Page 49 - Simon Lambert News Today

Christine Ruten arrived at around 4:15 a.m. and found herself seventh in line. The teacher at St. Catherine Catholic School in Prince Albert started her vaccine preparation last night purchasing gas and some snacks. “The opportunity to be vaccinated is very important to me for several reasons,” she told me. “I teach Grade 3 and K-6 music. I have siblings, nieces, nephews, parents and grandparents that I love deeply. I view being vaccinated as a way to help protect the people that I love ...

Are you itching to spend or planning to save? Lockdown savers are forecast by the Office of Budget Responsibility to have stashed away £180billion by the middle of this year. That collective cash pile has been built up by those who have been fortunate enough not to see their finances hit by the pandemic, but have seen their outgoings drop substantially. We’ve already seen some big spending themes come out of this, as people splash out on everything from home improvements, to luxury garden fu...

Investors have been backing a strong rebound from lockdowns - and are already reaping the rewards from some shares that have leapt since vaccines were revealed.

Life is tough for first-time buyers. House prices were already expensive before the coronavirus lockdowns and defying all logic a mini-boom has sent the average house price up £20,000 further over the past year. At the same time mortgage lenders have indulged in a flight to safety, canning the vast majority of 95 per cent loan-to-value mortgages and bumping up the gap between rates on 90 per cent mortgages and those for borrowers with more equity. Once more into the breach has stepped the Gove...

Was the blockbuster Coinbase stock market listing a coming of age for bitcoin and cryptocurrency or a top of the bubble moment? The world’s leading crypto exchange platform listed on the US stock market this week and at one point hit a hefty $100billion valuation, before slipping back to $60billion. That’s still a very big number, especially for a business that made $322million last year. But Coinbase is profitable, its earnings are growing rapidly, it can cash in whether bitcoin and crypto...

Cash Isa rates are at an all-time low and billions have been withdrawn  More savers are investing to improve returns  on cash Isa rates But the volatility of the stock market may put off some from investing From one-stop shop and defensive funds to online investment services which pick assets on investors behalf, we round up some less risky options 

Financial scams are on the rise. The coronavirus lockdowns have seen a fresh burst of investment cons with fraudsters impersonating legitimate companies to steal tens of thousands of pounds. Unwitting savers are being lured into fake savings and investments, such as fixed term bonds or share schemes, and falling victim to clone fraud. What’s behind this burst of crime and how can people protect themselves? On this week’s podcast, Georgie Frost and Simon Lambert discuss the rising tide of fr...

Is the economy primed to bounce back? That might sound like a strange question when you’ve just had the news that UK GDP fell by 2.9 per cent in one month, but January’s lockdown slump was nowhere near as deep as expected. It seems that despite a tough lockdown being imposed, shops and big chunks of the economy being shut and schools being closed, the UK has adapted to restrictions better than thought when it comes to doing business. On this week’s podcast, Georgie Frost, Jayna Rana and S...

Audrey and Brian Watson: Couple from Staffordshire sent a question to Steve Webb a year ago, sparking our investigation - read their story here Elderly women could receive £3billion in state pension arrears after being shortchanged for decades, the Government admitted this week. The scandal was uncovered by This is Money and former Pensions Minister Steve Webb, after we launched an investigation into a reader question to his weekly column a year ago.  The huge bill results from a failure to i...

This is Money columnist Steve Webb says:  Repayments of £3billion over the next five years imply huge numbers of women have been shortchanged The cost of fixing underpaid women’s state pensions will be £3billion it has been revealed – and people wouldn’t be getting that money without the work of This is Money’s journalist Tanya Jefferies and columnist Steve Webb. The £3billion figure slipped out among all the others packed into the Office for Budget Responsibility’s Budget report ...