Nowadays Every Day is April Fool’s Day for Savers

Every year a flurry of adverts appear extolling the virtue of maximising your tax allowance on savings.  And every year I wonder if anyone falls for it.  I mean – are you really beating the tax man if you pile any spare cash into low interest accounts?  And who actually has any spare money anyway – apart from pensioners who presumably want to eke a bit more from their savings than the near zero returns that seem to be on offer

Let’s be honest – I am not an independent financial adviser (IFA) but I am sure I can think of better things to do with my money – if I had any.   For starters don’t pay into a pension would be my top piece of advice.  Yes it is tax –free – and yes you might actually need the safety net of a pension in later life.  But you never actually see all that money ever again as the financial institutions hang on to it.  And we now know they are both reckless and stupid in their use of your money.  Much better to invest it yourself – which you can now do this yourself with a self-invested pension plan.

I doubt there are many people who try lending and borrowing to fund their investment strategy any more.  Yet a couple of years ago you could make a very comfortable living backing winners in a one horse race.  The housing market was a win-win situation too.  And a licence to print money.

And what about the people who dropped us into the current mess?  No – not politicians.  The banks!  Now you and I don’t have to make the decision to switch bank account at the touch of a button.  The government have effectively done it for us.  As a tax payer we now own more banks than you can shake a stick at.I feel decidedly sick every time I think how much money has been thrown away  propping up greedy and incompetent bankers.  Remember all the fuss about supporting miners, steel workers, car workers etc.  All those businesses were enthusiastically allowed to die because they would cost money to keep going.  Yet all three put together would cost just a fraction of the money put into banking.

It makes me think the best investment strategy at the moment is to quickly find an affordable health insurance quote – and get on board with that.  After all, if your blood is boiling every time you see the financial news… your health must surely be at risk!

Health insurance is not in good health

Insurance is one of those things you don’t need until you needed it. Then, maybe, if you are lucky, you’ll be glad you got it.   And then you might find there is something in the small print that suggests payment is not an option.  Nowhere is this more of a problem than with life insurance protection.  You have to make sure you die of something not mentioned in the small print.

It doesn’t get any easier when choosing health insurance.  The first problem is deciding where to go – assuming you are thinking of buying health insurance for yourself.  Most of us have heard of BUPA health – but tapping private health insurance into Google soon reveals other companies such as Zurich health cover – and the question is, what to do they offer?

Maybe the first question is to decide if you want medical health insurance or family health insurance.  I guess it depends if you have a family or not.  But if you feel you need health insurance – then you don’t have much faith in the NHS.

The NHS is one of this country’s sacred cows.  We’re supposed to feel proud of it and ignore the fact that funding issues mean the best treatments in virtually every treatment area are not given to you.

If you have osteoarthritis your doctor is instructed to offer you paracetamol as a first line treatment.  And god help you if you have something really nasty like Kidney cancer.

Need IVF?  Well, maybe, if you are lucky the NHS will offer you one course of treatment.  But strangely a breakthrough fertility monitor such as Duofertility is not even recognised by the NICE guidelines. Granted it costs around £500, which is not exactly cheap… but that’s one tenth of the course of a single course of IVF.

Like everything else the NHS is target driven – and only a few conditions are considered worthy of priority.  Breast cancer is worth a few votes…but not so much kidney cancer.  Heart disease is a priority – but maybe not prostate cancer.   And hey – don’t even mention Dementia.

Dementia is a bit of a problem – but not if you pretend it is a social issue.  Even better you can make dementia sufferers pay for their medical care right down to selling their own homes.  And if you know someone in your family who has dementia I bet you already don’t think very much of the NHS.  But here’s the rub…. Health insurance won’t be much help to you either.  Just check the small print.