From time to time we get together with clients on a webinar to share useful tips and our thoughts on what’s going on. We then like to share these insights from the paraplanning coalface with a wider audience. Here’s a quick health warning; at the beginning Richard asks for people to add any questions to the chatroom. Because this is a recording, you can’t do that. But you can email any questions to the team and they’ll get back to you.
For our March 2020 Insight session, Richard was joined by Colin Stewart. We take a tour of the Budget, focussing on the issues Planners and Advisers should look out for alongside technical tips from The Paraplanners. Colin then shares his favourite spreadsheet functions and, although this may not sound like a barrel of laughs, Colin manages to make it both helpful and (almost) exciting.
The Budget: Keep your eyes peeled
While the Budget was largely dominated by COVID19, there were a number of changes in there that Advisers and Planners should pay attention to. They include:
- The changes to annual allowance and the new cliff edge between £300,000 and £312,000 income
- Entrepreneur’s Relief reductions
- Employer’s NI allowance
- Changes to the NI threshold and the impact on setting earnings
- The CGT rule change on residential property sales
- Changes to net pay contributions and where you need to be careful with annual allowance calculations
- Lifetime allowance 2016 protection hidden ‘deadline’
- Offshore bonds and Brexit
Scintillating spreadsheets
If the Budget isn’t your thing and you want to jump to the start of the spreadsheet tricks, go straight to 9 minutes in the video. We use Google spreadsheets and that’s what we use for the demonstration. Many people use Excel. If you do, don’t worry the functions are the same but it may look a bit different – get in touch with us if you need guidance or would like the example spreadsheet we use. We explain:
- Rounding functions
- Cash flow functions (present value, future value, working out contributions required and the rate of return needed)
- How the SUMPRODUCT function can automate calculations for weighted charges etc
- Working out the internal rate of return of a portfolio or BTL property
- IF statements; how and when to use them
- How pivot tables can help you analyse a client’s portfolio
What next?
Watch the video and if you or your team have any follow up questions or ideas of topics for future Insight sessions, drop us a line.