It’s no secret that planning a wedding can be extremely expensive. When you add up the cost of venue hire, registrar fees, invitations, flowers, catering, a wedding cake, music and entertainment, transport, photographer fees, hairdressing and makeup artistry, bridesmaids’ dresses and accessories – not to mention the wedding dress (which alone averages around £1,200) – you can be faced with an eye-watering figure.

The UK Wedding Report (2020) found that the average cost of a UK wedding is £16,005 – and that doesn’t even include the engagement ring or honeymoon. The venue and catering together represent more than half (52%) of all wedding costs, with catering spend per guest averaging £45.

So how long does it take to save up this kind of money? Research suggests it all depends on where you live.

A study by beauty experts Cosmetify analysed ONS (2021) data on the median pay for residents in 181 regions of the UK, to see how long it would take the average person to save up this amount if they put away 5% or 10% of their monthly wage after tax.

Areas of the UK that would take the longest time to save up for an average UK wedding

According to a recent study, people living in Leicester need the longest time to save for the average UK wedding, with residents of northeast areas such as South Teesside and Kingston upon Hull also needing to save for longer.

In contrast, those based in London will need the least amount of time to save for their weddings, followed by people in the Home Counties of Surrey, Berkshire and Hertfordshire.

Read on to find out how long you can expect to save for a wedding, based on where in the country you live.

Which areas take the longest time to save for a wedding?

Leicester

Situated in the East Midlands region of England, Leicester is the area of the UK where residents have to save the longest to afford the average cost of a wedding.

With a yearly take-home salary of £17,166.96, it’s got the lowest median wage in Britain.

This means if one person in a typical couple puts aside 5% of their wage they would only be able to save £858.35 each year, so it would take nearly 19 years to reach the £16,005 that’s needed to pay for the average wedding.

Even if both people in a Leicester couple save 5% of the median wage, it would still take them more than nine years to cover the cost of their big day.

Torbay

This borough of Devon may be fondly referred to as ‘The English Riviera’, attracting tourists to its delightful towns of Torquay, Brixham and Paignton, but if you live in Torbay it’ll take a good few years to save enough money to pay for your wedding.

The southwest region ranks second on the list of places that take the longest to save for the UK’s average wedding.

This is due to the fact that the median annual wage for the area is just £17,199.60. If one person in a couple saves 5% of their salary, they can only set aside £859.98 a year, meaning it would take more than 18 and a half years to reach the full amount.

Isle of Wight

Just off the south coast of England lies the country’s largest island – the Isle of Wight.

With an average net salary of £17,281.20, residents here can also expect to wait 18 and a half years before they have enough money to pay for their wedding day.

That’s based on one person in a couple saving 5% of their wages, meaning they’ll be able to put aside £864.06 each year. However, if both people in the average couple save for their wedding, they can save twice as quickly and cut their wait-time in half.

Nine years is still a long time to wait to get married, though.

City of Kingston upon Hull

Further down the list is the Yorkshire city of Kingston upon Hull.

It comes after places like Blackpool, Cornwall, Bradford, Nottingham and South West Wales, all of which take residents around 18 years to save for their wedding, based on one person in a couple saving 5% of their salary.

If you live in Hull and get paid around £17,876.80 (which is the median salary for the area), it’ll take you and your partner almost nine years to save enough money to cover the cost of the average UK wedding. Or just under 18 years if only one of you is saving up, as you’ll only be able to put away £893.84 per year.

South Teesside

Another part of Yorkshire makes the list of places in the UK that take the longest time to save for a wedding.

Located on the south bank of the River Tees, South Teesside’s residents get paid an annual average net salary of £17,958.40.

Five per cent of that comes to just £897.92, meaning it will take a couple living here almost 18 years to pay for the cost of the average UK wedding.

Which areas take the shortest time to save for a wedding?

Wandsworth

Out of the top 20 areas that take the shortest amount of time to cover the cost of the average UK wedding, 70% are London boroughs.

Right at the very top of the list is the southwest London borough of Wandsworth. It has the highest median annual income, with the average person being paid £28,623.60 after tax.

Even if just one person in the average couple saved 5% of their wages, they would have £1,431.18 after a year, meaning they could cover the total cost of their wedding in just over 11 years – that’s a full seven years quicker than someone living in Leicester would take.

Westminster

You’d be forgiven for assuming that London’s central district would be first for having the highest median salary in the UK, but actually, it comes in second place.

There’s not much in it, though, with the average person earning £28,378.80 per year.

For couples wishing to save for a wedding, it’ll only take 11 and a half years if one person saves 5% of their income (that’s £1,418.94) each year and a mere five and a half years if both partners set aside money to pay for their big day.

Camden and City of London

This is also the case for residents who live in the Camden and City of London areas.

The annual salary for people living in these London districts is £27,799.40, which means a couple can save enough money to cover the cost of the average British wedding in just over five and a half years.

That’s 11 years and six months if only one partner is able to save £1,389.97 every year.

