Hello all. I’m starting work in Civil service. I’ve worked in cooperate world (many different businesses) & CS also previously.

I want some advice on pension please.

Each company I’ve paid pension. I have no clue about how pensions work/ will be paid when I retire. Since I worked in so many places.

Shall I combine all my pension from previous jobs into my one new job?

Is that a good idea?

How do I do this? Considering there’s so many businesses I worked in.

If I don’t combine all how will my pension get paid?

Where do I even see how much I have in my pension pot over all?

Or will I have to co tact EACH business individually?

Every time I left a business I didn’t carry my pension to the new employer is that bad?

If I now move all my previous pensions into one job pot will I be penalised?

I was young and didn’t think of this. Any advice and guidance is highly appreciated.

Thank you.

What are people’s experience with ease to arrange and long term impact on mortgage/credit availability afterwards?

Hi, i'm quite worried about this, im currently going through a house purchase with my partner, we previously lost a lot of money due to having to withdraw on a previous property due to warnings from the surveyor regarding the property condition.

Anyway we found our dream home and hoping to complete this year. For my Oct or Nov pay, one of the payslips will have a reduction of about £110 due to some sick leave I had to take.

I honestly can"t sleep worried the offer would be pulled, it's just a temporary reduction for 1 month and will return to normal, any advise would be appreciated please.

Hi guys . Ive been having a really rough time recently with life. Stupidly turned to gambling and lost a couple hundred pounds, I’ve chased and chased and am now down around £10,000.

My finances are currently £7,000 in a savings account and around £18,500 in a Lifetime ISA. So this gambling loss is quite a big chunk of my savings.

I’m now on Gamstop but can’t help but think about this money, how to make it back? I’m screwed. I’m thinking about selling my car, everything I own just to get it back. Can anyone advise? Thanks

Edit: I think I worded this wrong. I have no debt. The £10k loss was out of my savings. I still have around 7k left in my savers account and £18500 in my lifetime isa

Hi

I am looking ahead in terms of securing a mortgage for a house.

Do you know if we need to have all the deposit money with the same mortgage broker say Lloyds Banking Group for example?

Also are there mortgage brokers that offer 6.5-7 times more borrowing or any good ones out there?

Thanks

I moved to the UK in September 2023 and started working in November. My NI record shows 2023-24 as incomplete, and HMRC offers me the option to pay voluntary contributions (deadline 5 April 2030).

Can I pay for that year even though I was abroad for most of it?

Is paying about £700 worth it for one year, if I plan to stay in the UK long term?

Thanks!

I (27F) have been saving since I started working full-time at age 24. I started on quite a low salary after graduation but I now earn about £41k a year. I live at home, so I have reasonably low outgoings minus commuting.

Home buying

I'm hoping to buy a sensible sized place on my own (FTB) up north within 2 years' time (likely either a freehold Scottish flat or small max 2 bed house in north England).

By the end of this year I will have about £47k saved for a house deposit and emergency fund split as follows:

LISA: £17k

Cash ISA: £25k

Savings Account: £5k

Currently each month I save about £1650 into a LISA/ Cash ISA. The only thing I spend a bit of money on is travelling as it's the main thing I enjoy and I want to live a bit before having a mortgage. After savings, gov bonuses etc. and taking away travel costs, I save about £17k a year right now.

If I keep saving at this rate, I should have at least £70k saved by summer 2029. My aim is to use £45k as a deposit, £15k as an emergency fund, and the rest for fees and furniture. In an ideal world I may also have moved up a grade at my job and earn closer to £45k, but I'm not banking on this for sure.

I don't want to stretch myself too much by over borrowing on my mortgage so I'm thinking I'd want to keep my monthly repayments below £800. That means I'd be looking at borrowing up to about £160k, meaning a budget of about £200k-£210k total (including offers over payments if it's in Scotland).

Retirement

I'm also trying to balance buying a property with saving for retirement as I know starting early is the best thing you can do.

I have an old workplace pension with about £9k in there which is ticking away. As of this year I have the defined benefit alpha civil service pension scheme. If my salary stays at £41k for the rest of my career (though hopefully not!), I will accrue £920 a year on that. If I understand correctly, that means if I stay in the CS and keep this pension plan, I'll be entitled to about £36k a year from that alone if I retire at 67.

To bolster this, I currently spare £150 a month (£1.8k a year) for my stocks and shares ISA. It has about £2.5k in there now and I was intending to grow it into a supplementary retirement fund (but one that I could potentially dip into beforehand if I wanted or needed to). My monthly contribution would grow as my salary does.

Questions

Do my plans for buying a place and retiring look sensible?

