Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Welcome to Merin Talks
Speaker 1: Your Money, the personal finance edition of Merin Talks Money
Speaker 1: and these bonus podcasts, we talk about the best strategy
Speaker 1: for making the most of your money. A Merin sumset
Speaker 1: web and with Me, senior reporter and author of The
Speaker 1: Money Just Tells the newsletter, John step back, Hi, John, Now, listen.
Speaker 2: We really like.
Speaker 1: Getting questions and feedback from our listeners, don't we jump
Speaker 1: back me up on this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great, it's extremely interesting, and so.
Speaker 1: We're going to answer a listener's question today ask us
Speaker 1: to talk about non equity baskets. But before we get
Speaker 1: onto that and explain to you what a non equity
Speaker 1: basket is, of course, but you go through some of
Speaker 1: the other notes we've had from listeners, because we promise
Speaker 1: you we do read them all. Not all of them
Speaker 1: become episodes, but we definitely read them all and we
Speaker 1: think about them right. First up is Tracy. Tracy is
Speaker 1: a long term listener and she takes issue with her
Speaker 1: idea about holding cash. She feels that holding six months
Speaker 1: worth of expenses in a cash I ser is sensible
Speaker 1: for most people, but not for everyone. She cites two
Speaker 1: other groups of people, first though saving for a first
Speaker 1: house to posit, saying it doesn't seem sensible for them
Speaker 1: to invest a posit in And I said, and the second.
Speaker 2: Category would be the elderly. She talks about her mother.
Speaker 1: Tracy explains her mother has just sold her house, now
Speaker 1: lives in a care home and the cash in the
Speaker 1: house is being used to pay care fees. Therefore it
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense to invest that cash. That's actually an
Speaker 1: extremely sensible piece of feedback, I think. And one thing
Speaker 1: I would say, John, I don't know what you think,
Speaker 1: but it might be a good idea if you if
Speaker 1: you're talking about quite a lot of money from the
Speaker 1: sale of a house, just leaving that sitting in one
Speaker 1: cash account could be a mistake because you're only protected
Speaker 1: up to eighty five thousand pounds in each bank account,
Speaker 1: So that's worth thinking about.
Speaker 3: Technically, there is comfort for temporary big sums. If you
Speaker 3: are selling the house and you'll be wee noses for
Speaker 3: a few months, then double check with your preveder. But
Speaker 3: I think that it's covered for up to a million
Speaker 3: in certain circumstances.
Speaker 2: But that's not what we're talking about here.
Speaker 3: No, absolutely not. This is long term, so yeah, she bit.
Speaker 2: Tough to splatter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there is a case, and again there's probably
Speaker 1: something we should look at probably another time. There is
Speaker 1: a case for holding short term guilts and just continuing
Speaker 1: to roll those over getting the income from that, and
Speaker 1: there's some tax advantage there as well, So there's definitely
Speaker 1: a case for that if you've got a very large
Speaker 1: amount of money that you're holding on to for an
Speaker 1: elderly parent who's in a care home, because as we know,
Speaker 1: those care homes can come in at a one hundred
Speaker 1: grand a year plus, right, So you know, I hope.
Speaker 2: It was a big house, Tracy. I hope it was
Speaker 2: a big house, and I hope your mother as well.
Speaker 1: And the other thing on the housing point, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1: The last thing you want to do if you're saving
Speaker 1: up for a housing deposit is to put that money
Speaker 1: at risk in stock markets because it's short term savings.
Speaker 3: Right well, yeah, absolutely, And to be fair, we've never
Speaker 3: said that. I think this slate thing Tracy was taking
Speaker 3: Asue with as well was the eighty the cash ISA
Speaker 3: allowance should be reduced, and I think as a slightly
Speaker 3: trickier concept because I don't think that many people saving
Speaker 3: up for a deposit. I mean, there's gonna be a
Speaker 3: locket of twenty grand, which is the annual allowance for
Speaker 3: one year, let alone multiples of that. I can certainly
Speaker 3: see why you would want to keep a large sum
Speaker 3: of cash in an ISA so that it's tax free.
