Greater Fool
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Posts posted by Greater Fool
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Agreed, the Conservatives can't print money to bail out cafés with £50k electricity bills, Putin's war is game over for small hospitality business. It's very scary, who knows what's going to happen with unemployment this winter. The first to be hit are these types of businesses, the cost problems will rise up the chain to larger business. Are we on the road to Weimar?
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15 minutes ago, winkie said:
Plenty of jobs, but not plenty of trained up people to do them.......can the NHS afford to pay them?
I'm reliably told the NHS is recruiting a lot of nurses from India and the Philippines, so yes the NHS can afford to pay them. If those Baristas, pub workers, café workers, restaurant workers etc. want to train as nurses, care workers etc. because their employers are no longer viable they will be Ok. Just a suggestion.
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1 hour ago, Sour Mash said:
What action? More borrowing and debt to bail people out? That's one of the main reasons we are in an inflation crisis in the first place... You can't print energy. You can't print food. Printing money to pay for them just pushes prices through the roof and you are back where you started.
Of course the politicians could drop the 'green agenda' BS and resume business with Russia for vital energy and food resources - but no chance of those idiots admitting they messed up. They'd rather throw the economy and the population under the bus than lose face.
I don't think people understand, when Russia invaded Ukraine it created a whole new world order, there is no going back to business as usual and "resuming" business with Russia, we are in the new normal. This energy crisis is predicted to go on for years. Scary innit?
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We're told told are plenty of jobs available in the NHS and government etc, no question of the hospitals not being able to pay their leccy bills.
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Isn't the government about to embark on another slew of inflationary spending? How can CBs counter public spending splurges? I don't get it, help me out someone.
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Next year it will to a £200 billion hand out to compensate for the inflationary effect of this year's £100 billion hand out Ad infinitum.
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Just now, scottbeard said:
No sorry I was referring to private sector Defined Benefit/Final Salary pensions. Sorry for not being clearer.
Annuities are usually either
- No increases
- Fixed 3%pa increases
- Uncapped RPI increases
Depending upon what the person bought when the bought the annuity.
Drawdown of course you can withdraw more or less as you like, subject to the drawdown and tax rules.
Thanks, very informative!
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1 hour ago, scottbeard said:
I was just discussing that with a colleague at work (we work in pensions) and I think it's going to be the next set of Daily Mail headlines for 2023.
Most private sector pension schemes have increases capped at 5%pa - usually RPI. Conversely, public sector is uncapped CPI.
Next year you could easily see retired private sector workers get a 5% pension increase whilst retired public sector get 18% according to Citi!
Cue angry pensioner headlines...
Are you talking about annuities being capped at 5%? Presumably increases don't apply to drawdowns?
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12 minutes ago, TerryBoi said:
Looks like Flat Bear was right.
This is gonna be a tragedy for the poor.
Is the state pension index linked in the UK?
No, the state pension is set by the government, the last increase was 3.1% in April.
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1 hour ago, TheCountOfNowhere said:
Not to panic anyone....but look at the lead tine.
Plenty in stock on Bullionbypost.
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37 minutes ago, scottbeard said:
But you can’t have a government policy to increase private sector wages other than the minimum wage, as they aren’t under government control!
I suggest you read Milton Freidman's book, if there are unfunded increases in government spending (money printing) it will be inflationary, so the pubic sector increases wages and the private sector gets poorer as they can't simply do the same by government policy.
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A significant rise in the national minimum wage and a path to £15 an hour, a real public sector pay rise, and an inflation busting-rise in pensions and benefits.
After decades of stagnation and real terms pay cuts, it’s time for a real pay rise.
That means rewarding the people who actually run this country, not the fat cats. We need public sector pay to increase in line with inflation and a pathway to a £15 p/h minimum wage.
So basically they are only interested in unionised public sector workers, same old same old.
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14 hours ago, Insane said:
When I was about 5 so nearly 55 years ago all the Gas Pipes had to be changed as we were going over to North Sea Gas which was going to be very cheap for everyone. What has happened ?
What happened? The gas in the North Sea is depleted, most of it is now gone.
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1 hour ago, msi said:
The line that inflation 'erodes' debt only works if your income rises with inflation.
New debt taken out also increases as the inflation tide raises all boats, so spendthrifts (governments etc.) end up creating higher levels of new debt for themselves. Try to run away from old debt with inflation and new debt and you end up with another Weimar Rep.
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31 minutes ago, scottbeard said:
Only 30% of UK debt is index linked. The other 70% is being nicely inflated away as we speak.