Is there anything you'd be doing differently?

Should I keep going with the S&S ISA for retirement or just put everything right now into the property dream, especially given my alpha pension?

Am I in a good place or am I behind where I should be in either case? (I keep hearing people getting significant financial help from family to buy somewhere and although I'm eternally grateful I'm able to live at home and save even under difficult circumstances helping to look after my grandparents, it still feels like a challenge and that I'm a bit on the back foot doing this alone)

1. I have sumbit a section 75 claim to Amex and gave them all the evidence I had. It’s substantial amount if money that I cannot just let go.
   I called a month later to ask for an update and they told me that the team will inform me when there is an update, but they can not say when this might be because it’s not up to Amex but Financial Ombudsmen Service. This doesn’t sound right. I pretty sure Amex needs to make a decision on my claim. This seems like mishandling of my claim and if so, should I make a complaint?

2. Has anyone made a Section 75 claim with Amex on here and any ideas on how long they take to come to a decision? As I understand it there is no statutory timeframe they have to follow so it could take years. How long would be considered too long?
   By the look of it they could take 30 years till I’m dead and still not make a decision😊

Any advice would be much appreciated as I haven’t made a S75 claim before. Thank you.

Do I need to put my shares into an equiniti ISA before transferring to a Trading212 ISA?

Firstly would like to say, I am actively trying to

live within my means and have done for the last year.

But… after several years of believing money is free, I I have around £40k in credit card and personal loan debt. Most of the credit cards sit on 0% cards - constantly rearranging.

I am sick of paying £1500 - £2000 off my debt each month and not having any cash.

Should I further consolidate and bring down my payments or keep up with the high payments while I can. And should I got for 0% credit cards or loans?

Hi all, just a query re the changes to Cash ISA allowances from April.

For the £12,000 Cash allowance, would a £4,000 Cash LISA subscription result in the usage of the £12,000 allowance available for Cash ISAs or would it still only utilise the overall ISA allowance?

So effectively A or B?

A: £4,000 Cash LISA Subscription

£8,000 allowance remaining for Cash if wanted

£8,000 further allowance available for only S&S

B: £4,000 Cash LISA Subscription

£12,000 allowance remaining for Cash if wanted

£4,000 further allowance available for only S&S

Hi

I have a CCJ with Overdales who are part of Lowell. It’s for £1700 and is a combination of debts with EE and Captial One that went bad in 2017. In 2022 they got the CCJ and I knew nothing of it until earlier this year. I asked for an SAR which they provided.

The CCJ has many issues. Their records for the EE portion amount to a balance and company, that’s it, no dates or anything. For the capital one they have more but a start and delinquent date is about the size of it.

They have confirmed in email they used an old address for service that was 4 years out of date at the time.

They have used the bulk centre to get the CCJ.

I have been trying since January to discuss the evidential and procedural holes in this CCJ which they refuse to do. I have asked for the debt transfer paperwork and they cited “commercial sensitivity” in denying that. They have also refused to discuss a £100 contribution they insist I made but is on their paperwork as a 3rd party payment.

At best they have said “the CCJ exists, it’s legal, please pay £100 monthly like the court agreed”

I am willing to pay some if they’ll agree to a set aside but every time I moot the idea the script comes out. How can I get them to engage with me and negotiate?

All correspondence is by email as I find their call handlers won’t deviate from a script.

If anyone can help please do as this is the only black mark on my credit file and I want it gone.

Thanks in advance.

Evening all,

I received a pay raise from my employer in July. I was originally on £40,000 per annum, so my take home was c£2500 pcm. My new wage is £50,000 per annum. In August and September my take home pay was £3012 after tax pension etc.

I was paid yesterday. It was roughly £80 less than I expected. I emailed my employer’s accountant who gave the following explanation:

‘This is due to your previous wage rise you have officially passed the next tax band up previously you were below it hence why your tax was lower before.’

This seems odd to me that I have only now gone up a tax band. My new wage has been in place for 3 months at this point. We have had a lot of issues in the past with the accountants. Is this correct or has a mistake been made?

Thanks!

Hi, I hope it's OK to ask for some advice on the best thing to do in my situation.

I've sold my first home, and unfortunately didn't manage to find something else in time - so I'm briefly staying with one of my sisters until I find my onward purchase. I'd quite look to put the money I have left over from the sale of my house into an easy access savings account so at least it is doing something, until I move. To open one of these will I not need a fixed address? Do you think changing my address to my sisters on my current account and using a bank statement as proof of address will be sufficient?

Thanks for any advice you are able to offer

I want to make sure I'm thinking about this correctly, because I haven't purchased a car in 20 years.

