The PIGS or should that be the UPIGS

PIGS are an acronym for Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. Unlike the BRICS the PIGS have high government debt levels and high government deficits when compared to their GDP’s. Let me take a moment to explain debt and deficit because given that the UK is currently letting governments get away with saying ‘we will halve the deficit’ without really being challenged I don’t think most people understand the difference.

NS&I Index Linked Savings Certificates – review of previous issues and why I think they suit me as an investment

Regular readers of Retirement Investing Today will already know that I personally think National Savings and Investments (NS&I) Index Linked Savings Certificates are a good investment class and I currently hold 19.7% of my Low Charge Portfolio in them. A previous post detailed why I like them however I wanted to learn a little more about them given my large holdings. A web search turned up very little so I have had to do some analysis of my own. I have followed a similar style of analysis to that of all the asset classes I invest in or someday would like to invest in (these can all be seen in the right hand side bar under Latest Charts) that I regularly post about however because of their complexity the analysis is not perfect but in my opinion more of a trend.

Average UK savings interest rates – April 2010 Update

My chart today shows that for those that are looking to save it still isn’t getting any better out there. If you don’t want to lock your money up for greater than 2 years (I know I don’t with what I see going on with inflation) then the average interest rate on savings accounts continues to decline.

UK Property Market – April 2010 Update

I am still out of the UK residential property market although today I really am beginning to wonder why. It really is amazing what a government can achieve if they are prepared to sacrifice the country long term to keep a bubble afloat. Today the Nationwide reported that average house prices had risen from £164,519 to £167,802, a monthly rise of £3,283 or 2.0%. On an annualised basis house prices in absolute terms are up by 10.5% and if I look at real (after inflation) returns they are still up by 5.2%.

British Bankers Association reports on mortgage lending levels

The British Bankers Association (BBA) reported on mortgage lending levels for March yesterday. As regular readers will know I blog on mortgage lending levels monthly (last month here) however I use the Bank of England data which is currently only published up until February 2010.