Bitcoin is hanging on to a $4,000 plus price tag by the fingertips and may dip below again within a few days. Current trading puts Bitcoin at $4,036.50 with the cryptocurrency rallying from a start of $4025.19 to a high of $4,072 at lunch time before falling back. In the markets, traders were hoping an … Read more
Monero is the latest cryptocurrency to face a hard fork – but the upgrade is to improve the blockchain rather than increase the throughput of transactions. Other hard forks – like the recent Bitcoin Cash fiasco – have looked towards speeding up the cryptocurrencies blockchain. The Monero hard fork will happen when a specific block … Read more
Savers find working out their retirement finances years in advance is too complicated, say pension experts. Actuaries from the US, Britain and Australia looked at why people in each country seem to struggle with pensions and savings. They found a common reason – they lack vital information about how to save, such as: How much … Read more
Crooked advisers are to blame for most investment scams, according to a probe by pension providers determined to root out the fraudsters. The Pensions Scams Industry Group (PSIG) came to the conclusion after scrutinising more than 27,000 pension transfers from defined benefit to defined contribution schemes by three providers – Phoenix Life, Standard Life and … Read more
Financial experts are advocating more pension tinkering after an international study of workplace schemes concluded retirement savers could benefit from pooling resources. The study looked at defined contribution pensions offered by employers and found that pooling could lead to benefit from economies of scale. This was most significant when schemes looked at: Negotiating fees for … Read more
House price rises are slowing down across the world, according to property experts. Prices in almost nine out of 10 countries tracked by international property consultants Knight Frank returned increasing values – but the rate was around half that of the previous three months. At the top of the 56-country table, 13 of the top … Read more
Expats saving for retirement and drawing the state pension are the biggest winners from the latest spike in the cost of living. Inflation has hit a five-year high of 3% for the year to September– up from 2.9% in August and the peak since April 2012. This means that Chancellor Phillip Hammond should dole out … Read more
British expats with home thoughts from abroad find getting a mortgage is a challenge. Many of the 4 million Brits choosing to live overseas want to keep their options open by owning a home in the UK. But a government-initiated squeeze on mortgage lending has confined expats to seeking loans from a small group of … Read more
The British tax man is asking foreign governments to chase down expats working overseas who have failed to pay the right amount of tax. Almost £6 million was raised for HM Revenue & Customs by foreign tax authorities in 2017. This was triple the amount raised from British expats in 2016 and a huge increase … Read more
Online crooks have put thousands of fake web sites online to scam millions of pounds from taxpayers on both sides of the Atlantic. HM Revenue & Customs warns fraudsters are forever coming up with ways to rip-off taxpayers. In the past 12 months, HMRC has taken 20,750 malicious web sites offline– an increase of 29% … Read more