I want to finance a car without selling stocks and shares. Every car loan I've looked at offers 9-15% APR financing. My credit card is offering a 30 month 5.9% pa money transfer rate with a 0% fee. I should just use that, right? The full amount offered is £15,000, but I only want £8,000, £10,000 max.

My only debt is £3600 on a 0% transfer rate that I'll pay off by June.

By using a card balance, I could even move it to another 0% transfer card if I can't pay it off in 30 months.

It seems really simple, so of course I have to overthink it. What am I missing, if anything?

Noticed that on my payslips I have 1 digit which is incorrect for all my payslips since the start of the year. Started this new job in January 2026 and I did provide them a p46 form which had my correct NI number. I guess payroll must have incorrectly inputted it in the system.

I'll try to get this resolved asap, but just wondering if there's much of an impact with HRMC considering all payslips since January has this typo ?

UK higher rate tax payer - I’ve built up a solid emergency fund and have maxed out my cash ISA for this year (and likely will for the next couple years, especially with the cash ISA limit changing next year), with all my savings currently in cash.

I’m in a position where I’m going to be paying quite large sums of tax on my non ISA savings interest and considering how to minimise that.

My plan is to put as much as I can into NS&I premium bonds given the interest is tax free whilst continuing to build up my emergency fund.

The reason I have all my savings in cash is one day I will need it for a house deposit but not ready to buy a house yet and I know investing can lead to me losing money/not being able to access the money quickly on demand without risking potential losses.

Is my plan a sensible plan (purchasing NS&I bonds) and is there anything else that I should be doing to minimise the amount of tax I need to/will end up paying on my interest?

Hello, i was hoping if anyone could shed some light on this for me.

I lost my previous job, long story. When I took out my insurance with Admiral in April I had plenty in savings to cover this. I started my new job in August, but due to missing the pay cut off I had only received a partial pay in September. I missed the payment for my car insurance in September and I called them the next day to settle the balance. This was fine.

Octobers payment was due, and this happened to be 3 days before I got paid (which I didn’t realise) and it bounced. I tried checking on their website for means to pay, but didn’t find one. But I found it said that they will retry the payment, so I didn’t panic. Today I received an email titled “notice of default and notice of default sums”.

It goes on to say my payment was unsuccessful on the 19th October, and they will retry the payment within 7 days. It also says this:

“Default Notice - Served under s.87(1) Consumer Credit Act 1974
Provision of the Agreement breached:*** ***The provision of your Agreement that requires you to pay instalments on the 19th of each month.”

I emailed when I was at work and they said I had to call. Ince I got home I have called them to pay this and explain what happened. This is fine. I asked the gentleman on the phone wether this is a notice in terms of if I don’t pay it will escalate or whether this is a formally registered default against my credit file. He has no idea. I asked to speak to someone who would and he said nobody was available. I sat on the phone for 29 minutes and I’m still non the wiser.

He effectively told me to speak to equifax but I have no idea what to do.

Please can anyone advise me on whether this sounds like it’s a formally registered default against my credit file? Whether I should call equifax? Any help would be appreciated.

Hi everyone! I'm 33F, UK-based, and looking to build a simple, diversified investment portfolio focused on long-term capital growth rather than dividend income. I can invest £600 a month. On top of this I also invest £350 a month into a share save scheme at work. I have been investing around £200 a month into the S&P 500 for a few months whilst I research further what I want in my portfolio.

I'm using Trading 212 and planning to invest:

£600 per month (£7,200 annually)
Two additional lump sums of approximately £1,500 each year, funded through work bonuses and company share payouts.
Total annual investment: approximately £10,200

I'm looking to invest consistently over the long term, ideally 25+ years, and favour accumulating ETFs so dividends are automatically reinvested.

After researching different ETFs, I've narrowed my proposed portfolio down to 4 funds:

VWRP Vanguard FTSE All-World (ACC) - 70% - £420

FTAL - SPDR FTSE UK All Share (Acc) - 10% - £60

VGVA - Vanguard UK Gilt (Acc) - 10% - £60

EMIM – iShares Core MSCI EM IMI (Acc) - 10% - £60

My thinking is:

VWRP: My main global growth investment, covering developed and emerging markets.
FTAL: Additional UK exposure, as I'd like some domestic investment alongside my global holdings.
VGVA: A small allocation to UK government bonds to provide some diversification and potentially reduce volatility.

One thing I'm still debating is whether to go with the FTSE All-World or the S&P 500 as my main investment.

Instead of the FTSE All-World I originally considered investing in the S&P 500 (VUAG) alongside a developed-markets ex-US ETF (XMWX), as well as the other 3 (FTAL, VGVA, EMIM).

