How to get the Government to refund 10% of your housing costs

We don't seem to get a lot from the government these days but there is a way you can reclaim about 10% of all of your housing costs.

This includes your mortgage, energy bills, council tax and even phone calls.

I always tell my clients that the best way to improve their finances is to start a home based business. There are loads of benefits to this, one of the benefits is the tax advantages.

If you run a business from home you are allowed to claim a proportion of your house expenses as legitimate business expenses. So for example you can put down 25% of the mortgage as a business cost, you can then offset this against your business income or even your wages from your day job so that at the end of the tax year the Tax man will send you a nice cheque.

This amount will vary depending upon your circumstances and I would advise you to get advice from an accountant.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/selfemployed-can-set-mortgage-costs-against-tax-says-hmrc-856994.html

If anyone wants advice on setting up a home based business contact me at steve@ukwealthcoach.com

Introducing Maggie Currie

I love helping people and seeing great results. It's also great to meet other similar people.

Tonight I had the pleasure of speaking to a woman with a real passion for helping people, Maggie Currie. We had met on a networking site which is a great way to meet other professionals and coaches.

Maggie works with people helping them build self-confidence and self-esteem. I don't think you can overestimate how important that is; a lot of clients come to me because they aren't making as much money as they want and the bottom line is often their lack of self-confidence.

Well now we have an expert on the team! Maggie is a Dawn Breslin accredited life coach and is also licensed to teach courses based on Susan Jeffers' teachings.

If we feel that self-confidence (or the lack of it) is at the bottom of someone's wealth lack, we will be happy to refer clients to Maggie, who can do online or phone advice for you.

Pop along to her website and see how passionate this woman is about helping others.

Good news week

You only ever hear good news on here, if you want doom and gloom try the news.

(Only joking - the only time I ever turn on the news is if I think I am going to be on it to check out how I look ;-))

So don't turn on the news but check this out -

So apparently we are facing the worst recession for years. Does that mean we are all going to suffer? No of course not, in fact if we all pulled together we could get through this.

But some people will thrive during these times, I don't mean people who are going to pray on other peoples misery and misfortune but people who can offer a good service and a good product.

The 1930's was a real bad time for the whole world, shares plummeted, people lost millions, millions lost jobs, 25% of people in America were out of work.

But amongst this loads and loads of companies set up. A lot of them are still going strong now.

Amongst the deepest depression someone came up with the idea of setting up a company to sell doughnuts. Can you imagine it, 25% of people are unemployed, a large amount of people who are working are struggling to pay bills, have barely enough money to buy food and you go to the bank and say "I want to set up a company selling doughnuts!!!" but not just doughnuts, big ones, small ones, ones with chocolate on, ones with hundreds and thousands on. In fact every variety you can think of - pure indulgence in a time when people had little money.

Well the company got their money and set up and if anyone has been to America you cant miss Krispy Kreme. They are everywhere, with 1000's of stores across America and 13 different countries.

Other companies started in the 30's include Saab, Hewlett Packard, in fact google 'founded in 1930's' and see what you find.

This shows that no matter what the climate if you have a good product or service you will thrive.

I am recommending to all my clients that they start looking at other forms of income and I haven't found anything better than this - http://stevewilliams.mtexpro.com/ and if you act quick enough you could be part of my team.

To your wealth and happiness

Dads Army in Downing Street takeover shock!!!

I try and keep this blog fairly light hearted and upbeat but every now and then want to deal with some economic issues going on.

Today the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee met to decide on interest rates. they do this every month and it's important for a number of reasons.

The main one is that the high street banks normally set their interest rates based on the Bank of England's rate. This means it affects all of us directly, well those of us that have borrowed money, owe money, have a mortgage or have savings. So I'm guessing that's pretty much all of us ;-)

You may have heard our chancellor of the exchequer say earlier in the week that we are facing the worse recession for 60 years, now for the guy in charge of the countries money to be saying that isn't very comforting. Many people are saying he shouldn't have said that. I'm gonna add my view - HE WAS CRAZY TO SAY THAT! - I think that about covers it. In my mind he should be sacked immediately for that and this is why I think that -

Recessions are in a large part based on people's confidence. When we hear nothing but gloom and doom people are scared to spend money, move house etc. This doesn't help the country because if people aren't spending money stuff isn't being sold and jobs are at risk. On a larger scale the big investors are not likely to be as willing to leave their money in a country facing it's worst recession for 60 years. So as we speak millions of British pounds are being invested in countries where the money man isn't saying doing a dads army impression and saying 'we're doomed, we're doomed'. Come to think of it maybe Capt Manwearing could do a better job in charge of the countries money!

So given the doom and gloom why haven't interest rates just been reduced so we can all have more money?

Well unfortunately it's not that straight forward. Whilst it would be good to put more money in every ones pocket so it can be put back into the economy the risk is that this will increase inflation which harm the economy. So it was a pretty hard decision to make. My view is that at this moment we would have benefited more from a reduction in interest rate and the confidence boost it would be given.

We need to hold our nerve through these times but inevitably we will get through it, economies go through cycles like this and we will come out the other side.

For tips and advice to get through these times sign up at my website or in the words of another dads army character "Don't panic, don't panic"