by Gareth Morgan on August 9, 2022
There’s been some discussion recently about the use of pension savings, after the age of 55, to help meet the cost of living increases that are affecting many people. You can see some of this discussion on Henry Tappers blog about pensions (a highly recommended read): The cost of living crisis – and the value […]
by Gareth Morgan on April 3, 2022
This is a quick update to my posting of two years ago, looking at the real gains (and for whom) of the increase in the National Living Wage (NLW). You can read that in my blog at https://benefitsinthefuture.com/national-living-wage-cui-bono/. Once again, this year, the government have proudly told us that the substantial increase in the NLW […]
by Gareth Morgan on November 3, 2021
With some very, very boring but pretty important numbers The government has been playing around with the tax and benefit system quite a lot this year. They have increased and decreased rates, tapers, thresholds and other factors with, apparently, wild enthusiasm. All of the announcements have been, predictably, treated as stand-alone elements with those that […]
by Gareth Morgan on June 24, 2021
The House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee is inquiring into the effects of the 2016 changes to the way in which pensions could be used and how to protect pension savers. They have looked at scams already (https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmselect/cmworpen/648/64802.htm) and are now, in their 2nd part of the inquiry, looking at the options open to […]
by Gareth Morgan on March 13, 2021
DWP responses to my suggestions for changing the assessment of earnings. It’s some time since I posted to this blog, not because nothing of interest, or worthy of comment, has been happening, but simply because, like many others, I have been busy. In that, I am lucky; far too many people have been without work, […]
by Gareth Morgan on October 19, 2020
Very pleased that the Work and Pensions Select Committee has recommended that the DWP assess my proposed model of assessment of Universal Credit, which could sort out irregular assessment of earnings and remove the need for a 5 week wait for the first payment. You can read the report at https://committees.parliament.uk/work/135/universal-credit-the-wait-for-a-first-payment/publications/ . It’s pretty wide […]
by Gareth Morgan on July 27, 2020
PensionBee are a company which “combines and transfers your old pensions into a brand new online plan, managed by some of the world’s largest money managers.” It doesn’t offer advice but points to where that can be found. It emphasises that it offers a simple online service. It has a lot of useful information on […]
by Gareth Morgan on June 9, 2020
A brief update to my post on Surplus Earnings of May 24th. The team at legislation.gov.uk have corrected the current version of the Universal Credit regulations and pulled the incorrect consolidated versions , that they said had been provided by the DWP. I have put up a Youtube video trying to explain the serious flaws […]
by Gareth Morgan on May 24, 2020
Even by Universal Credit (UC) standards that might seem a little bit excessive, but it appears to be happening. It’s also a real, and urgent, problem for a rapidly increasing number of people. Once again, it illustrates how the complexity of rules within Universal Credit seems to work against the stated aim of simple, understandable […]
by Gareth Morgan 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 […]