (and much needed) all with European Union money and I can’t help but think that it’s things just like this which went over people’s heads when it came to the voting. I kept hearing stories of us ‘giving away money’ with no return but actually… I think we were given far more back than most people realised and now, of course, all this money we are ‘saving’ is going to be distributed in a very different way. It amazed me that almost immediately people who had been staunch ‘leavers’ couldn’t fathom that money would now be dished out in a very different way – with lots of causes now not going to benefit at all.
Regret seemed to be seeping in from every corner just as it did in the hours after Mrs May called her recent referendum which not only backfired on her but really, in my opinion, showed the Tories (and their voters) up for what they are. Getting into bed with the DUP… Well, if I thought they’d stooped low before then I was in for a (not so) treat when that happened.
The bones of all this political despair to me says we are going to be a lot less well off than we could have been if the votes had gone a different way. We may lose our beloved N.H.S, our schools will suffer and anyone in a lower income bracket, despite the tripe dished up to them in the rags belonging to the ’riches’, is going to bear the main brunt of it.
It’s not fair!
The state of the UK economy will not recover for a long time and as such the question becomes what do we do with our own finances as a result? There are very few places these days that we can put our money and know that it is safe, know that it will look after itself. Oh how times have changed. Yet our goals have not. We still want to make sure we have enough for our children’s futures as well as for the here and now. Children are expensive; just entertaining them in the summer holidays can set you back a month’s salary (please see this post I found for some top tips which could save you a bob this summer) so we need to be careful and frugal without being miserly… Oh finances… It’s not easy is it?!
We are thinking about taking out an ISA, and I recently came across the Innovative Finance ISA, which I think makes a lot of sense as an investment. We have money left over from the sale of our London flat that we simply don’t know what to do with for the best and everything I have read points me towards this.
What is the Innovative Finance ISA?
It’s for the children’s future, it has to be thought about and The Innovative Finance ISA (IFSA), which is geared towards peer-to-peer lending, gives you the opportunity to shield your P2P income from tax. You can invest some, or all, of your annual ISA allowance (£20,000 for the 2017/18 financial year) into this type of ISA. Furthermore, the limit of £20,000 relates only to money subscribed during the current financial year, which means there is no limit to the amount of ISA capital accumulated over previous tax years which you can transfer into your ISA.
There’s certainly a place in today’s Britain to think very carefully about what we do with our dosh… Gone are the Thatcherite moments which inspired the character ‘Loads a money’ and the catch phrase ‘Oi, you, look at my wad’. Today we have to play a different ball game entirely!
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t enjoy ourselves too and if you think about it, being careful, a little bit frugal at times even, means we can splurge in a way we know we will still be ok! We are going on holiday tomorrow, I am by no means someone who wants to squirrel everything away. We are all off to Majorca on a James Villas holiday along with my Mum in the morning. Everything is organised (apart from the actual packing – I’m not ALWAYS organised), my cousin is on her way to house and cat sit, the money has been spent but I know that we can afford this one so I am not worried. I just want to make sure we can afford to do it another time too… What is it they say? Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves!
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