economy personal finance: linkers national savings
by ermine
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Nuts – No NS & I linkers for you lot for the moment
National Savings, they of the horse chestnut logo have decided that they’ve sold enough index linked certificates to the fearful savers of Britain and they’re not doing that any more for a while.
I liked these. The index linking, to RPI, was great. It’s the government you’re lending to, so they will be the last to fall in a run on banks, which is nice. And they’re tax free, so they are a great place to stash some cash to hold it in real terms, almost risk-free. By the time these become risky you will be able to hear the hoofbeats of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and you know you’re going down with ship UK… Presumably this paves the pay for some savings certificates linked to the CPI not the RPI, which as we all know is a true reflection of inflation as real people don’t use fuel or pay housing costs, natch.
The official reason is that NS&I has met its targets for savings this year. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks “yeah, right. What is it that you guys know about forthcoming inflation and government policy that you’re not letting on. As these two guys posted to the Daily Torygraph
The only (risk free) way to protect your savings from inflation being withdrawn. Is this an indication that inflation will rise further still?Looks like it.They’re are going to steal everyone’s wealth via inflation, taxes, debt repayments and printing of more funny money. The last train out has just left the station.
[...]
Break out the tin hats and the sick-bags people. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride down. Also screws my plans where I am regularly buying the three-year version every month to give me an RPI-hedged income for three years.
hehe – I’m already doing that – I’m in a whisker of maxing my ISA in the autumn and I hold a L&G index fund in my AVCs. That’s my Pollyanna Portfolio – the horse running on the ‘it’ll all be all right on the night’ assumption.
The other portfolio, my ‘tin hat portfolio’ is the one which seems to be running out of good options left, right and centre.
These certificates were a great way to buy some breathing space and thinking time. I’ll save the cash and buy a wodge of these if/when they reappear. I’m not doing CPI though – if they reappear as CPI-linked Mr Tin Hat is gonna have to find something else as I’m not linking to the price of consumer gewgaws rather than energy & shelter. Mr TH thinks energy will go through the roof in the years to come 
by the Autumnal Equinox, when the light surrenders to the darkness « Simple Living in Suffolk
[...] I had reason to consider recently how I could preserve enough cash to pay my way for five years without working. I have assets equivalent to about three years running costs which I saved the ERE way in two years. Some of that is in shares ISAs which the oncoming Kondratieff Winter * could write off. Some of it is in cash ISAs which are already dying slowly, as the interest, though a decent tax-free 3.2% isn’t enough to compensate for the corrosive effects of inflation. N&SI index-linked certs carry a little bit of the rest, but I was trying to create a laddered sequence of these to mature over the period I want an income. What I didn’t allow for was the fact that the buggers would can these. [...]
[...] not to have to eat this sort of counterparty risk by buying NS&I index-linked certs, but I can’t do that at the [...]
by A New Financial Year looming, plus the Sound of Thunder in the Distance « Simple Living in Suffolk
[...] doesn’t fit with the seasonal availability, so I only got £2000 into that before they were summarily canned. Which sort of put the kibosh on that bright [...]
Or buy shares with the FTSE at 5200 and yielding more than gilts. (*ducks*)