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With the subject of IR35 feeling like a grey area for most contractors, it is recommended that any contractors unsure of their IR35 status seek expert advice from either an accountant or most of the time recruiters will also be able to advise you on this topic, however it depends how uncertain you feel about your IR35 status.

To avoid your contract and working practices falling inside IR35 legislation, you will need to clearly show that the way you are working is that of a self employed contractor. HM Revenue and Customs clearly define what in their eyes classes as ‘passing IR35’; visit their website for more information, but as ever it is worth speaking to a specialist contractor accountant who will be able to simplify things for you and discuss this topic further.

Some contractor accountants also offer free verbal IR35 contract reviews which is quite handy. You can also ask for a full written formal review with a report outlining areas of weakness; however nobody can guarantee or insure you against IR35. You can buy IR35 insurance which will cover the accountancy and legal costs to defend your case but nobody guarantee you’ll be inside as it’s based on what HMRC decide.

You can fall inside IR35 legislations and still work as a contractor through your own Limited company there are still tax gains to be had working this way, and you will only pay tax on roughly 95% if your tax able income rather than the full 100%. Again talking to a specialist accountant means they will be able to advise you on your current contracting situation and advise you on the best way to contract which will maximise your take home pay.

IR35 is in essence quite simple but just having a cleverly written contract isn’t enough, you need to also make sure your working practices reflect your contract.

As economic times have gotten tougher, many people have turned to plastic to help get them by. Perhaps a paycheck isn’t as steady as it used to be, or an unexpected expense has suddenly occurred, leaving the person in a difficult situation so their only choice is to use a credit card. Because of this, many people’s spending got out of control. There have been several factors that can be attributed to this, and first and foremost it should be addressed and acknowledged if there is a problem. Things won’t change if the root of the problem isn’t fixed, no matter what things are put in place to help correct it.

Something that has helped many people help escape some of the debt and get on the right track back to normalcy is a balance transfer credit card. What a balance transfer credit cards does is that it allows a person to move current credit card balances to this new card, up to a certain amount and limit to possibly let that debt incur a lower interest rate. What usually gets people in the hole and hard to climb out of is a high interest rate. Once the charge is put on the card, the interest rate on it starts accumulating. Many people will struggle just to meet the minimum payments, and can take them much longer to pay off the original charge. In the mean time, they could be adding to the current balance by charging more to the card. It can actually end up being a vicious cycle, one that has put a lot of people into debt with a lot of trouble climbing out of. Read the rest of this entry »

Please never buy PHI insurance from your own bank, instead I saved more than £157 per year buy using a site called Permanenthealthinsurance.uk.com

Sitting in an airport lounge waiting for a flight connection is probably the dullest way of spending time I know, apart from waiting for the AA which is also up there in my list of things I would do less than go to have root canal work done by an inexperienced dentist. The process of waiting for a plane however can be transformed by WiFi which if you are lucky enough to be able to access from one of the comfy seats rather than the wooden seats in the Starbucks franchise is all the better almost making the whole process bearable. With two hours to kill I sat down and decided to work though as many emails I could, so reducing the time I would have to spend doing this at home.

On this occasion this was all going pretty well with the delete button being pressed at an ever increasing rate until I came across an email from my travel insurance provider letting me know that the cost of my renewal would be about ten pounds more than I had paid the previous year, although the increase was affordable I thought that it would be worth spending a couple of minutes getting an alternative quote as, lets face it, what else did I have to do for a few minutes? As it turned out I could save myself ten pounds on the annual premium I was currently paying. Once you’ve saved a few pounds you get a taste for it. On another table along the top of the web page I could make a Permanent Health Insurance comparison, find critical illness cover and other financial products. Saving money or rather stopping yourself wasting any more money is a tremendously empowering feeling and rather addictive.

