by The Investor
on April 1, 2010
Most first-time buyers are celebrating the removal in the Budget of the 1% stamp duty tax on their first house purchase costing up to £250,000. The stamp duty has been scrapped for two years.
According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, 92% of first-time buyers buy properties costing less than £250,000, and these first-time buyers will save up to £2,500 when they purchase their home.
In London and the South East, however, first-time buyers are making stuffed straw versions of Alistair Darling and setting them alight with flaming torches fashioned from estate agents’ listings.
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by The Investor
on March 29, 2010
This year’s General Election in the UK will be the first to feature the live debates that the U.S. and other countries have enjoyed for 50 years.
Come on, we gave the world the Magna Carta, what more do you expect?
Tonight we got our first taste of how these debates will play out with Channel 4’s Ask the Chancellors, which pitted Labour’s incumbent UK chancellor Alistair Darling against the Liberal Democrats’ Vince Cable and the Conservative party’s George Osborne.
Kennedy versus Nixon this was not – it was more like watching three Council officials quibbling over how much money to spend repairing the duck pond.
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by The Investor
on March 29, 2010
Want to get the best returns possible from holding cash? Then you have to chase the best cash investment rates from the banks.
The best interest rates often only apply for a year, before the banks quietly reduce the rate, hoping you won’t notice. This means you have to move your money every year to keep it invested at the best rate possible.
It’s a hassle, but being an interest rate tart like this can be very profitable.
- In the ten years from 2000-2010, a UK saver getting the best cash investment rates every year by moving their money between accounts would have seen an average return of 5% a year – or 70% over the decade – according to recent research from Defaqto.
That means investing at the best cash rates was almost 30% more profitable than the 10-year return if you’d stayed in the average savings account.
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by The Investor
on March 27, 2010
This week’s phony UK budget may have been politically expedient and mostly harmless, but it didn’t make it any easier to decide who to vote for.
No wonder the polls predict a hung Parliament – this is voting by elimination, a real-life version of Hangman.
Starting with the Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable grasped what was going in the crisis early and deserves some praise, but the rest of his party put the moan into sanctimonious.
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