Understand Your Money

What you'll learn

• Understand risk, return and the six main asset classes
• Choose between active and passive, direct and smoothed, packaged funds and DFMs
• Diversify properly — the closest thing investing has to a free lunch

What you'll learn

• Understand how lifetime mortgages and home reversion plans actually work, and why 99% of the market chooses one over the other
• See how compound interest grows the debt over 15–25 years, and how voluntary partial repayments can dramatically flatten the curve
• Check your benefit entitlements before releasing equity — the single most overlooked step, and often the most valuable

What you'll learn

• Understand the difference between buildings and contents cover, and why rebuild cost is not the same as market value
• Avoid the underinsurance trap that quietly reduces every claim you make, however small
• Set excesses and single article limits correctly, and know when valuables or away-from-home items need to be specified

What you'll learn

• Understand why "own occupation" is the gold-standard incapacity definition.
• Use deferred period, benefit period and amount to size cover properly.
• See what the state actually provides — £116.75 SSP, often zero self-employed.

What you'll learn

• Understand the nil-rate band, RNRB and why frozen thresholds catch more families every year
• Use the seven-year rule and the gift exemptions almost no one claims
• Plan for the April 2027 pension change and the April 2026 Business Relief / AIM / APR reset

What you'll learn

• Use the full gifting toolkit — annual exemptions, the seven-year rule with taper relief, and the under-used normal-expenditure-out-of-income exemption with no cap
• Understand when trusts genuinely help (bare, discretionary, loan and discounted gift) and when direct gifting is simpler
• Plan around the family home, the residence nil rate band, and the April 2027 pension change that brings DC pots into estates

What you'll learn

• Use the £20,000 annual allowance properly — and stop losing it every April
• Choose between Cash, Stocks and Shares, Lifetime and Junior ISAs with confidence
• Decide ISA versus pension — and why for most people the answer is both

What you'll learn

• See how missing the ten best trading days can halve your return.
• Spot the four behavioural biases that push investors to sell low.
• Understand the difference between capacity for loss and attitude to risk.

What you'll learn

• Understand how Junior ISAs and Junior SIPPs work, and when to use a bare trust for sums beyond the £9,000 JISA limit
• See exactly what a decade's head start is worth — and why equities, not cash, suit an 18-year horizon
• Avoid the parental settlement rule and other tax traps that catch out well-intentioned parents and grandparents

What you'll learn

• Understand why every major UK market crash since 1984 has fully recovered.
• See how reinvested dividends and compounding can roughly double long-term returns.
• Spot the hidden risk of holding cash through years of inflation.

What you'll learn

• Understand level term, decreasing term, Family Income Benefit and whole of life.
• Use a four-part framework to size cover instead of a salary multiple.
• See why writing your policy in trust saves months of probate delay.

What you'll learn

• Understand how LTV bands and rate types shape your monthly payment
• Avoid the Standard Variable Rate trap when your fixed deal ends
• See how fees and headline rates trade off across the full deal period

What you'll learn

• Understand how pension tax relief actually works — and how to claim what's yours
• Navigate the annual allowance, lifetime limits and the rules most people never learn
• Plan for the April 2027 change that brings pensions into the estate

What you'll learn

• Understand longevity, inflation and sequencing risk before drawing income
• Avoid triggering the £10,000 Money Purchase Annual Allowance
• Coordinate pension and ISA withdrawals to minimise lifetime tax

What you'll learn

• Decode the jargon — ESG, SRI, "responsible" and impact investing are not the same thing, and the differences matter
• Spot greenwashing using a seven-question due-diligence checklist, the FCA's new SDR labels and the EU's SFDR categories
• Understand the honest evidence on returns, including why ESG funds behaved differently in 2022 and what that means for the long run

What you'll learn

• Understand the ILC evidence: £47,706 wealth boost and 50% higher pension wealth.
• See how a proper advice process runs from discovery to written suitability report.
• Spot the life moments — house, family, windfall, retirement — where advice matters most.