What about savers?

Enable's IFA’s of Bishop’s Stortford can see that once again it is the savers who will be disadvantaged by recent cuts in interest rates. “The lenders and the borrowers are doing just fine as interest rate fall and cheap mortgages and zero rate credit card deals abound. The plight of savers is the real tragedy,” says Claer Barrett is the editor of FT Money.

The cut may be small but for savers who have endured dwindling interest rates for years it looks as if they are stuck with them for longer, as rising inflation erodes the value of cash. Hargreaves Lansdown estimates that since 2008, savers have theoretically lost £160bn worth of interest payments (based on rates at 2008 levels).

So what can savers do? Claer Barrett suggests starting with looking at your mortgage, if you have an interest rate of less than 1 per cent then rates are unlikely to go up for some time so why not drop to the minimum repayment then with the cash saved instead of putting it into a savings account you could top up your pension with a monthly AVC (additional voluntary contribution) It is always worth exploring how much you can put into your pension. The annual allowance (capping what most people can pay in tax efficiently) is £40,000, although this could taper down to just £10,000 if your total income is over £150,000.

If you are thinking about how to balance your borrowing and saving to make the most of the current climate Enables IFAs in bishops Stortford can help talk you through your options.

YOUR HOME COULD BE AT RISK IF YOU DO NOT KEEP UP YOUR MORTGAGE REPAYMENTS

Source: FT Money

Jobs (Source: The Office for National Statistics)

The latest unemployment rate in the UK continues to throw up anomalies against the poor Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures recently released for Q2 2012.

Unemployment has continued to fall, confounding many market analysts, with the number of fulltime workers increasing by 102,000 on the previous quarter, up 0.5%. This represents the best figures since April 2009. Part-time workers also increased by 134,000 to a total of 8.12 million; this is the highest figure recorded since records began in 1992.

Overall, the unemployment rate for the three months to July 2012 was 8.1%, which is a reduction of 0.1% amounting to 2.59 million people. The flip side to these figures is that 71.2% of the workforce is currently in employment.

Those unemployed for over one year has increased by 22,000 from the previous quarter to 904,000, the highest figure since the quarter ending March 1996.

The youth jobs market (those between 16-24 years old) improved slightly in the three months to July 2012 with an additional 58,000 finding employment, but there remained 1.02 million of those unemployed representing 21.6%.

Those unemployed claiming Job Seekers Allowance also fell by 15,000 to 1.57 million between July and August 2012.

The disparity seen between the private and public sectors continues with private sector employment increasing by 471,000 from March 2012 to 23.9 million, whilst the public sector saw a decline of 235,000 people to 5.66 million.

Redundancies fell by 13,000 from the quarter ending April 2012 and down 20,000 from a year earlier. Therefore the redundancy rate was 5.7 per 1,000 employees, again down 0.5 on the previous quarter and 0.8 on the year earlier.

Total pay saw an increase of 1.5% with average total pay (including bonuses) being £471 per week. Average regular pay (excluding bonuses) was recorded at £443 per week.

So in brief…

Unemployment continues to fall

All eyes still on the Eurozone...