Source: http://www.permanenthealthinsurance.uk.com/blog/2011/12/16/please-never-buy-phi-insurance-your-own-bank/

It started off with me doing some searching around on the web for cheaper car insurance after my premium had gone up for the third year in a row, despite not making a claim. Once I realised just how easy it was to save myself some money, I set off checking all my premiums. Shopping around for insurance on the net is pretty easy these days. We have had critical illness cover for a number of years now and within a few minutes we had saved ourselves quite a bit of money after searching on mortgage protection quotes. When you sit down and work out how much you can save each month it makes you wish you had done this a long time ago. If there’s one thing I will be doing going forward it is to make sure I do not just agree to renew all my policies every year, without checking if they are competitive in the market place. I have now decided to spread the word to all my friends and family about the money they could save themselves. Why throw away all your hard earned money if there is a better deal to be had elsewhere.

Source: http://mortgageprotectionquotes.org/blog/2011/12/14/i-searched-mortgage-protection-quotes-website-and-saved-56-month/

From the 1^st to the 10^th of December 2011, Wallace and Gromit’s Children’s Foundation will be hosting their 4^th annual Great British Tea Party, to celebrate Christmas and raise money for sick children throughout the UK. It’s a great time to do your part and also to consider health cash plans from UK Healthcare; which can help you to look after your own family, when they need it most.

Looking after the health of ourselves and our families can cost a great deal, with mounting costs from medical, dental and opticians bills making difficult times, even more difficult. A health cash plan from UK Healthcare is a simple and affordable healthcare insurance policy, to which you make small monthly contributions. Then if the worst should happen and you require cover to pay expensive medical bills for yourself or your family, UK Healthcare can provide the support you need.

Unfortunately, there are thousands of sick children out there, in children’s hospitals and hospices. They need our help, so Wallace and Gromit’s Children’s Foundation will raise all of the funds and awareness they can through the fantastic Great British Tea Party. But with a health cash plan from UK Healthcare, you can enjoy the peace of mind that comes with knowing your own loved ones will be taken care of, in any event.

Health cash plans from UK Healthcare are very affordable, and are certainly more affordable than paying medical expenses, by yourself, if the worst comes to the worst.

Safeguard your children’s healthcare future, with an affordable health cash plan from UK Healthcare, and do your bit to ensure other kiddies a bright future, by joining Wallace and Gromit for a cuppa, with the Great British Tea Party.

My wife and I are both in our fifties and the newspapers describe us as Dinkies which as I write this I don’t know what the ies stands for but we have a double income and no kids. Or rather to be completely accurate about this, our children have long since left home which I’m sure makes us empty nesters , or is that the children I’m not sure. We both have reasonably well paid jobs. That is to say, compared to the national average wage we do, but compared to our friends we are about normal. Perhaps if they had a survey that compared you with the people you wanted to be compared with more people would take notice and read it. Whilst they are at it, it would be helpful if they could explain what the ies stands for and what exactly a empty nester is and I’ll start to sound like I know what I’m talking about. Anyway the reason for me penning this was to say that there are probably many others in our situation that once they find themselves in the years between kids and retirement probably tend to think of their pension as their priority and they would probably be right. However, most people are likely to have had a mortgage and possibly switched from a repayment to an interest only and not switched their life insurances or mortgage protection cover so potentially leaving them selves with a shortfall should the worst happen before the mortgage is paid off. It’s probably worth checking as we have done and we did have to put some more cover in place. Clearly we could’ve chosen not to do so, as we do have additional life cover through our employers however, as the economy is in a state of flux at the moment, who knows if our jobs are likely to be there in a year or two’s time and as our state of health is reasonably good at the moment it seemed to make sense to do it now as we never know what around the corner.

An Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) is an alternative solution to bankruptcy, and in the vast majority of instances when an IVA represents an appropriate solution, can help a debtor to control debt within a five year fixed term. But what happens at the end of that fixed term? What happens at the end of the IVA?