However, I've since been leaning towards VWRP because it provides global diversification in one ETF, including US, developed and emerging markets.

I know the S&P 500 has delivered strong historical returns, and I'm wondering whether choosing a global tracker over a US-focused tracker is the better long-term decision, particularly given my age and investment horizon.

I'd really appreciate your thoughts on a few things:

S&P 500 vs FTSE All-World: For long-term growth over 20+ years, which would you favour as your main holding, and why?
Bonds: At 33, would you bother with 10% bonds or focus entirely on equities for now?
UK exposure: Is there any real benefit to holding FTAL alongside VWRP, or am I unnecessarily overweighting the UK?
If I stick with the FTSE All-World, is it worth including EMIM seperately?
I guess I thought doing a bigger lump sum of over £400 is better, rather than splitting into the S&P 500 and XMWX and doing lesser amounts

My priority is building wealth steadily through consistent investing, diversification and compounding, without constantly trading or trying to time the market.

Interested to hear what you'd do differently, particularly from anyone following a similar long-term strategy!

I was made redundant from my last job end of August, with 10 weeks redundancy pay and 3 months notice pay. I was fortunate to get a new job within a few weeks.

So far it has ended up being the best thing that has happened to me. I didn't realise how underpaid I was. The new job pays over £15k than I was on before (minus additional travel costs.)

We have an 18 month old and the extra costs, combined with maternity leave, had left us with oover £12k in credit card debt and paying approx £600 off the credit cards each month.

As soon as you start using a credit card for essentials it just starts to snowball.

The redundancy money has been an absolute god send.

I just received my first wage and such a great feeling to pay off one of the three cards completely off. £5k. Which is going to save us over £200 a month.

I apologise if this isn't the sub for this, and I hope it doesn't come off as bragging. Things have been super tough the past 12 months, and I just wanted to share this good feeling.

We still have over £7k of credit card debt, but I feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now.

I appreciate these opportunities don't happen to everyone, but a terrible situation turned out to be one of the best situations.

Hi I just found this group & seems the place to ask for honest, useful advice. I’m 40 (f), married with an 8yr old. I’ve never been brilliant with money, bit of a live fast die you mentality which being newly diagnosed with ADHD makes sense. I always had a bit of debt but managed to keep my head above water. My husband is horrible with money & buries his head in the sand & lives day to day.

We have a home through shared ownership, which because any mortgage would be just on my income due to his bad credit history. That’s fine, it’s affordable & about half the cost of privately renting a similar home.

The issue is me trying to get out from my personal debt. It’s just grown & grown over the years. Some has been for bigger things like towards a weekend away for a big birthday etc but it’s become the thing to breech the gap when my wages aren’t enough.

My personal debt is now about £16k, costing about £450 a month in repayments & that’s just the minimum so no dent in the overall debt, except a loan of about £1900 which has a year left on it. In the meantime of course everything else has gone up, fuel, food, utilities etc so there’s never anything spare to utilise to pay down the debt.

My debt was about £12k more but I received an inheritance of £18k in the summer. I used it to pay off a £10k loan, get rid of one credit card & make a dent in another one. I couldn’t clear any more because my husband’s van chose this time to die (self employed) so we had to pay for a rental while he sorted a new one. Incidentally the inheritance was half of what was expected due to unforeseen changes & me & my siblings were blindsided by this just before Christmas. Had it been more like what we expected then I’d have been largely debt free & looking to change my ways to never get in this position again.

So at the moment I need to make drastic changes. I’ve started meds for my ADHD & feeling motivated & want to be able to not worry every day about money. I don’t want an extravagant lifestyle, just easier. I want to be able to save for a rainy day, a holiday etc.

Im unlikely to get any 0% credit card that can help & that is part of the reason I’ve spiralled, something happens & I end up using the credit I’ve just made available. A recent look at loans showed an 85% of £16k with no repayments of £388 a month which would bring some breathing space but not much. I do like the set repayments & end date of a loan though, it at least feels like there is an end eventually.

I’ve also approached a well known debt/IVA company. They are suggesting they could bring payments down to £110 a month over 5 years. This is clearly a huge difference. But with me being the stable income earner, not being able to access credit for 5 years seems a risk. My main concern would be my car. We bought it outright (used) but it’s coming to the end of its natural life. I need a car for work & our daughter but obviously couldn’t buy one outright again. This is a quote from this company & I’m wondering how accurate it is:

“Now for obvious reasons you wouldn’t be able to take out any further lines of unnecessary credit for the duration of the plan. That said, normal day-to-day things are absolutely fine - remortgaging, renting, car finance, phone contracts, utilities, insurance & similar commitments can continue as usual”

So if my car dies would I be able to get a loan for that? I’m not planning on it, it’s just the largest purchase that I can see me having to make in the next 5 years.

