Wealth Tax, GameStop and How to Wow!

Where to start? 2021 – A New Year that so far feels very similar to most of 2020.

However, with around 10 million now vaccinated across the UK including many of our more ‘experienced’ clients, we can start to dream that the lockdown requirements can be eased sooner rather than later.

This month, we are delighted to share the artistic talents of Masako Tobita, alongside:

• HarperLees news,
• Wealth Tax – Our View,
• Investment Updates including the story and implications of GameStop,

Our regular Distraction ideas including another HarperLees playlist and ‘How to Wow!’

Tracing The March Walk

Our clients have some amazing skills, experiences and artistic talents such as writing and poetry, photography and art. Here, we are privileged to show one of the works of Masako Tobita.

‘My work is always about my experience in a particular space and at a particular moment. How I get there is led by a spontaneous conversation with a canvas – and a lot of chance. This painting is about one of my walks along the SW Coast Path in Cornwall.’

Masako Tobita

Masako has exhibited widely and further examples of her art can be seen here.

HarperLees News

Adrian was recently asked to write a series of Later Life planning articles for Shalford Village’s local magazine – ‘Bendlowe’s Bugle’. The first in the series looks at Long Term Care – What you need to know and why.

Click here to read the article.

Mark as Chair and Steph as Professional Qualifications Officer for the Personal Finance Society, Essex Region would ordinarily have attended an Officers Conference during January. Unsurprisingly, the live conference could not go ahead and became a virtual event instead.

Whilst a different experience viewing a virtual conference on a miserable Monday morning, rather than looking forward to the traditional dinner, Mark was very pleased to receive a Special Recognition Award.

Investment Updates

It is fair to say that the regular investment related questions tend to currently include:

• How does the world deal with the COVID-19 related debt?
• What happens in the US after the election of Biden?
• What investment risk is still attached to the pandemic?

Seven Investment Management share their current thoughts here.

Particularly newsworthy over the last few days has been ‘Reddit investors’ taking on hedge fund managers by investing into GameStop in the US. Waverton Investment have written an informative guide explaining what has been happening and a view of the potential consequences.

Wealth Tax – Will it, Wont it?

You may recall media coverage of the Wealth Tax Commission report last December entitled A Wealth Tax for the UK which suggested that the Threshold could be set at £500,000 per individual. We look at the proposal with our views and planning considerations available here.

Distraction Ideas

During 2020, we included reference to our recommended music and podcasts.

We have extracted those to compile a new ‘HarperLees recommended….’ Section on our website.

Click here for the recommended podcasts.

Click here for the recommended albums.

After the positive feedback to our Desert Island Discs Playlist in December’s Newsletter, we have compiled another HarperLees playlist on Spotify consisting of tracks from the albums featured in our 2020 Newsletters.

Click here for HarperLees Albums of 2020 playlist.

Click here for the HarperLees Desert Island Discs playlist.

For this month, we recommend the following podcasts:

How To Wow – Described as a technicolour “how to…” gold mine of inspiration, wisdom and experience harvested first-hand from the minds, hearts and spirits of dynamic, maverick and high achieving individuals who are living proof that sure, the road is long and life is hard but if you dream big, put in the hours, keep on showing up and never give in, amazing things happen. Our favourites have included interviews with Sir Mo Farah, Romesh Ranganathan, Joe Wicks and Roger Daltrey of The Who!

The Mid-Point – Gabby Logan is middle-aged and unashamed. She talks candidly to well-known faces about their own midlife challenges and expectations, drawing on the advice of experts from sleep gurus, nutritionists and doctors specialising on hormone treatment.

Radio Headspace – Join former monk and Headspace cop-founder, Andy Puddicombe every weekday to move away from the internal chatter and consider how we can live a life that best reflects our limitless potential.

We trust you find our newsletter content relevant and informative. We greatly appreciate your feedback and if you feel it suitable to share the content with your family and friends.

Whilst we continue to be operating from our homes, we are available as usual if you need any assistance or would like to discuss any of the aspects raised.