I have long feared that inflation will rip through our savings, sooner or later. Possibly there will be deflation first, but our various feckless governments will eventually try to repair their dodgy budgets by stealing value from our savings. In fact, it’s already happening, if you look at the derisory interest on bank accounts, which after tax and compared with iffy official figures on price inflation means your cash is rotting.
But thanks to bloating the banks with bailouts, government bonds have little or no or negative yield, and stocks are a-bubbling on the basis of great earnings they will show when, er, and here’s another social media app I’m ready to go IPO on, fill your boots etc. Buy a house and rent it out? You can’t lose, can you? Gold, surely (but how do you get it through the airport scanners?)
This is why, five years ago, I started a long and fruitless correspondence with my then Member of Parliament to get the Government to reinstate its inflation-proofed National Savings certificates, which were introduced in 1975 as “an act of belated social justice to millions of people who have seen their savings irreversibly damaged during the recent rapid rise in the rate of inflation.” [http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1975/jul/10/savings-index-linked-schemes]
But my MP, whose political friends were (in 2012) in cahoots with the ruling Conservative (hah!) Party, seemed unwilling to ask a simple question at Prime Minister’s Question Time. Tried pushing a mule? And the written answers I got from ministers was a worrying indication of the brainpower guiding our national ship.
However, some of you may be able to turn our rulers’ desperation to advantage, if you act fast. They’re offering the opportunity to make a lump sum payment to increase your State Pension by £25 a week, if you’re a woman born before 6 April 1953 or a man born before 6 April 1951:
https://www.gov.uk/statepensiontopup
