Mosaac Financial Blog

Public opinion is pessimistic about the future of the State pension. Ask yourself these two questions: Do you believe that the State pension will be around in 30 years’ time? Do you think that the State pension will keep pace with prices over the next ten years? If you said ‘no’ to both, then your view places you in the minority, although a sizeable one. Polling research undertaken for the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) last year revealed that a third of working

For employees, the national insurance cut announced in the Autumn Statement took effect on 6 January. For many years, successive governments have been happy for the public to vaguely believe that national insurance contributions (NICs) are building up in some national benefit fund, rather than representing just another tax on income. While something called the National Insurance Fund does exist, as a House of Commons Library briefing noted back in 2019, “The Fund operates on

The widening gap: National Minimum Wage vs. new State pension The National Living Wage (NLW) and the new State pension both started life in April 2016 during George Osborne’s tenure as Chancellor. In his March 2013 Budget, he announced that the new State pension would begin a year earlier than had originally been planned. Just over two years and an election later (and still Chancellor – they were different times), in July 2015, Mr Osborne produced another surprise in the form