A request for help and comment

by on April 24, 2024

This is a plea for help ( perhaps that’s a bit dramatic?) As well as Ferret’s core benefits and other calculation systems and models (see https://www.ferret.co.uk/) we produce a number of more task focused ‘reckoners’. These little helpers tackle the odd calculations or assessments you might need when you’re dealing with different scenarios.  They include […]

Some random jottings on the current benefits situation – no. 1 The Benefit Cap.

by on April 21, 2020

I’m not going to write much about what benefit changes have taken place recently, and there are lots of them, but a little bit about how they might affect people. This is because I’ve just finished the first baseline run of Ferret’s Future Benefits Model for 2020 to 2024. This is our big five-year rolling […]

Income certainty and low pension savings

by on January 12, 2018

There is concern, increasingly voiced, by a number of well-informed commentators, about some of the consequences of the pension freedoms. The complexity of choices, the lack of knowledge of most pension savers and the actions of some advisers, particularly around pension transfers, have led to calls for changes that would lead to safer and more […]

Notional income from pension pots

by on December 22, 2015

Before the pension freedoms of April 2015, the practical reality, for most people with pension savings, was that they had to take an annuity. For those with benefits entitlements that was often a pretty poor bargain. The annuity was taken penny for penny from any means tested benefit entitlement that they had, whether Pension Credit […]

Tax Credit cuts bad – Universal Credit cuts worse!

by on October 20, 2015

Tax credits are very much in the news at the moment, not least because of the powerful appearance on BBC Question Time of Michelle Dorrell with her concern about the personal impact of these cuts. I have recently completed a big exercise, using our Future Benefits Model, looking at the effect of all the announced […]

Mortgage interest changes – finally on their way

by on August 20, 2015

I wrote some time ago, over 3 ½ years in fact, about the consultation and call for evidence that had been published by the government announcing their policy intentions for support for mortgage interest in means tested benefits – http://blog.cix.co.uk/gmorgan/2012/01/06/mortgage-interest-support-consultation/. The Summer Budget 2015 has now produced the date of introduction of the proposal – […]

Pension Wise will make people Pound Foolish

by on February 15, 2015

There are big changes coming in April to the way in which people, from age 55, can access their ‘money purchase’, or ‘defined contribution’ pension savings.  These are pensions where the amount you get is decided by the amount that you’ve paid in to your ‘pot’ – the total value of your pension savings.  The […]