Sunday finds me round the corner from my former residence at Mill Hill for a Barnet Symphony Orchestra concert http://www.barnetsymphony.org.uk/sponsors.html where two of my daughters are playing French Horn and Trumpet. First piece in what turns out to be a very enjoyable evening, is La Petite Symphonie by a French composer I have never heard of called Charles Gounod http://www.8notes.com/biographies/gounod.asp . His best known work is Faust so during an amusing introduction to this rare piece, the conductor relates how one of the oboe players mentioned that their part was well … a bit dull. Turns out this was deliberate as when writing it, the oboe player was having a fling with Gounod’s better half and this was a small way of getting back at him.
Non-stop news about the credit crunch reminds me of one surprise from revising for my mortgage qualifications sometime ago. The word foreclosure is often used when a lender takes possession of a secured property when things have gone pear-shaped but this process is no longer used in this country. When people cannot keep up their mortgage payments and the arrears go beyond 6 months, a lender may apply for possession of the property under the terms of the mortgage deed – hence the warning YOUR HOME IS AT RISK etc. But after the sale, any surplus is returned to the borrower. If this were done via foreclosure proceedings the borrower would get nothing. Where the liabilities exceed the assets, any distinction here is probably academic but courts these days are unlikely to allow creditors to use foreclosure proceedings with the last case I have been told about dating from 1955. Collectors of trivia might wish to remember that this is called poynding the ground north of the border in Scotland.
Still on the cheerful subject if money, it is the tax season and I am doing the rounds of accountants who have recovered from sending out an avalanche of tax returns in January and are now looking at tax saving ideas before 5th April. At one meeting before the Budget, http://www.bradburystell.co.uk/ we end up speculating if this will turn out to be the second longest suicide note in history echoing Gerald Kaufman’s famous comment about the Labour Party’s disastrous 1983 manifesto.
The Budget really does smack of desperation and has examples of unintended effect. For example, about 1.8 million of the poorest people will be worse off with Gordon Brown’s tax changes and sometimes paying higher marginal rates of tax than millionaires. As a classic disincentive to work or perhaps not declare earnings, the rate applied to tax credits when they are clawed back has been increased when people are on benefits and start earning over the fantastic sum of £6,420 a year http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/03/13/cccowie113.xml
Looking at my viewer stats, I note that someone asked “Does an Agreement in Principle (AIP) mean I will definitely get a mortgage?” Definitely get a mortgage offer? No. Even if you have a mortgage offer, the lender can withdraw it and quite a few have been doing this recently. Some mortgage offers even state this explicitly “This offer is not legally binding until the funds have been drawn”. But an AIP is still worth doing as checking if a borrower is good for the money is what usually takes most time and where people sometimes lose out if they are in a race against another buyer. Checking out the property is done by means of an independent survey and can sometimes be done very quickly.
Another question asks “Is life insurance part of someone’s estate if they die?” The answer here is Yes. Since the value of the policy proceeds might increase the liability for Inheritance Tax, a simple way round this is to put the policy in trust. The guy who sold the policy should be able to do this but if not, any IFA ought to be able to arrange it. Putting a policy in trust also means that the proceeds can be paid out more quickly i.e. without waiting for Probate.
Walking through Smithfield and thinking of the Budget reminds me of a hidden gem which ought to be of interest to my many American readers should they visit London. Benjamin Franklin famously said “Nothing in this life is certain save death and taxes” and in his autobiography, mentions his residence in a City Street called Little Britain (nothing to do with the BBC TV comedy series) where he had his printing press. This street is still there but the former location of his old press is now apparently in the Lady Chapel of the church of St Bartholomew the Great
next to Bart’s Hospital, which some may recognise from the film Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Still on funerals, Friday finds me west of London in Bracknell for a workshop on seminars with Phil Calvert of Calvert Media. http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=53930 Making one’s business different from the hundreds of others doing the same thing is important and he gives a very memorable example in the story of Motorcycle Funerals. This was started by a vicar apparently and its sidecar hearse won the Hearse of the Year Award in 2003 http://www.motorcyclefunerals.com/
Finally, as part of my wish to stay out of a hearse for as long as possible and keep in shape, I finally get round to booking a place with Bev Breeze an established Shiatsu practitioner who practises in the Wren Clinic http://www.wrenclinic.freeuk.com/ in the curiously named Idol Lane in the City. When hearing the word Shiatsu, some wags ask if it is a small Chinese dog but it is rather a form of muscular therapy based on the Chinese medical philosophy that we have five main energy meridians. As expected, I feel much better afterwards but am given some amusing gyratory exercises to do before my return visit in 4 weeks. As one might guess, the Wren Clinic is situated in All Hallows, a ruined Christopher Wren church with a peace garden nearby – another one of London’s hidden gems.