Money: A User’s Guide. Laura Whateley

      

      

       Copyright

      4th Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.4thEstate.co.uk

      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.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

      Source ISBN: 9780008308315

      Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008308322

      Version: 2018-08-24

       Dedication

       To Mum and Dad

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

      Introduction

       PART ONE

1. The housing crisis and how to rent well

2. How to buy a home

3. The debt you are in and how to handle it

       4. How to budget

       5. Where to save

       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

       10. Money and love

       11. Money and wellbeing

       PART THREE

       12. Ethical Finance

       Thanks

       About the Author

       About the Publisher

       INTRODUCTION

      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.

      •

      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 if so, how? Should I pay off my student loan? How do mortgages work? What are the best budgeting apps? How do I split money with my other half fairly, and can I ever afford to buy a home, bring up a child, or be the kind of person at ease in small-plate restaurants? What stupid mistakes am I making with my money, and how can I stop it making me feel so crap about myself?

      Get through this in an afternoon, and you should know a lot more than you did this morning. I can guarantee that if you follow at least a couple of tips in this book you will have already reimbursed the cover price.

      But first, a bit about me, us feckless ‘millennials’, and where we are at.

      Please note that I use the term ‘millennial’ reluctantly. It is a word that has come to make me itchy, a crude catch-all for the 14 million or so very different people born between the early 1980s and the year 2000, some of whom are now parents of teenagers, your boss, your lawyer, your surgeon, or your favourite novelist.

      In September 2008 I went for an interview for a role as editorial assistant on the Money section at The Times, the optimistic move of a young