If you owe more than £12,000, to multiple lenders, an IVA could prove to be an effective debt removal solution. Before entering into any financial agreement, especially a legally binding one, it is important to ensure that the solution will benefit you. An individual voluntary arrangement, or IVA, is a legally enforced arrangement between you and all of your creditors which introduces a new debt repayment scheme, which the debtor can afford to repay and usually runs for a fixed term of five years.  Of course, it is often the case that this fixed 5 year term is reached before the full amount of debt has been repaid. This makes sense, because since the repayments involved within the arrangement are reduced when compared with the original repayments, they should take longer to clear the debt, but the fixed term of repayment can occasionally prevent the IVA from clearing the entire debt.

When this is the case and a remainder of debt is left over at the end of the fixed IVA term, this remaindered debt is completely written off. This is agreed with all of the debtor’s creditors before the IVA is agreed upon and put into place, and is one of the reasons that an IVA is seen as an attractive alternative to bankruptcy when a debtor’s financial circumstances make it beneficial to them.

Once you have completed a list of all of your debts, including who you owe and how much, the next step of the debt management process involves working out how much of your monthly income you can afford to commit to debt repayments. Debt management is the process of clearing your debt by initially making it simpler to do so. A debt management plan involves calculating the remainder of your income after essential expenses such as home and utility payments. This remainder then becomes the maximum amount of your monthly income that can be dedicated to debt repayment and it is this sum that must then be divided among your creditors.

Create a list of income and expenditure for your whole household, and be sure to be realistic as this sum will affect your debt management plan. Do not include potential income that you think you may earn, because you do not want to risk being reliant on a sum that is not forthcoming. Simply list the money which is definitely coming in each month.

Monetary items which can be included in your income calculations are:
• Wages for yourself and your partner, list the net amounts ie after tax and NI has been deducted. If these amounts vary then take an average over the last 6 months.
• Any benefits that you may receive
• Any maintenance payments that you may receive from an ex-partner for your children.
• Rent from a lodger or contributions from family members.

It is recommended during debt management procedures that if you have any additional means at your disposable for generating income then your do so. This will improve your debt management plan and help you to remove debt as quickly as possible.

Once your income has been calculated, make an additional list of all of your monthly outgoings, including mortgage or rent payments, utility bills, insurance payments and any other monthly expenditures. Subtract this figure from your income amount and the amount left over after the calculation is your remainder. This amount can be dedicated to debt management and the repayment of your outstanding debt. By sticking to this amount you can successfully ensure that you do not fail to afford payments, incur charges and higher interest payments which add to the debt rather than remove it.

The best 0 credit cards are typically considered the low interest rates and 0% balance transfer. BANKAMERICARD offers the cash rewards Visa Signature. This card offers you 1% cash back on all purchases and 2% cash back on groceries. You spend money on gas, and get 3% back. You can receive a 10% customer bonus by redeeming your rewards in Bank of America’s savings or checking account.

If you qualify, you can earn up to $50 cash back on purchases. You can redeem your points once you reach $25, and you have the option to set up automatic redemption. Your rewards won’t expire and you do not have to pay an annual fee. Once the term expires you pay 12.99 to 20.99% APR. You must have excellent credit to apply. There are some 0 apr credit cards but you must have a good credit rating to apply. Read the rest of this entry »

My father is eighty two and my mother is five years younger than he is. He has always been in charge of household finances and he has always run what he would call a tight ship, financially speaking. At the age of seventy he got his first computer and enrolled himself on a computer for beginner’s course at the local college; becoming what the newspapers would nowadays refer to as a silver surfer. I use computers every day in work and although I would purchase certain things on line that’s about as far as it went. However in recent years my father has gone from strength to strength and he’s now doing everything on line; buildings and contents insurance; holiday insurance, which can be tricky to arrange for the retired; and, of course, car insurance. To hear him on the phone telling the man from Saga that his quote is two hundred pounds more expensive that he can get on line was funny but when he told me that he had a life insurance quote I did ask him what on earth he wanted one of those for at his age only to be told that the quote he had got was for me and he wanted to know what I was currently paying. I had no idea but after checking my direct debits it turned out that my father had actually managed to get cover cheaper than I had been able to. Following that I am now converted, I will be doing everything on line going forward.