Whilst female managers are now paid an average salary of £31,895 a year, male managers receive an average salary of £42,441.

This gender pay gap is closing, albeit very slowly. Based on the current rates of salary growth, it would take 98 years for women to gain pay parity with men.

Salaries for women grew by 2.4% on average this year, compared to earnings inflation of 2.1% for men.

Salary inequality between the sexes is not evenly distributed across the different age groups. For junior managers, women are now earning more on average than their male counterparts.

Junior female managers have an average salary of £21,969 compared to £21,367 for men.

The gender pay gap appears to be largest in the IT sector, with the smallest gender pay gaps in the insurance and manufacturing sectors.

These figures have implications for financial planning, as couples need to understand their relative earning power to best plan their personal finances.

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The level of owner occupiers in the UK has fallen over the past few years.

This is the result of high house prices, larger deposit requirements for mortgages and the banks imposing stricter lending criteria as they seek to rebuild their balance sheets following the global financial crisis.

Oxford Economics believes the proportion of home ownership in the UK, which currently stands at 67%, could fall to 63.8% over the next ten years as a result of these factors.

They also predict a 20% increase in rents over the next five years.

What does this housing ‘crisis’ mean for Financial Planning?

Fewer people owning their property and instead renting has important consequences for retirement planning.

Whilst home owners typically pay off their mortgages in full ahead of retirement, those renting are left having to cover this expense in retirement. This translates into a need for a higher level of retirement income in later life, to cover the cost of rent.

If more people rent rather than buy property earlier in life, this suggests that less disposable income will be available in the decade before retirement to fund pensions.

Not owning a property also has an impact on the availability of wealth for care fees planning and future inheritance for children or grandchildren.

A move from home ownership to renting creates important considerations for financial planning. If this does become a persistent cultural shift in the UK, financial plans will need to be reassessed accordingly, with priorities changed to accommodate this change in behaviour.

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This pressure is the result of low interest rates, high price inflation and low wage inflation.

New research from financial information company Markit has found that nearly 40% of households saw their finances deteriorate between July and August this year.

This means that finances worsened at their fastest pace since the middle of the last recession in February 2009.

Only 6% of households experienced an improvement in their finances during this time.

The Household Finances Index monitored by Markit had fallen for the third month in succession and now stands at its lowest level since it was created at the start of 2009.

With the UK economy struggling to recover, consumer sentiment is likely to remain poor for some time given this continued squeeze on household budgets.

Financial Planning can help to identify areas for savings and steer a path through an uncertain economic environment.

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Leaving an inheritance is usually seen as an important way to provide younger generations with a head start in life; to get onto the property ladder, clear debts or invest capital for the future.

Whilst wanting to leave an inheritance is a noble aim, the reality is often quite different.

New research from Prudential has found that only 52% of those planning to retire this year are confident they can afford to leave an inheritance.

One in ten will go further and actively cancel their plans to leave a legacy for their families in order to boost their own retirement income.

What prevents people from leaving an inheritance for their children?

In our experience, it is the combination of cost pressures in later life which makes leaving a legacy unaffordable.

In addition to the cost of supplementing pension income in retirement, the costs of long-term care combined with the financial support provided to adult children and elderly parents leave little if anything in the ‘pot’ at the end of life.

This is where Financial Planning can play such an important role.

One exercise we complete with our Financial Planning clients is a lifetime cash flow forecast. In the simplest terms, this demonstrates when an individual or family will run out of money.

Cash flow forecasting enables us to demonstrate how small changes to Financial Plans can cause or prevent running out of money in later life. For individuals who are keen to leave an inheritance, this type of planning is essential.

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This means that a 40% tax payer will need to earn £21,667 gross of income tax (but excluding NICs) just to cover the cost of fees.

Additional rate (50%) tax payers will need to earn £26,000 a year.

If your child is attending (or will be attending) one of the twenty-five schools that charge over £25,000 a year, the level of pre-tax earnings needed to cover these fees will be substantially more.

In addition, when you consider that the average increase in school fees over the past twelve months is 4.9% (twice the rate of national average earnings), the measure of wage inflation your disposable income will have to increase by at least this if you are to comfortably afford to keep your child at private school.

Consider also the cost if you have more than one child!

What can you do about it? There are several options to consider.

-Apply for a scholarship or bursary.

-If you have two or more children attending the same school you may receive a discount.

-Save as early as possible (before your child is born); compound interest is a powerful force not to be missed.

-Have a plan for how you will build up a school fees fund of sufficient size.

-Ask for grandparent assistance. This can be a useful inheritance tax avoidance option.

-Send your children to private school at a later age where the value received may be greater.

-Re-mortgage, though this is probably the least attractive option as you are deferring the cost and having to pay interest on loan.