Surrey

It’s not just those living in London who can afford to pay for their wedding within a reasonable time frame.

Outside of the capital, East Surrey’s median wage of £23,531.76 enables one person saving 5% of their income to reach the £16,005 target within 13 years and seven months.

People living in West Surrey take a similar amount of time to save for the average UK wedding, as the median annual salary after tax is only slightly less, at £23,303.28.

Berkshire

Another of the counties surrounding London makes the list for being one of the best places to live in when you’re saving up for a wedding.

The annual median salary here is £22,568.80, so if couples can save £1,128.44 each per year, they’ll have enough to cover the cost of their wedding in just over seven years – or twice as long if only one of them is saving.

Those living in the heart of Essex, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire are also able to save enough to pay for an average UK wedding in around 14 years, providing one person in the partnership puts away 5% of their salary (about £1,100) each year.

Considering the wedding industry is worth a massive £14.7 billion to the British economy, it’s no wonder the average cost of a UK wedding is so high.

“A wedding is one of the biggest days of anyone’s life, and the costs can mount up quickly,” said a spokesperson for Cosmetify. “Traditionally, the father of the bride is expected to cover the costs but that’s not an option for everyone, so it’s sobering to see just how long it can take to save for the UK’s average wedding cost.”

Fintech app development can be a daunting task. A good product must be functional, easy to adopt, and have a snazzy feature that sets it apart from hundreds of other apps. Before your dive head-first into creating a new piece of software, check out your competition, and don’t forget about the customer needs analysis. If you are interested in financial app development, this website can provide a list of solutions for building anything money-related. Whether your goal is a simple calculator or the whole smorgasbord of features from cashback to investing, you should give it a look.

The Most Popular Categories of Fintech Software

Financial institutions were the first to use the full potential of emerging digital technologies to create new solutions for their customers. Once mobile Internet access became more available, banks, lending providers, brokerages, and startups flooded the market with apps. However, most of them are niche products, devoted to specific end-user goals.

Types of Fintech apps:

• personal finances and budgeting;
• bookkeeping for businesses and individuals;
• online banking platforms;
• tax management;
• P2P lending software;
• e-commerce payment gateways;
• credit score calculators;
• cashback and rewards;
• cryptocurrency exchanges;
• brokerages;
• pension and insurance;
• crowdfunding solutions.

Experts estimate the market size for financial app development to be more than $300 billion. It is projected to rapidly grow in the next decade, as more people around the world switch to digital for all their financial needs.

Choosing a profitable niche for your Fintech project is the first step to building a successful app. Let’s examine some of the most popular categories and list the best cases for each.

Personal finances and budgeting

Individual wealth management is one of the fastest-growing areas of Fintech app development. Users connect these mobile apps to their bank accounts to monitor expenses, set aside some funds and plan their monthly and yearly budgets.

One of the most popular apps of this type is Mint. It comes with a basic free version and paid features like personal investment advising. It tracks your goals and can provide a general overview of your financial health. Being praised for its easy-to-navigate UI, it has the largest user base to date.

Features to include in your app:

• integration with multiple bank accounts;
• support for international currencies;
• dashboard to track earnings and spendings;
• estimates and budgeting forecasts;
• ability to set recurrent payments and create schedules.

Bookkeeping for businesses and individuals

Businesses from small to large and solopreneurs depend on accounting software. While corporations often prefer sophisticated custom-built solutions, “the smaller fish” uses convenient and streamlined mobile products of financial app development. 

This market niche continues to grow at an almost 10% annual rate. QuickBooks is probably the most downloaded app of this type. Directed at mom-and-pop shops, other smaller businesses, independent online stores, it provides users with basic accounting features, invoicing, and payroll. It automates many time-consuming tasks allowing entrepreneurs to concentrate on sales or product development.

Features to include in your app:

• managing all accounts payable and receivable;
• directing cash flow;
• managing depreciation of business assets like equipment or real estate;
• international currency conversion;
• integration with a bank account and merchant accounts on platforms like PayPal;
• expense tracking and forecasting;
• budget allocation.

P2P lending software

Crowdlending is one of the largest financial market segments that has shown incredible growth in app development.  Pandemic has positively impacted P2P lending, with more people looking for alternative ways to borrow money or earn a small profit by lending it. Experts the niche to expand at a rate of almost 30% during the next decade.

Digital wallets like Venmo present their users with a range of options, in addition to allowing them to pay and get paid. Lending is a natural feature to include in any peer-to-peer transactional app. Unlike banks, crowd lenders on the platform don’t require borrowers to provide background checks or credit scores. While it is a high-risk activity, P2P lending can be a lifesaver in some situations. The revenue model for app development usually includes charging users a small fee for every transaction.

Features to include in your app:

• calculators for loans;
• creditworthiness score;
• pre-qualification for borrowers;
• user matching to find the best lender-borrower pair, using such measures as interest rate or loan amount;
• investment algorithm that helps lenders diversify their loan portfolios to mitigate risks.

