SIPP is short for Self Invested Personal Pension and is a do-it-yourself pension scheme that allows you to choose how your retirement savings are invested.

Sipps allow you free rein as to where your money is invested whereas standard personal pensions tend to have quite narrow choices.

The beauty of Sipps are that if your funds start to struggle, you can take full control and switch the investment to other areas to make your nest egg grow further.  Read more... (570 words, estimated 2:17 mins reading time)

The current upturn in the UK stock market is said to be being driven ‘ordinary’ householders buying shares because they are sick of the poor interest rates attached to their savings account.

The FTSE 100 index was pushed up 3.2 percent last week. This has followed a six month rally that has driven blue-chip shares up 50 percent over their March low.

Experts believe that both of these rallies are in part due to ordinary buyers, that is buyers who are not represented by big investment firms. Since June, the number of these buyers has risen to levels equal to the dotcom boom of 2000, and in the last three months, deals placed through execution-only stockbrokers has risen to over 4 million.  Read more... (294 words, estimated 1:11 mins reading time)

According to a report just released by Scottish Widows, a quarter of women are not putting away any savings towards their retirement and just 47 percent of women are on track to have a ‘comfortable’ retirement.

Men fare slightly better with 59 percent of men saving the recommended 12 percent of income each month.

There are many factors why women can’t save more for their retirement with the most common reason being a large family. 25 percent who have three children or more said they were not saving any more for their retirement. Women over 50 also are unable to save with many reporting that the recession has made them less well off hence their inability to put money away in a savings account.  Read more... (257 words, estimated 1:02 mins reading time)

The number of households saving money has fallen dramatically over the past year. At this time last year, 50% of people tried to save some money each month. This year, 85% of people have said they have nothing left at the end of the month to put into savings.

Scottish Widows surveyed a number of people and called the results ‘alarming’. The lack of savings is put down to a difficult economic climate culminating in unemployment and pay freezes.

75% of families have said that daily living costs were preventing them from saving, up from 67% last year. 42% of families said that debts prevented them from saving, up 10% from 2008.  Read more... (173 words, estimated 42 secs reading time)

Recent research has shown that the average Briton has just 52 days worth of savings – that is, if they were made unemployed today, their savings would only be enough to cover 52 days before the money ran out. Scarily, over a third of people were found to have just 11 days worth of savings. Another recent survey has shown that only around half of Brits are putting aside enough money to give them an adequate income for their retirement years.  Read more... (433 words, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)