Young people face unprecedented financial challenges: rising student debt, stiff competition for jobs, barriers to home ownership, dwindling state benefits and prospects of a longer working life. Essential Personal Finance is a guide to all the key areas of personal finance: budgeting, managing debt, savings and investments, insurance, securing a home and laying the foundations for retirement.It provides an introduction to some of the essential foundations of a modern unde...

Owning a property is a dream for many people, and borrowing from banks is often essential to achieve this. However, having a mortgage can cause real anxiety because of the latent fear of losing our home if we cannot keep up with mortgage payments. Traditionally, homeowners repay their debt over 25 years, but high house prices have made it necessary to increase the term up to 40 years to make monthly payments affordable. Spreading the debt over a longer period of time not only means that bo...

Many young people aspire to own their own home but face a myriad of challenges such as high property prices, the need to raise a large deposit, and difficulties of getting a mortgage.The process of buying a property is also stressful, fraught with complexity and uncertainty, and a mistake can prove very costly. This book therefore provides a much-needed step-by-step guide to help those seeking to buy a property for the first time.Packed with helpful and practical tips, this...

There is increasing pressure for all of us to take responsibility for our own financial security and wellbeing, but we often overlook how the benefits that come with a job can help us do that. Essential Personal Finance: A Practical Guide for Employees focuses on these valuable work benefits and shows how you can build on this important foundation to achieve financial security and your life goals.This unique book explores how making effective and practical use of ...

National pension systems face a range of tough social and economic demands and pressures. These are complex to navigate, especially in a twenty-first century world that has ushered in global uncertainty and pressing challenges – even threatening the planet’s very sustainability – with implications for pensions that policymakers, financial services providers and individuals themselves must address.This book probes, and unpacks, what pension systems aim to achieve, the uncertainties ...

Financial services are an ever increasing part of the infrastructure of everyday life. From banking to credit, insurance to investment and mortgages to advice, we all consume financial services, and many millions globally work in the sector. Moreover, the way we consume them is changing with the growing dominance of fintech and Big Data. Yet, the part of financial services that we engage with as consumers is just the tip of a vast network of markets, institutions and regulators – and fraud...