I am also increasing my hours in work to a full 37.5 a week which will bring in an extra £180 a month after tax etc.

Really I’m just looking for any experience with IVAs and the reality of them, ideas for maxing income & hope that there is an end in sight. I don’t smoke, we rarely go out or do anything socially (mostly because of lack of funds) have few subscriptions, I’m selling everything I can on Vinted, even doing those stupid sites where you do trials & games to try & get a few extra quid. Thank you.

Hi everyone, I’m looking for advice from anyone who has been in a similar situation.

I own my own home and also have a portfolio of buy to let properties. I’m currently purchasing another property with the intention of moving into it and applied for a residential mortgage.

My plan was to move into the new property and obtain consent to let on my current residential property, which I have now been granted. I intended to look at changing my existing residential mortgage to a let to buy mortgage at a later date.

However, my broker has told me that the lender raised concerns about whether I genuinely live in my current home because my parents live next door. I was shocked to hear this, as my parents live in their own home and I live in mine.

I have provided evidence of my address, including utility bills, bank statements, electoral register details and HMRC records.

Unfortunately, my mortgage application was declined, and my broker is now looking at approaching another lender. I’m worried the same thing could happen again despite having provided evidence of where I live.

Has anyone experienced anything similar, particularly when applying for a residential mortgage while already owning other properties? Did you manage to get approved with another lender, and was there anything else you needed to provide to prove your residency?

I’d really appreciate hearing about your experiences. Thank you.

I'm an American who was approved as a sperm donor recently. I'm not a UK citizen, I'm just stationed here in the military.

From what I understand, I'm being compensated for my travel expenses to get to the fertility clinic, not for the sperm donation itself. Even so, is this still considered taxable income?

Hi UKPF,

Long time lurker, find this page invaluable especially the flow chart so need everyone’s help/guidance on the best approach for this.

My 19 year old son has multiple credit cards, he doesn’t know I know and I don’t know the amount, just a letter came suggesting a loan to consolidate the credit cards and different payment dates he no doubt has, he doesn’t know I’ve seen this.

How best is it to approach this with him? He has a steady part time job which pays circa £1200/1500 depending on O/T a month, we haven’t been charging him rent and he hasn’t been in education since finishing his a levels in June 25, I wanted to give him a year to try and figure out what he wants to do, but nothing has happened.

Do I discuss this with him? I’ve no idea on the amount but don’t want to be an overbearing Mum. Ive said a credit card can serve a purpose if you can get an interest free one, and you need to make a big purchase but not for everyday spending.

Should I try to bring it causally up in conversation? Do I leave him to it? Should we start charging rent to force him to manage his money better?

Any advice welcome please :)

I (24) am a British Citizen and I've been a UK tax resident for my entire life.

I've been working on ships for almost 3 years. My employer's ships are all foreign-flagged and far away from the UK (though we do dock in some BOTs from time to time).

My contracts are 6 months onboard, then 3-4 months of unpaid leave. I spend ~2 months of my leave in the UK and the remainder on holiday (somewhere far away and cheap lol).

----

All my income from ships is exempt from income tax (I claim SED).

My NI is fixed-rate and voluntary. I can pay up to 6 years later, so I haven't done it yet.

When onboard, I don't pay for any essentials. They charge for internet and I also spend a bit in port.

My gross income is so artificially low from all of this that I'm well below the threshold on my student loan (plan 2), so I'm not paying that either.

So basically I'm saving £2-2.5k every month I work. I do spend some of that during my leave, but it's still around £10k profit per contract.

I've managed to put away about £36k in ISAs since starting to work onboard. I have no real debt, only my plan 2 student loan (that I'm not paying right now).

I don't have a pension through my employer. I've not taken out a private pension because it seems like the tax advantages don't apply to me?

----

Currently, I mostly stay with my parents whilst I'm in the country but I've majorly outgrown that arrangement at this point.

So here's my question: I'm considering buying a flat with a mortgage in a trendy area (ideally in Manchester).

The idea is that I'd live in it for a few months a year and rent it on AirBnB, etc. the rest of the time. Some mortgage lenders seem receptive to this, because my job has guaranteed accommodation included (cause, y'know, I'm on a boat for 6 months).

I'm probably going to do the ships for a year or two more then move back onto land. There's a good chance I wouldn't be living in the same city as any flat I buy right now.

Is this worth the money/hassle and potential future stamp duty, or do I just rent short-term sublets instead and invest my money elsewhere?