Speaker 3: For the second scenario, a kind of elderly person in
Speaker 3: care at home fees. At the same time, I think
Speaker 3: that there still is a discussion to be had about
Speaker 3: whether the cash annual allowance should be as generous as
Speaker 3: it currently is, but that there's an element swings and
Speaker 3: round the boots.
Speaker 1: There one other thing that we wanted to look at.
Speaker 1: Lucy got in touch to ask if there are any
Speaker 1: free or low cost personal finance resources specifically for women.
Speaker 1: I would say on that, but I'm interested to hear
Speaker 1: what you said, Jonas Sanfrees. Yes, there are loads of free,
Speaker 1: low cost personal finance resources.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Merin Talks Your Money podcast on.
Speaker 1: Which which is free at your your favorite podcast provider,
Speaker 1: and we do a lot of personal finance. Then of
Speaker 1: course there's Money Saving Expert. There's Money Week, where John
Speaker 1: and I both used to work, which has a lot
Speaker 1: of free stuff on its website. There are boards of
Speaker 1: websites there blonde money, John, can you think of some.
Speaker 3: Others boarding money, Holy Planks, very money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I'm meant totally. So there's loads. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's good. It's very much all it is. Yeah, not
Speaker 2: quite what Lucy's after.
Speaker 1: So there are lots and lots of free resources and
Speaker 1: money saving expert is that go to for so many
Speaker 1: people when it comes to looking at the granularity of
Speaker 1: personal finance, And I'm not sure that you need to
Speaker 1: look at anything specifically for women. The rules are the
Speaker 1: same men and women. There are a few things that
Speaker 1: are different about female personal finances. Of course, we are
Speaker 1: the ones who take perhaps longer breaks to take care
Speaker 1: of early relatives, to look after children, et cetera. So
Speaker 1: maybe are there are issues about how much we should
Speaker 1: put independents, etc.
Speaker 2: But the rules don't change. They're the same for everybody.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure that you ever need to look
Speaker 1: at female specific finances. I say that as someone who
Speaker 1: wrote a book on female specific finances about twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: The rules of the same, the emotions might be different,
Speaker 2: is that, fat John?
Speaker 3: I think that's fair. The one thing I would say,
Speaker 3: and I think one of the things that came across
Speaker 3: in your book originally is that it's not so much
Speaker 3: about the rules as the situations. And obviously that's always
Speaker 3: a tricky thing to talk about because people simultaneously kind
Speaker 3: of like the idea of equality but also don't like
Speaker 3: the idea of admitting that there are differences, and that
Speaker 3: there are situations like pregnancy, for example, which are almost
Speaker 3: bound to cause differences in your life path that are
Speaker 3: not the same as those of the average man. What
Speaker 3: kind of always irritates me about this discussion is that
Speaker 3: it kind of often focuses on kind of stupid things
Speaker 3: like are women more or less risk averse than men,
Speaker 3: which is clearly just situational, as opposed to focusing on
Speaker 3: the kind of more important things about, well, okay, what
Speaker 3: should you do if your career is more likely to
Speaker 3: not be a straight kind of line from twenty to
Speaker 3: sixty five and more likely something that's broken up? And
Speaker 3: I actually don't think there's enough coverage of those things.
Speaker 3: I think we like to sweep those under the carpet.
Speaker 3: That's kind of a separate issue that is more about
Speaker 3: the different life path of you know, of your average
Speaker 3: women compared to your average.
Speaker 1: We've got John the Feminist on the show where.
Speaker 2: You do.
Speaker 3: Only creepy man to strivee themselves as feminists. Really totally sorry,
Speaker 3: its thing late women and sympathize with women and the issues.
Speaker 3: But I think that you can only be a feminist
Speaker 3: if you're a woman. Actually, that's a whole different topic.
Speaker 1: All right, Listie, I'm going to take that one offline
Speaker 1: with John, but I will definitely dedicated podcast over the
Speaker 1: next few months specifically to the different different pathways to pensions.
Speaker 1: I think is probably what it's all about. That's the
Speaker 1: man and women with it. Well, we'll come back to
Speaker 1: that one. Thank you very much for it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: One more, I got in touch about the government's move
Speaker 1: to abolish the lifetime allowance, how it affects people.
Speaker 2: If there's any way you can get back tax that
Speaker 2: he's already paid.
