In times of low interest rates and rising inflation, investors look to non-traditional sources to find investments that will yield large returns. With bank interest rates on cash savings accounts maxing out at around 1.3% these days, it’s no surprise that a few alternative options have started to become fairly popular in the current economic climate.

Innovative finance ISAs, a type of individual savings account, are rising in popularity, particularly as many are seeing returns of up to 7%. Whether 2020 is the year you want to start saving or you’re busy updating your long-term savings plans, considering an IF-ISA as a new investment may be a good place to start.

What Is an Innovative Finance ISA?

Innovative finance ISAs, or IF-ISAs, refer to a specific type of individual savings account that gives consumers the chance to earn tax-free interest through a peer-to-peer lending network. These ISAs pair up willing savers (investors) with individual and business looking to become borrowers

There are many IF-ISA providers in the market, each providing lenders with the chance to pinpoint exactly which industries they would like to invest in. IF-ISAs cut out the middle man (the bank) completely, reducing overheads and leaving leaving room for higher rates of return.

The Pros, the Cons and the Risks

As with all ISAs, there are pros, cons and risk factors to consider when it comes to IF-ISAs. Detailing a few allows us to get a holistic sense of IF-ISAs in general.

The pros of innovative finance ISAs

• On average, IF-ISAs earn higher rates of return (often more than double) than traditional savings accounts.
• The IF-ISA market is relatively new so it has low entry barriers. This ensures a multitude of investment options, as well as various competitive rates from possible providers.
• For basic taxpayers, the first £1,000 of interest earned through an IF-ISA is tax exempt. Higher rate taxpayers are offered £500 tax-free interest earnings. This amount can be reinvested right away, which will compound your earnings.
• If you are a company and you are making regular payments into an ISA, this may reflect well when it comes time for financial expansion in the form of secured-business, or revenue based loans, especially if your company is utilising open banking software to track your payments.

The cons of innovative finance ISAs

• Consumers are only allowed to open one new IF-ISA with a single provider per tax year. There is also a yearly cap of £20,000, which must be spread between all ISA types owned.
• IF-ISAs invest in different loan categories, so it can be hard to predict how loans will perform. This is mostly because there is little historical data to use as a reference.
• Other types of ISAs offer fixed returns (cash ISAs) and FSCS protection (as with stocks and shares ISAs), but IF-ISAs offer neither. Returns can vary and if the provider goes under, your money goes down with it.

Keeping these pros and cons in mind, IF-ISAs are generally considered to be medium to high risk investments. A convenient way to mitigate this is to secure an investment against a fixed asset, like a house or a commercial building, and to start investing with a small amount, growing your portfolio over time, rather than investing everything in one go.

How Can You Invest in an Innovative Finance ISA?

Opening an IF-ISA account is a relatively straightforward process that should only take a few minutes to complete. Once your IF-ISA provider has been chosen, the first step is to complete a registration form on their website. You will have to provide your name, email address and a secure password. 

With some providers, there may be an option to register as an individual or as a company. If this is the case, ensure that names given match up with existing ID documentation (for individuals) or with the registered business name (for companies). Applicants will need a valid UK bank account to qualify, as well as a valid photo ID. Some providers may perform a credit check, though this is not always a requirement. 

After registration is complete, you will gain access to an online portal that will allow you to transfer of funds from the bank to the IF-ISA provider – and just like that, your money is invested. Voila!

A View Towards Saving For the Future

It’s never been easier to kickstart a savings plan, and by beginning with an IF-ISA, it’s possible to start investing tax-free as early as today. Over 10 million households in the UK having no savings so there has never been a better time to start prioritising your savings account, particularly in the wake of relative uncertainty around Brexit and economic performance.

You only need a small portion of funds to get started, then you can begin monitoring your progress carefully, investing more as your confidence grows and ultimately developing a well-oiled personal savings strategy.

Every year, whenever people are eyeing up a major purchase or upgrade, they’ll pad their savings account until winter rolls around. Winter has become the sales season, with November through to January being the platform for many of the year’s most advertised and highly-anticipated offers.

