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4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018
Copyright © Laura Whateley 2018
Laura Whateley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The information in this book is for general guidance only and is not legal advice. If you need more details on your rights or legal advice about what action to take, please see an advisor or solicitor. Please note that neither HarperCollins nor the Author offer investment advice. All financial investments carry risk. You should therefore seek independent financial advice before making any investment.
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Source ISBN: 9780008308315
Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008308322
Version: 2018-08-24
To Mum and Dad
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
PART ONE
1. The housing crisis and how to rent well
3. The debt you are in and how to handle it
6. How to invest in the stock market
7. Everything you need to know about pensions
8. Everything you need to know about tax
9. Understand your bills and insurance
PART TWO
PART THREE
This is a little guide that I could have really done with ten years ago, when I was twenty-three, and fresh off a First Great Western into London, one of the world’s most expensive cities, ready to start my first full-time job as the global economy crashed. Here I address the things I wish I had known about money earlier (the younger you start saving the more time your money has to grow) but was too embarrassed to ask. I assumed everybody else already had it nailed. Turns out that most did not, and still don’t, whatever their seeming competency at being an adult.
My aim is to make sense to those of you who write yourselves off as bad with money, the way I once did and often still do, as you stare down the barrel of your overdraft. It does not have to always be this way. Anyway, what does being bad with money even mean? Failing to check your bank balance regularly and not putting enough in a pension? Or putting so much in your pension that you haven’t had a holiday since 2005? Who is to judge?
Here is a secret: everyone is ‘bad’ with their money sometimes, some people are just better at styling it out and not letting on, some are rich enough that they can keep it well hidden. We are psychologically programmed to make poor financial decisions. There’s a whole Nobel-prize-winning area of academia, known as behavioural economics, to describe how. And because no one likes talking about money, and no two people agree on what it is for, whether it is better to spend it or to save it (clue, there is no right answer), the myth that others know what they are doing is rarely exposed.
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So read on if you have ever wanted to know, what actually is an ISA? What tax do I pay and why? How much should I be saving towards retirement? Should I be investing any money, and
