Too Expensive? Whole of Life Insurance explored

In this Meaningful Money Q&A, Pete Matthew and Roger Weeks answer six listener questions about UK investing, pensions and retirement planning. They explore investment fund risk ratings, funding the years before the State Pension, balancing pension saving with spending and family gifts, and how salary sacrifice, relevant UK earnings and pension carry forward work. The episode also examines how Armed Forces Early Departure Payments relate to the tax-free pension cash allowance, plus whether a £2,880 SIPP contribution could benefit a non-taxpayer approaching retirement. A practical UK personal finance podcast for anyone seeking clearer answers on investment risk, pension tax relief and making retirement income last.

In this Meaningful Money Q&A, Pete Matthew and Roger Weeks answer your UK personal finance questions on retirement planning, pensions and tax. Can a couple really retire at 50 on £40k a year using ISAs, a SIPP and a DB pension, and should you trust AI for retirement projections? We also cover semi-retirement, tax-free cash and the Money Purchase Annual Allowance (MPAA), whether to switch extra pension contributions to a SIPP ahead of the 2029 salary sacrifice changes, and taking dividend income from a GIA. Plus, how gifts to children are treated for inheritance tax, and how pension and ISA rules could be reformed without becoming a political football.

The Fault Lines of Finance asks why good people do bad things with other people's money, and what keeps the good ones good. Pete is joined by Philippa Hann and Dr Moira Somers, authors of the book, to talk about ethics in financial services, the role of regulators like the FCA, and the case for what they call the re-moralising of finance. They get into the personalities most at risk of crossing a line, why humility seems to be in short supply in the profession, and why the way we spend and invest says more about our identity than we tend to admit. There is also a line we keep coming back to: scrutiny done well is an act of stewardship.

In this Meaningful Money Q&A, Pete Matthew and Roger Weeks answer six listener questions on the UK money decisions that trip people up. We look at the best place to hold an emergency fund (cash ISA, Premium Bonds or stocks and shares ISA), how the £10,000 Money Purchase Annual Allowance works if you retire part-way through the tax year, and whether moving pension income into an ISA can help fund future care home costs. We also cover claiming a refund on overdraft charges, balancing a police CARE pension with a SIPP, LISA and ISA to retire at 55, and paying employee share scheme proceeds into a SIPP tax-efficiently.

Why does money cause so much worry, even when the numbers add up? In this episode of the Meaningful Money podcast, I am joined by financial planner Shabbar Kassam and organisational psychologist Tim Malnick, hosts of The Problem of Money podcast, to explore the psychology of money and why our financial behaviour is shaped so strongly by the money lessons we learned in childhood. We discuss why money can't buy happiness, why meaning matters more than comfort, and why the emotional side of the transition into retirement is often far harder than the financial planning.