Cryptocurrency exchanges and other blockchain apps

App development for blockchain and cryptocurrency shares many of the characteristics found in other financial software. What makes it innovative is the ability to trade and receive crypto funds while remaining completely anonymous, and their decentralization. Blockchain apps are not limited to trading. This technology can be applied anywhere from logistics to compliance checks.

Binance, one of the more widely used platforms, has a mobile app that allows its users to trade more than 500 tokens, store them in a digital wallet, and even lend and borrow cryptocurrency. 

Features to include in your exchange app:

• anti-fraud measures that include user authentication and verification; 
• an engine for trading assets;
• analytics and forecasts;
• hot and cold wallets for storing tokens;
• alerts and notifications for traders;
• private and public APIs
• protection from DDoS attacks and other security features.

App development for payment gateways

Payment gateways are a necessary part of all digital products developed for online payments. Bundled, or stand-alone, these apps allow their users to securely transfer funds, pay for products and services and manage their e-commerce stores. While the market is divided between a few large companies, like Stripe or PayPal, there’s always a place for a new startup that can offer breakthrough niche solutions.

Features to include in your app:

• full compliance with international card processing security standards;
• anti-fraud detection;
• secure user data storage to remove the need to manually enter payment info;
• international currency support.

Conclusion

Financial app development remains a hot spot for global growth. Despite the ever-increasing competition, the market continues to expand at an astonishing rate offering possibilities for Fintech players big or small. Experts advise digital entrepreneurs to focus on a smaller niche or audience instead of creating a “swiss-army-knife” solution. Active mergers and acquisitions performed by larger corporations provide newcomers with an option to build and sell their niche-focused or technology-driven companies for a sizable profit.

Switzerland has always been extremely attractive to business owners due to the coordination of asset protection within the jurisdiction. The country has a long history of being noted as having one of the most powerful commercial banking centres in the world, making it the ideal place for dealing with international currencies and open capital markets. Swiss bank accounts offer a high level of privacy for their clients, with minimum risk, which is how they have managed to stay popular and current throughout the years. This year alone, UBS, which is ranked as the largest bank in Switzerland was awarded with the Best Global Private Bank, Best Private Bank in Asia and Best Private Bank Chief Investment Office by PWM as well as World’s Best Bank for Wealth Management by Euromoney.

Country’s Stability

The Swiss economy is notably one of the most advanced in the world, with the financial services sector playing a major role within the economy. From an asset protection point, Switzerland’s stable political and economic environment make the region extremely attractive to those that are looking for a place to keep the underlying assets. The Alpine country is renowned for its independence and neutrality which has been maintained throughout the years. The appealing tax regimes all for both individuals as well as companies to benefit 

Trusts and Private Trust Companies

Trusts are flexible and in the correct instances provide the perfect mode for efficient asset protection. This allows families to execute complete confidentiality and anonymity when it comes to their assets and companies that are held within the trust. There is domestic law that governs trusts in the country, therefore the person who settles the assets for the beneficiaries, the settlor, can impose the law of any trust jurisdiction to control the trust. This means that an American trust can still be set up with a Swiss Trustee.

There are also a variety of tax advantages that come when using a Swiss trustee and these are subject to the tax residency of both the beneficiaries and settlor. It is always advisable to seek professional help to confirm legalities. Wyoming Trust and LLC Attorney is a great reliable source to use when researching the matter, more information can be found in this suggested resource.

Safety and Secrecy

When setting up an account with a Swiss bank, privacy is of paramount importance. Only under extremely critical situations, which are rare, Swiss banks are not allowed to reveal the names of clients to their foreign governments. The breaking of this law could result in serious legal repercussions which banks avoid at all costs. Accounts are extremely secure and should there be a flood or fire, clients are assured that they will be compensated for any loss.The Swiss law only allows the breaking of client confidentiality, be it personal, professional or commercial, in the event of criminal liability.

Wide scope of services 

Opening up a bank account in the Swiss jurisdiction offers a wide host of benefits that go beyond traditional banking. Apart from taking the utmost care to ensure complete anonymity, banks in the region offer services in a variety of major languages and are able to receive credit/ debit cards in either their personal or business capacity. Access to corporate bank accounts can be done via post, courier, telephonically or over the internet. Utilising the latest technology, online security is given priority to ensure that clients receive secure internet banking channels. This means that customers can check their bank balances, operate transactions as well as initiate wire transfers, without worrying about there being a privacy leak within the banking platform. 

Final Thoughts 

Opening up a Swiss bank account helps protect your assets from the scrutiny of the public, and the process is comparable to that of opening up a regular bank account with a local bank. However, it is always vital to have professional help when dealing with these matters to ensure that the process is completed with all legal criteria met. The overall stability of the country as well as the taxation and privacy laws make it the ideal place to set up a bank account for asset protection. The correct Swiss bank account will afford guardianship of your assets to preserve them whilst providing clients the peace of mind that their “nest-egg” is protected.