First a quick look at the fun part of retiring, the whole point – stepping away from the desk brings 24/7 freedom so what’s your plan? Here’s what Steve & Judy from the BBC did in the mid-50’s as a change of tack (pun intended) and plan for filling retirement years.

Today we’ll have a quick look at some items we have come across recently – we’ll show you what Russian bots on the web actually look like and the simple error Norway has made on its wealth tax.

This week we have been running annual updates and valuations for all our clients – the updates include the month by month record of the actual income, and these annual tables are stacked with the prior years to provide clients with the reassurance of just how reliable the income is in reality. You can’t pay bills with optimistic asset allocation.

Now here’s a double edged blessing; many moons ago I was at a drinks party hosted by my father and I joined his group swapping tails. He remarked to the eldest of the group that an upside of being older was that he no longer had school costs to pay, to which the reply was ‘Who do you think pays the grandchildren’s school fees?’ Quite…

Do you read the FT? Most readers here will say ‘no’, and that’s as it should be, we’ll show you why. Anxiety free investing? There’s a very real technique in doing this, backed up by a Nobel Prize, so I outline for you how that’s done, and what you definitely should not be doing.

An astute investor I know of in the US, Morgan Housel, is also a very, very accomplished communicator who is effective at distilling practices and experience into simple summaries. The simple litmus test of financial decisions he believes is the question ‘Does this help me sleep at night?’ What he is saying is…

Following on from last week’s note, maybe its only stuffy baby boomers who have noted the irony in the FTX crypto investors rushing to the exit to sell their crypto holdings for cash. Next up on the list of items proving cashflow is king, is Mike Ashley – he’s in the process of…

As people we know about ‘the law of unintended consequences’, and that rule applies throughout the arithmetic of investment. Some is unintended, some consequences are designed, some are simply natural. Interest rate rises have a…

Like borrowing money for a car or a house, government money also needs to be paid back, and that job belongs to Jeremy Hunt. His predecessor said he planned to ignore paying back what we owe so the lenders had him and his boss evicted. It’s interesting to note that…

How to get rich slowly and avoid the puddles. The hullabaloo over gilts has had a knock-on effect with interest rates, and you’ll have noticed that interestingly large rates are now being advertised. We should probably repeat ‘if it looks too good to be true …’,

I’m never sure whether the Chinese regard it as a curse or a blessing to live in interesting times, and I’m pretty sure anyone connected to the media in the UK is having a blast with our current shenanigans. Last week’s newsletter came to you a day early due to Kwasegate, and it happened that we pressed the button a mere five minutes before his disciplinary at the head mistress’s office.

And now again – as I write this on Thursday we’ll try to ensure we

I'm leaving this question in for you - it's rhetorical, but it is very important in setting the right frame of mind for income investing. A quick question to ponder on: are you more anxious about what your income will be in the next 12 months, or in 10 years time?

Baby boomers know about inflation, today’s 60 year old hit teenage years when the price of his Spirograph was shooting up in price by 24%. Spikes always occur, however from 1970 to 1980 the average of the annual inflation rates was 13.3%. Yikes.

The 4% Rule was defined in America by Bill Bengen using US stocks and bonds records, along with US inflation. This is Bill's original essay and calculations. The study does not transpose to the UK because UK equity, fixed income and inflation levels are not the same; the principle is valid in the UK but not the calculation.

This is what’s called macro – it’s to do with wealth in a country, a continent, the world, and within that macro environment we all exist, earn and pay our bills. The macro measures big ticket items, like the price of everything at the factory gate

We draw on Irving Fischer’s book “Money Illusion” and examine what inflation and deflations means to us.

Warren Buffet first invested in Coca Cola in 1988. He (Berkshire Hathaway) now own 400m shares, 9.4% of that company.

As a result, on the 15th March of this year he received a payment of $168,000,000 from Coca Cola. In cash. It’s a quarterly dividend.

This is the most important calculation any investor needs to know. It is simply a shortcut to estimate the number of years required to double your money for a given rate of return / interest / yield.

In this free white paper, we argue that Modern Portfolio Theory is an inappropriate basis for generating a retirement or other long-term income for individual investors because their main objective is reliability of income, not capital growth.

The golden goose of low fees and high yields has been the dream for investors and advisers alike and a common way to try and achieve this has been to predict the markets. However, in reality, this is akin to trying to predict the lottery.

Research from the actuary Lane Clark & Peacock assessing modelling of retirement portfolios alongside consideration of relevant asset allocations for decumulation. It also outlines their thinking on why the heuristics on spending rules and portfolios need to be updated.