Speaker 1: Oh, took a a retirement in twenty twenty a mixture
Speaker 1: of defined benefit and defined contribution pensions. Games my sympathy
Speaker 1: slipping away in slipping away over the years, my DC
Speaker 1: did pretty well. Okay, it's gone, and I ended up
Speaker 1: my total pension exceeding the lifetimee lifetime allowance. I'm definitely gone.
Speaker 1: In fact, I stopped contributing and got individual protection status.
Speaker 1: Do I have to go on with this?
Speaker 2: However, so the.
Speaker 1: Send the government doesn't bolished the lifetime allowance because it
Speaker 1: was coming to punitive for public sector employees, especially senior
Speaker 1: doctor doesn't even said yes, Starma had his own specific
Speaker 1: civil service pension scheme that exempted him from the lifetime allowance.
Speaker 2: Yes he did.
Speaker 1: By the way, my sympathy for him is also entirely evaporated.
Speaker 1: So my question is, is there any way I can
Speaker 1: get that tax back now the lifetime allowances be abolished.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: There may be a more complicated answer to this, but
Speaker 1: my answer is no, I don't think so, John, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, I can't imagine that that is. And I think
Speaker 3: the main thing that ian Zimia was illustrates is the
Speaker 3: problem with the government constantly changing the rules, so it
Speaker 3: creates I mean iansawenna he's sad to apply for lightfstime
Speaker 3: allians protection, which means he's even got higher bakestiame alans
Speaker 3: than most people hide. But the point is the fact
Speaker 3: that it does keep changing, and that's very detrimental. It
Speaker 3: creates winners and losers, and it also puts people off
Speaker 3: saving anti pensions understandably.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, leaving that one, we are now going
Speaker 1: to go onto today's actual episode. Today we will be
Speaker 1: answering a question from Nelma, and she says, at sixty eight,
Speaker 1: I self manage my money, which is all either in
Speaker 1: a sip or an I say, well done. I increasingly
Speaker 1: want less in equity investments and more in safer holdings.
Speaker 1: I wish to reduce my sixty percent equities. I have
Speaker 1: cash itces and very short term guilts. Where else can
Speaker 1: I put my money to increase my non equity basket?
Speaker 1: Is it money marketing funds and bond funds? Well, this
Speaker 1: is really interesting one, isn't it, John, Because sixty percent
Speaker 1: equity is at at sixty eight when it's self managed,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that many financial advisors would necessarily advise
Speaker 1: now pulling that much below sixty And when we were
Speaker 1: looking at this the other day and wondering exactly what
Speaker 1: it is that NILIMA is is after hearing that there
Speaker 1: are if it's income you're after, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of what you might call safe income equity products. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that you and I look at
Speaker 1: a lot is the dividend heroes, the AIIC, so the
Speaker 1: investment trust sort have put their dividend up every year
Speaker 1: for however many years. I've actually had a new list
Speaker 1: just in the nick of time.
Speaker 2: So lots of them.
Speaker 1: Scottish American has put its dividend up for fifty one years,
Speaker 1: Merry Income Trust fifty one years, Runner Investment Trust fifty
Speaker 1: three years, etc. Caledonian Investments fifty seven years, City of
Speaker 1: London fifty eight years.
Speaker 2: They're not going to break that record.
Speaker 1: So what you know is if you go out and
Speaker 1: you buy the City of London Investment Trust, you can't
Speaker 1: guarantee that that dividend will constantly be put up to
Speaker 1: match inflation if inflation goes berserk. But nonetheless, what you
Speaker 1: know is that it's more than likely to rise every year.
Speaker 1: So that seems if it's income you're after and hanging
Speaker 1: on to your capital at the s same time, that
Speaker 1: would seem a reasonably sensible way to go, even though
Speaker 1: it's still an equity product.
Speaker 2: So that's one thing to look at.
Speaker 3: One of the things here is is it's just being
Speaker 3: curious as to what Neliam's overall goal is at this point.