But inflation also means the government has to spend and borrow more so "new" debt also increases, you can't simultaneously inflate old debt away faster the you're inreasing new debt to reduct overall debt.
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4 hours ago, scottbeard said:
Rather than ask loaded questions like that, take a step back: you cannot get return without risk.
There will be years when your pension fund goes down.
All that really matters is what it is when you come to draw it. If you panic in years when it falls you risk making bad decisions based upon fear or frustration instead of sound long-term investment principles.
There isn't really much that can be done about it to panic, it's a workplace pension so you either pay into it or you don't, the big pension company only offers a few different investment options.
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8 minutes ago, wighty said:
How much has it dropped?
The lower the drop the less chance of getting decent growth as it'll be invested in low risk assets.
I transfer my company additional sipp contributions after extra 40%tax advantage to Interactive investor for £7.99/month and can control my funds.
Total value has dropped about 9% on last year, which is going to be due to investing big in US tech stock, which as we all know has dropped.
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8 minutes ago, Nomadd said:
Seriously, buy that book and watch all of the YT content on the late John "Jack" Bogle that you can find. Like buffet, he's a no-nonsense, straight-talking guy looking out for you, and not some City Trader.
For the record, I took over the management of my own pension - via a SIPP - around 15 years ago and increased its value substantially compared to the high-charging thieves (pension companies) who were managing it beforehand.
Thanks, do you transfer the balance of your workplace pension out every year to the SIPP? I'm not sure if every provider allows you to do that?
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9 minutes ago, reddog said:
Probably makes sense to contribute due to tax efficiency and the fact your employer will put some in.
But you have to do serious saving into a defined contribution pension (like many £100,000s) to get any sort of return.
For my first company pension I just added whatever was the default (not very much) and just thought I was doing the right thing by having a pension. That pension will now be paltry.
But I think many people will be having an unpleasant shock quite soon, they thought they were doing the right thing paying into a pension, but they will come up massively short even though they but I'm the default amount advised by their employer. In many cases they really would have been better off spending the money on some amazing holidays while they were still young.
I few months ago I was looking at some old payslips from a previous job and noticed how little my pension contributions were, it worked out to be 1.5%. This of course was the default amount, but I thought to myself what employer would set up a pension scheme for employees with such a low rate. Employers were getting away with murder expecting the employee to take the initiative and go out of their way to increase their contribution from the default. The government has recently changed the minimum to be a minimum total 8% of salary contribution which will significantly increase minimum contributions, but it took a change to law to put it in place.
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2 minutes ago, Nomadd said:
Thanks, looks good, I've got the book "Trillions" waiting to be read.
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9 minutes ago, Si1 said:
Warren Buffet says that in the accumulation phase of a lifetime investment a bear market is preferable.
Say the pension companies invest big in overvalued big US tech stocks at the top of the market, they fall and it takes at least 10 years or more for them to get back, is that good?
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6 minutes ago, Jason said:
Don't forget you get tax relief on pensions, so taking that into account it still beats most other investment vehicles.
But what investment hasn't fallen in price in the last year? Apart from houses.. but that's coming..
A pension valuation that is less then the previous year is not beating any investments, other than those which have lost even more money. It makes no difference how much tax relief there is on the contributions if it's lost money.
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On 09/07/2022 at 13:31, kzb said:
I've always thought peak oil was a bit of an exaggeration, because you can make pretty much everything we get from oil from coal.
It would be more expensive I guess, but given the oil price now maybe it does not need to be dearer than that.
Coal resources are massive, loads more coal than oil in the world. There's trillions of tonnes under the North Sea, completely dwarfing the oil n gas resource there.
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/newly-discovered-north-sea-coal-could-power-britain-centuries-1442551
Governments would rather have us starve than use more carbon emitting energy source though, just wait for the climate change bed wetters to start up about the heatwave.
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So I've just had my latest pension statement and its showing that its value is down on last year despite a years' worth of contributions. This has happened before for a couple of years after the crash of 2008, but it had made me think about pensions as good investments. Basically what other investment would force you to pay into it despite the underlying assets falling in value? Surely conventionally someone would have to be mad to willing pay more money into an investment that loses money?
There is no guarantee that the underlying assets the pension provider is invested in, which is mainly index funds, will increase in value to recoup the loses this year. It's a possibility the assets could again fall over the next year as well, leading to a further loss for the second year running. It all depends on the funds' performance and the fund managers. Food for thought for the economically literate among you!
The pints are likely to get expensive 6000 GBP per month to heat a pub
in House prices and the economy
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Seems everyone has forgotten about the schools while constantly banging on about the NHS.