Do speak to us if you have any questions about planning for the cost of school fees.

The index is called Your Better Life and forms part of a wider OECD Better Life initiative to measure well-being and progress.

It allows people to compare the quality of life using 11 dimensions – housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety and work-life balance.

Users can give their own weight to each measure and compare lives across 34 different countries.

This is a very interesting tool.

Looking at scores for the UK, where the average household earned $27,208 in 2008, we perform very well in terms of overall well-being. The UK ranks among the top countries in several topics in the index.

What the Better Life Index demonstrates is that well-being is not limited to financial wealth. When considering your Financial Planning, thinking carefully about the non-financial measures of success is equally as important.

The webcast, 10 Ways to Make Your Money Work Harder & Why You Need to Act Now, was presented by Informed Choice financial planning director Andrew Neligan.

Chartered Financial Planner Andrew Neligan discussed the ten things you need to know about your Financial Planning, to enable you to build, manage and protect your wealth.

You can watch a recording of the webcast here or view it below:

The reason is because I believe as a legal professional the nature of your work often prevents you from putting in place the steps necessary to achieve what is most important to you in life but, with a bit of planning this can be rectified.

I have family and friends in the law and I so have witnessed the challenges legal professionals have; working long hours, inconsistent cash flow for the self employed, and an unpredictable flow of case work.

My father is on the cusp of retirement (hopefully it will be sooner rather than later) but when I was at school I know there were occasions when I was playing a rugby or hockey match which he would dearly have loved to have come to support me but the demands of the job prevented him from doing so.

There was also a time when he had taken time off to attend a university open day with Mum and I but as we started out on our trip up North he received a call from his Chambers asking him to deal with an urgent brief.

Frustrated and disappointed he was dropped off at Tiverton Parkway station to make his way back to Exeter to pick up the papers.

It’s recalling experiences such as these, and those that barrister and solicitor friends are having now, that made me realise that by using my experiences and expertise I can help you put in place the steps to ensure that you can achieve what is most important to you.

This may be enabling you to retire early, to reduce the hours that you work so you can spend more time with your family or being able to afford private education for your children. Whatever matters most to you.

Now I can’t control the demands that the profession place upon you. For the time being at least, the long hours may still be necessary but what I can do is help you understand what steps you need to put in place to enable you to achieve your goals.

This may be:

-how you make your money work harder for you,

-how you can minimise the tax you pay,

-to help you understand what you need to earn each year to be able to achieve your goals,

-to assess whether your existing savings and investments are appropriate to fulfilling your objectives or

-to determine whether you have sufficient financial security should you be out of work for a prolonged period of time.

Without fully understanding what you need to do to achieve your lifestyle goals it is likely that they will never be realised or, at best, have to be postponed.

The first step is to write down what your financial priorities are to understand if they are achievable based on your current circumstances and, if not, what changes you need to make.

Since 2008, over 55s have faced additional costs of £918 a year due to higher price inflation.

These costs are even higher for older age groups, with those in the 65-69 age group facing additional costs of £1,054 a year since 2008.

Higher price inflation for older people is the result of the typical basket of goods and services consumed as we all get older.

The things we tend to buy and consume in retirement often increase in price at a faster pace than the items used in the Office for National Statistics (ONS) inflation basket.

This is an important issue to consider when planning for retirement and financial planning in later life.

Because your expenditure in retirement is likely to escalate more quickly, you need to consider what impact this will have on your income, savings and investments.

When working with clients to construct a meaningful financial plan, we take into account this ‘Silver RPI’ factor and ensure the inflation assumptions we use are realistic for the future.

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The new research from Standard Life found that even many older people have not made sufficient plans for their estates, with 22% of over 65′s without a Will.

The most common justification for not having a Will was people not having got round to doing it yet. Others felt it was too expensive to have a Will prepared or were happy to rely on the statutory default rules.

Dying without a valid Will in place, known as dying intestate, can create serious financial problems for your family and other beneficiaries.

The laws of intestacy result in the value of your estate being shared out according to a specific set of rules. If you are married and have children, your partner will inherit the first £250,000 of your estate and a life interest in half of the balance.

This is often not the desired result on death for a married couple. Putting a Will in place enables you to ensure your estate is distributed in line with your wishes, rather than an ancient and inflexible law.

We often find that people delay getting a Will due to a lack of understanding of their current and future financial positions.

By spending some time with a Financial Planner, it is possible to then meet with a solicitor fully armed with a statement of assets and liabilities, along with a better understanding of your estate planning wishes.

We can even accompany you to a meeting with your solicitor (or recommend a suitable local solicitor) to help you to get your Will drawn up.

Photo credit: Flickr/Martin Bamford