Speaker 3: I mean, if she's got more than enough money and
Speaker 3: she actually just wants to reduce the absolute amount of
Speaker 3: risk that she's taken in her portfolio, then I can
Speaker 3: get why you might want to move more money towards
Speaker 3: kind of cash type assets because you just don't want
Speaker 3: to take any risk by the inflation risk. It's tricky
Speaker 3: about knowing exactly what she's aiming to do. And I know,
Speaker 3: I mean because Neliam has been quite a regular correspondent
Speaker 3: over the years, and so I'm pretty sure that she's
Speaker 3: quite clued up in the fact that she's managing her
Speaker 3: own set and all of that is impressive. But so
Speaker 3: I'm sure she knows what she's doing. But in the
Speaker 3: absence that kind of gold structure is a thing, it's
Speaker 3: much harder to say.
Speaker 1: I suppose, I'm the real question is she loo looking
Speaker 1: for to maintain her income or is she looking to
Speaker 1: hang on to her capital one undred percent in real terms?
Speaker 2: Or is it both?
Speaker 1: These are very important ways to look at it. If
Speaker 1: you want to preserve your capital, do you need to
Speaker 1: preserve it in real terms? Do you just want to
Speaker 1: preserve it in nominal terms? Why do you need to
Speaker 1: preserve your capital I mean that's the other question that
Speaker 1: we should often be asking people.
Speaker 2: What are you preserving your capital? Four?
Speaker 1: Is it because you want to leave it to somebody?
Speaker 1: Is it because you're frightened of these you know, care
Speaker 1: home fees, etc.
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 1: And one of the things that we often ask people
Speaker 1: is why wouldn't.
Speaker 2: You just die broke?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Why hang on to the money? What's going on there?
Speaker 1: So that's a good question to ask yourself. But outside that, yes,
Speaker 1: it is money market funds, it's short term guilts, it's.
Speaker 2: I'd be quite worry of bond funds.
Speaker 1: Actually, with the inflation environment, there's a lot of crazy
Speaker 1: stuff going on out there. I'm not entirely sure that
Speaker 1: I would look at a bond fund these days and go,
Speaker 1: oh look, aye, buy that, I'm safe.
Speaker 2: You're not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I cannot feel with boinds you probably need to
Speaker 3: be looking more to And this says quite complicated, but
Speaker 3: it's kind of structuring your own boindlide or tape. Thing
Speaker 3: weird because probably bond funds is that they constantly sell
Speaker 3: the boinds before the mature, and so that means that
Speaker 3: they can take a whack when interest rates change, whereas
Speaker 3: if you're an individual holder, you can hold the bonds
Speaker 3: and I mean you'll still get whacked by inflation in
Speaker 3: terms of you know, if you hold it for five
Speaker 3: years and it turns out of the interest rate and
Speaker 3: the guilt wasn't enough to compensate you for the inflation
Speaker 3: over that time, you've lost money in real terms, but
Speaker 3: your nominal money will come back. So I think if
Speaker 3: you're really worried about the protection of your your nominal value,
Speaker 3: then you have to look at individual bonds for yourself.
Speaker 3: If the longer term. Obviously, money market funds are just
Speaker 3: that is what they had do, just short term treasuries
Speaker 3: and boinds that are shouldn't then rEFInd us by the
Speaker 3: government very rapidly, so they're basically just cash accounts, but
Speaker 3: in the bond market.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So in the end, if you want to be
Speaker 1: said you really are cash cash equivalent, I think so
Speaker 1: Jason just moving into cash. And the other thing is
Speaker 1: that we're not going to get ded get into gold now.
Speaker 1: But you know that's a sort of cash equivalent that
Speaker 1: might or might not preserve the value of your capital.
Speaker 1: So if you have look on the Bluebook website, you'll
Speaker 1: find lots of stuff about gold, and obviously in our
Speaker 1: podcast last week was about the line, we talked about
Speaker 1: gold at some length. I mean, that's worth thinking about.
Speaker 1: But of course it's not going to guarantee the preservation
Speaker 1: of your capital, because it's not like that.
Speaker 3: That's important to emphasize, just because I do think that
Speaker 3: people get partectar in gold's going up as it is now,
Speaker 3: people start to believe that it is something that invariably
Speaker 3: protects the capital. We like gold on this show. We
Speaker 3: think it. You know, we've been talking about that you
Speaker 3: should have part of your portfolio in it for like,
Speaker 3: you know, twenty or years now. But the point is
Speaker 3: it does go down in nominal terms, and it does
Speaker 3: go down in real terms. You know, if if you
Speaker 3: buy it and it falls by twenty percent, which is
Speaker 3: perfectly possible, then if you have to sell it, then
Speaker 3: you're going to make it twenty percent loss.