It’s a crazy frenzy that’s centric to a national holiday in the United States, an originally Christian holiday, and the start of the new Gregorian calendar. While many of the sales of this huge shopping window are coming to a close, many industries layout promotions throughout the year – you just have to know where to look for them.

Finding the best deals from November to January

While the adoption of Black Friday in the UK was quite recent and only really became a fully-fledged event in the last few years, it is now utilised as a sales day by many of the biggest brands that offer their wares to the country. So, in preparation for catching some bargains, people in the UK, around October time, find themselves searching Google to find out when Thanksgiving is and when Black Friday will start – it’ll be on 27 November in 2020.

Amazon puts on a big sales event each winter, encouraging people to explore the website with this advertisement.

Black Friday 2019 featured deals such as a 75’’ 4K Philips TV reduced from £1499 to £899 at Currys, Apple MacBook Pro cut to £2179 from £2399 with BT, and an Xbox One X Forza Horizon 4 and Lego Speed Bundle only costing £299 instead of the £440 tag price at John Lewis. The main theme tends to be tech, but many retailers spread into other regions, as Amazon does with their Black Friday events.

If Black Friday wasn’t difficult enough to navigate, Cyber Monday kicks off on the Monday after Black Friday – 30 November in 2020. Cyber Monday is now effectively just an extension of Black Friday, with a focus on eCommerce sales. Some of the top offers on in 2019 included a £22 Amazon Echo Dot from Amazon and Apple AirPods with Wireless Charging Case from £139 from Argos.

There’s no rest from the sales, though, with some retailers putting on promotions and offers in the running to Christmas to get some late sales on the books.

After the respite of Christmas Day, the sales rush gets underway again on Boxing Day. This is closely followed by the January sales event, which is the traditional sales window in the UK, with some of the promotions combining them together with the Boxing Day sales. This year, big discount events like up to 70 per cent off at H&M and the Superdrug up to 50 per cent off sale were among the headline acts.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a leading retailer without a selection of big money-off deals during these now-staple sales windows, which can make it difficult for people to find the best deals on the day. There’s also the problem that many people simply don’t know until the day what will go on offer, so they don’t really know how much money they need to save. This is amplified by many retailers keeping their on-sale stock secret until the day to drive traffic.

Sales window closing, but there are plenty of offers to claim

Supermarkets are continually changing their offers and putting items on sale.

For big-name retailers, participation in the various winter sales has become more of a practice spawned from conformity than anything else, and for most, it’ll be their main sales event of the year. However, other big-name shopping brands are more than happy to stage their own sales events at other stages of the year.

Each year, at the exact opposite end of the year to that of Black Friday and the January sales, Amazon stages a massive sales event called Prime Day. It started on 15 July last year and will take place from 13-14 July in 2020. As if Amazon Prime customers didn’t get enough with the same-day conveyance, music platform, and video platform, Prime customers also get an exclusive sales event in the middle of the summer.

Outside of major sales events put on by some retailers, in other industries, sales and promotions have become such an ongoing feature that many people forget that they’re continually in the works. The most glaring example is in the iGaming industry.

As the scene is so incredibly competitive, brands need to find ways to stand out, with the promotions and offers pages being the primary battlegrounds in iGaming. You’ll see everywhere that online bingo brands will offer welcome bonuses and specialised sections for newcomers, otherwise known as ‘Newbies Rooms,’ but some go further to continually offer ongoing bingo promotions to existing players after they claim the welcome bonuses, such as mystery jackpots, reward tokens, free games, and Birthday bonuses.

Another obvious industry where offers are on the go at all times is in the supermarket industry. Due to the rise in prevalence of price comparison websites, big supermarket chains have almost been forced to battle it out on the offers front with their big-brand items. The practice has become so engulfing, in fact, that even the most premier of high-end food retail, Marks & Spencer, has launched a new line of value offers.

The future of deals and promotions

While a huge number of major outlets putting out offers at set times of the year can’t be a bad thing, it is very difficult to navigate the sales and work out the best offers. Some people even get so wrapped up in the events that they just end up buying things that they don’t really want or need.

