The Salary Calculator

General Election nears

by Admin

With a General Election later this week, it’s time to find out about each of the parties and consider who would best represent you in Westminster. It’s the closest election in many years so it’s very important that we make the effort to have our say in the decision of who will govern us. The economy has been a key election topic for most of us this time around, and each of the parties have a different way of tackling the problems we face. Yes, we have come out of recession but the recovery is not yet complete – the actions of the next government will determine how we go forward from here.

In the Election Comparison Calculator I’ve tried to help show what would happen to your take home pay should we have a change of government. All the details of the calculations performed are underneath the results, explaining what the key differences between the parties are. Of course, your take home pay is not the only thing at stake – all the major parties have put details in their manifestos of how they will make other changes affecting not only your money but other aspects of your life as well.

Over at the BBC they have created a useful election tool called Where they stand. This allows you choose a topic and three parties to compare, and a summary of each party’s manifesto is displayed. You can see at a glance what the major differences are between the parties on the issues you believe are important – be it the Economy, Civil Liberties, Health or Education (amongst others).

Your vote can make a difference, this year more than ever before, so I encourage you to read up about the parties standing in your constituency and vote for who you think would best represent you. See you at the polling station!

Tags: Economy, election, income tax, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, pension, Pensions, personal allowance, tax rates, The Salary Calculator

Election Comparison Calculator launched!

by Admin

With a general election now called for 6th May, the major parties have started campaigning and promoting their policies. All have policies related to taxation, and The Salary Calculator has tried to show you what their different policies may mean to you.

The Election Comparison Calculator aims to help you see the differences between the major parties’ policies on personal income. Using the information available, the calculator estimates how their policies would affect your take home pay. As described on the Election Comparison Calculator page itself, not all the details are available at the moment, and probably won’t be until the next government holds its first budget. However, the details they have provided allow the calculator to estimate what those changes would mean to you.

All the details used to create the calculator are available underneath the results. As explained in that description, the calculator considers PAYE changes – each party also has other economic policies which may affect you in other ways, such as stamp duty or inheritance tax. Some assumptions have had to be made – if you can help provide more detailed information then please contact us. So why not try the Election Comparison Calculator and see what you learn?

Tags: 50% tax, April 2010, Economy, election, income tax, National Insurance, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, pension, Pensions, personal allowance, recovery, tax rates, The Salary Calculator

UK economy turns around

by Admin

So finally, the news we’ve been waiting for – the UK economy has come out of the longest recession since records began. In the 3 months to the end of December, the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the UK grew by 0.1%. This is only a very small growth, but it’s growth nonetheless – for the previous 6 quarters UK GDP had been shrinking.

This is a very encouraging sign, especially since the UK was one of the last major economies to still be in recession, others having returned to growth some months earlier. However – before we break open the champagne we should note that these are only preliminary figures – often GDP figures are corrected up or down at a later date, as explained here. Also, 0.1% is only a low growth rate and most analysts are predicting slow growth for the rest of 2010.

Still, after the recent turmoil a few quarters of good, solid, sustainable growth should stabilise the economy and see the job market (and mortgages and loans) pick up as confidence increases. A stronger national economy should also help the Pound make back some of its recent weakness against other currencies – although, again, this is likely to be a slow process.

Tags: Economy, Foreign Currency, foreign exchange rates, pound, recession, recovery

Superfreakonomics

by Admin

I’ve previously mentioned the book Freakonomics as an interesting read which explains how economic thought can be applied to many different (and unusual) areas of the world around us. Well, the same authors (Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner) have recently released a follow-up book, Superfreakonomics.

This book covers in quite some depth topics such as finding solutions to global warming, using statistical analysis to find terrorists (particularly relevant at the moment) and why the solutions to big problems are often simple. I personally found that a few of these chapters strayed further from the economics-based descriptions that defined the first book – concentrating more on the details of possible solutions to global warming than the economic forces working on those solutions, for example.

Having said that, the chapter about the economics of prostitution is very much like the previous book’s chapter on drug dealing – because the relevant studies the authors were reporting on were done by the same researcher. It offers some of the detailed analysis that I felt made the first book accessible – explaining why the data gathered (and the methods used to gather the data) can tell you things you wouldn’t otherwise find out.

A very entertaining read which unfortunately is over too quickly – but the epilogue is my favourite part of the whole book, where they explain briefly the impact of explaining to monkeys the concept of money!

Click on the link to the right to buy the book from Amazon, and you’ll be doing your bit to support this site!

Tags: books, economics, Economy, united states

Time to make some changes

by Admin

2010 beckons and the start of a new year is for many people the time to sort out their career or their finances. The Salary Calculator is here to help you if you want to make some changes to your financial situation.

It might be time to look for a new job – the Christmas break gives one time to consider career plans, and you might think that in January you’ll start looking for new employment, or talk to your employer about a promotion. Use The Salary Calculator when comparing salaries so you know how much extra it would make to you each month if you got that pay rise.

If you need some extra money each month, to save up for a holiday or a new car say, then use the Required Salary Calculator to work out what salary you need to look for to get that extra take-home. There’s hope that early in 2010 we’ll hear that the UK has finally left recession and things will start to pick up – including the job market.

If you’re not interested in a new job, you can consider sorting out your finances. Use the Mortgage Repayment Calculator to get an idea of the effects of remortgaging in 2010, or the Debt Consolidation Calculator to see what you could save by taking control of all of your loans. Why not try to get debt free in 2010?

Here’s to a great new year for everyone, I hope that The Salary Calculator will help you with your money in 2010!

Tags: 2010, careers, debt, Economy, job hunting, Jobs, Loans, Mortgages, Pay As You Earn, pension, recession, recovery, tax rates, The Salary Calculator