Speaker 2: You know, that's just that.
Speaker 3: So it's not like cash from that point of view.
Speaker 3: Just think it's important to emphasize, and I think.
Speaker 1: We're confidence saying that it will preserve the value of capital.
Speaker 2: Over the very long term.
Speaker 1: But no one could argue for a long time about
Speaker 1: what the very long term is exactly, And I suppose
Speaker 1: the only other option for Neirlima, which is something that
Speaker 1: I'm sure she's thought about already, is an annuity.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Again, if she's really worried run in there, then that's
Speaker 3: somethingty consider.
Speaker 1: And it's also a lot more attractive now if you
Speaker 1: think about it in terms of the way that pensions
Speaker 1: will be taxed going forward. In the old Azima was
Speaker 1: slightly assuming that she's looking to leave her money to somebody,
Speaker 1: hence the need to preserve the capital, etcetera. It used
Speaker 1: to be you could just leave your money on your
Speaker 1: pension and it would effectively become a trust fund for
Speaker 1: your heirs. But this isn't going to be the case
Speaker 1: anymore with the reforms or should I say changes to
Speaker 1: pension taxation. It's now going to be liable for inheritance
Speaker 1: tax and then liable for your income tax after that.
Speaker 1: So that's quite a big percentage of the capital it's
Speaker 1: going to vanish on your death anyway, assuming she's in
Speaker 1: the zone for inheritance tax. So with that in mind,
Speaker 1: given that you're likely to lose the majority of that
Speaker 1: capital if you're reasonably wealthy when you die, makes more
Speaker 1: sense than it used to to use the money inside
Speaker 1: that wrapper to buy an annuity which will pay you at
Speaker 1: a relatively good income because in unity right, so obviously
Speaker 1: they've gone up quite a lot recently.
Speaker 2: Is that fair?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? And she also doesn't have to spend all of
Speaker 3: the money on an innuity, and you know, shit can
Speaker 3: get a certain amount of inflation proofing as well, although
Speaker 3: obviously that means that you have to pay more for
Speaker 3: the annuity. If we having this chat eight years ago,
Speaker 3: in the idea of buying an innuity, would it seemed
Speaker 3: kind of only if you were really desperate for certainty.
Speaker 3: But at this point it's definitely something to throw into
Speaker 3: the mix.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, anything else, John, That's all my thoughts on
Speaker 1: the matter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's one thing. I've got any more thoughts on
Speaker 3: it either. I do think it does boil down to
Speaker 3: what Nellima's overall goals, and the thing is sixty eight
Speaker 3: is I don't know. I feel that it's quite a
Speaker 3: tricky age in terms of thinking about you know, you
Speaker 3: might actually have much longer to go, and alternatively, perhaps
Speaker 3: you know you may not, And so I think, you know,
Speaker 3: it's what's kind of like thinking about in those terms
Speaker 3: of what is it that you also want to achieve
Speaker 3: in your remaining time and thinking about what you want
Speaker 3: to do and know what that's all about, existential and
Speaker 3: gem But it'll be cool first pension planning for you.
Speaker 1: Thanks John for giving us that note to end things on.
Speaker 1: But I would just say, by the way, that we
Speaker 1: do not know everything about Ilima's personal circumstances. So absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing that John and I have discussed today is to
Speaker 1: be construed as advice, either for her or for that matter,
Speaker 1: for anybody else. We're just shooting the breeze about what
Speaker 1: we think, right John, Yeah, do not take this as advice.
Speaker 2: And if you want to do anything like we've discussed.
Speaker 1: And you're not expert on these things, do please consult
Speaker 1: a financial advisor.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this week's Maren Talks to Your Money.
Speaker 1: If you like our show, rate review, and subscribe wherever
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Speaker 1: Maple's questions and comments on this show and all our shows,
Speaker 1: as always welcome, our show emails Marimani at bloomberg dot net,