Moira O'Neill

Festive investment trust bargains for all the family

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Advice & Comment news every morning. Congratulations if you resisted the temptation to indulge in Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. Not every bargain is what it seems, and the stakes…

Seize the Isa advantage while you can

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Personal Finance Advice & Comment news every morning. My Dad’s response to the chancellor’s cuts to capital gains and dividend allowances was: “It’s a relief that everything your Mum and…

Inflation remains the key fight for your finances

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Personal Finance Advice & Comment news every morning. One day before the Autumn Statement, official data showed UK inflation hit a 41-year high of 11.1 per cent. So it was no surprise…

A comfortable retirement is being sacrificed for many

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Autumn Statement news every morning. Moira O’Neill is a freelance money and investment writer The chancellor had already made it clear that he would be asking everyone for sacrifices.…

Invest for good — put thoughts into actions

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Personal Finance Advice & Comment news every morning. After seeing world leaders in Egypt this week hammering out agreements on cutting carbon emissions, you may have made a mental note…

Does your money manager pass the Ofsted test?

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Personal Finance Advice & Comment news every morning. In the past year, many parents, including myself, have seen Ofsted downgrade their child’s school from “outstanding” to “good”. This…

Can equity release help hard-pressed pensioners?

After years of paying off your mortgage, the feelgood factor of owning your home outright may be shortlived. We can be hit by personal setbacks that cut income. Or, as we are now seeing, by an upsurge in inflation or a financial market storm. Or…

Time to switch out of a defined benefit pension?

The UK pension funds liquidity crisis has, quite understandably, shaken confidence in defined benefit (DB) pensions. People with these final salary-linked schemes got very worried when the news broke of fund managers having to sell assets in a hurry…

Pay down the mortgage or invest?

The growing prospect of 5 per cent or even 6 per cent mortgage interest rates in the UK means that so-called good debt could give your living standards a horribly bad squeeze. Your mortgage debt is considered good because it is widely held to help…

Ten ways to improve your portfolio without really trying

Whether it’s cutting fees, maximising your tax breaks or tidying your portfolio, here are 10 easy ways to improve your investment performance. None requires an expert or much time or effort. 1 Use tax wrappers to the full Move any investments held in…

From £10,000 to £100,000: your financial fitness plan

Congratulations, you’ve done the hard work! You started an investment plan, put it into a tax-efficient Isa, and now your savings are firmly into five figures. Your hard-earned money is no longer “sitting on the couch”. But how do you think about…

How to invest your bonus for the long term

“Money may not buy happiness, but I’d rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus,” said the French writer Françoise Sagan, a famed and profligate spender. It’s a snappy quote, but tempting as it may be to spend your hard-won bonus on a fancy car today, it…

What Dickens and Scrooge teach us about money

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Personal Finance Advice & Comment news every morning. The Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol has always been a seasonal favourite among local theatres as a tale which speaks to…

A puppy for Christmas? Better invest in dog food

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Personal Finance Advice & Comment news every morning. People have always been willing to spend on pets at Christmas, even fake ones. Advertising executive Gary Dahl once sold more than…

Squid Game has lessons for investors

If there’s ever been a warning about taking extreme risks, Netflix’s biggest hit Squid Game is it: 456 debt-ridden adults risking their lives playing children’s games for a huge cash prize. But I’m hoping that among the bloodshed and high drama, some…

Investing in the menopause can offer many rewards

Sign up to myFT Daily Digest to be the first to know about Personal Finance Advice & Comment news. The night before writing this article, I woke with a hot flush and pain in a frozen shoulder. I don’t write this because I need your sympathy, but I do…

How to teach your bored teenager about investing

“My skin is dead good. I think it must be a combination of being in love and Lucozade,” said the fictional socially awkward teenager Adrian Mole back in 1981. The social media-enabled teenagers of 2021 have filters to fix their problem skin. But…

Does your fund manager have skin in the game?

In 1956, Warren Buffett raised $105,000 from 11 investors — most of whom were family — for his first fund, himself placing a token sum of $100 as his “skin in the game”. Over the next 13 years, he grew Buffett Partnerships to $105m, running it “like…

Your pension: think about it earlier and more often

Industry must engage with savers with new tools and ideas. Persuading people to engage with pensions is a never-ending task and ministers, it seems, will go to any extreme. In 2015, they probably thought that a campaign headed by the 10ft-tall…

Your pension: think about it earlier and more often

Persuading people to engage with pensions is a never-ending task and ministers, it seems, will go to any extreme. In 2015, they probably thought that a campaign headed by the 10ft-tall “Workie” pensions monster was clever, before critics slammed it…