Would you like a financial MOT?

Hi Yes I would welcome a finical health check provided:

1. It’s confidential.
2. No or little cost.
3. No pressure sales to follow
4. Done by reliable INDEPENDENT experts.
5. Brief written summary and recommendations/considerations included in plain English.

Is Which? in a position to develop sic a scheme?

Yes please.

I had “reviews” when younger (in my 20s) and was mis-sold various pension things and that has destroyed all my trust in the financial sector. Later, once I thought I’d learnt a little, I’d “challenge” the advice a little too much (due to lack of trust) and lost out on products that would have been good for me.

I’m now 50. The nice salesman that sold me an endowment policy just over 25 years ago was wrong – it did not pay off the mortgage with a large surplus that would allow me to retire early.

So … PLEASE … give me a, proven, trustworthy, contact (who is not trying to sell me anything) to check my plans are in order … for retiring in 15 years time.

Having bought 3 endowments to cover various mortgages after being told they would not only repay them but also provide a nest egg, I also ended with massive shortfalls. The actions of the banks over the last few years proves that financial services is still a wholly corrupt industry with the morals of the gutter – the elderly are a prime target for their activities and we must remember that IFA’s and the like are solely concerned with furthering their own interests. From my own recent experiences, IFA’s have no more expertise than the average person could gain from reading a magazine!

My experience is that every bit of professional financial advice given over 35 years has failed me. The industry can’t be trusted to do anything except look after its own interests. And the government appear to be complicit in this.

The central element of a financial MOT for the 99% of whatever age is a document which describes what social insurance provides what safety net, for how much, how long and how to apply.
Such a common sense MOT will not be provided by government because it is political party sensitive. Instead they bury us in pamphlets. Nonetheless, it is far more important that all this savings products business which benefit only the 1%.

For example, we supposedly have a national health service but few understand how much money is skimmed off by private provides, like Virgin Health, and how deteriorated services for chronic care such as arthritis is (you won’t have to wait more than 13 weeks to ….this is a deterioration which can be document by reference to the last time it was published as ..nor more than 9 weeks..) and so forth.

The 99% paid out roughly 10% of their income for the whole of their working life for insurances against calamities that can hit us all, including the NHS if you are sick, the dole and Job centers if you are unemployed, etc–. If you take an average manual worker, employed from the age of 15 to the age of 60 that is 45 years of full time work, the inflation adjusted take by government is about £90,000–that is a big insurance policy which is totally ignored in all this ‘finance’ jazz. and btw, I am professor of the subject so I know whereof I speak.