The future of such events is in software which can not only streamline the process of finding the best offer during sales events but also throughout the year. This is why the browser extension Honey looks to be such an exciting prospect for online shoppers.

Honey has been reviewed quite well but does have its flaws. Its strengths are in its ability to search databases for coupons and purchase drops automatically, but it has also been noted that it doesn’t always find coupons. There’s also the additional flaw that Honey doesn’t have an app and is only for computer shopping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jjZWJqUcLc&feature=emb_logo

Honey claims to help people to find the lowest price when shopping online.

Anything that can help co-ordinate shoppers during clustered sales periods and direct them to the very best offers has to be the future of deals and promotions. This sector would also possibly help to reduce prices further due to outlets competing to be at the top of one comprehensive list per item.  

While many people have become accustomed to saving for the winter sales window, others understand that there are plenty of promotions and offers to be found every day.

It is never easy to lose a loved one, more so if you lose that someone unexpectedly. Losing someone you love means going through the different stages of grief, feeling pain, being sad and in sorrow, or even be in denial and carry a lot of stresses in your life. What if you were assigned to plan out the funeral to commemorate the life of your deceased loved one? Imagine adding that kind of stress to your already emotional and grieving state, how hard would that be, right? Not to mention, even considering all of the financial stresses it brings. The average costs of funerals these days are already up to £3,757, with burials averaging at £4,267 and cremations averaging at £3,247. If you do not know how to plan a funeral, it might even cost you more. Being prepared would not only be helpful to you in terms of the emotional burdens losing a loved one may bring. But, it would also be the most economical and practical decision you would make not only for yourself but also for your family and as well as your deceased loved one.

Funeral Services

At S. Stibbards & Sons, you would be able to plan out a funeral starting at £975 for a direct cremation. If you want to have a simple commemoration and memorial of the life of your deceased loved one, you could also opt for the Essentials Package which would only cost you £1,575, far cheaper than how much the average funeral already costs today. A tailored and bespoke funeral would start at £2,695 and just increase in value as you go along and choose your preferences, wants, and needs as a family. Choosing S. Stibbards & Sons with regards to all of your funeral planning needs would alleviate the unnecessary stress you have to go through with all of the decisions and the planning. Their services would allow for you to grieve for your loved one in your own time, in your own way, and at your own pace.

Preparing Ahead

The best thing that you could do to prepare for such scenarios is actually to invest in a prepaid funeral plan. It may be one of the last things on your mind, but it is actually a pretty good investment to make early on because of the continuous rise in the cost of funerals in the United Kingdom. At S. Stibbards & Sons, you could have the Value Plan, which includes basic funeral services for only £2,899. If you want added services, you could also opt for the Crystal Plan which would cost you £3,349, the Pearl Plan which would cost £4,144, or the Ruby Plan which would be a bespoke funeral and memorial service and would only cost £4,599. The beauty of prepaid funeral plans is that you would be able to use it at any moment, and there would be no additional costs whatsoever. If, for example, a member of your family passes away unexpectedly, and you do not have enough finances to fund and plan the funeral, you could easily transfer your prepaid funeral plan.

Keeping Your Loved One Close

Commemorating the life of your deceased loved one does not end just right after the funeral. The hurt and loss will never go away even the years to come, so having something always close to you would make it a whole lot easier for you because you have something to remember your loved one by. S. Stibbards & Sons would be able to do precisely that for you as they can turn the ashes of your deceased loved one into pieces of jewellery. You have the option to have it in keepsake jewellery with pieces and designs you can wear daily. The keepsake jewellery pieces come in five different designs such as a conch, cross, dragonfly, heart, or teardrop, and each comes with a silver chain. There are also more elegant pieces which place the ashes in glass pieces and incorporate it into jewellery like rings, round pendants, and even cufflinks. You can have a piece for each family member as there are also keyrings, pendants, and rings to choose from. You could even have a beautiful glass piece you can keep on your desk as a paperweight with colourful glasses frosted with your loved one’s ashes.