David Gillon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
davidgillon) wrote2011-04-11 11:09 pm
davidgillon) wrote2011-04-11 11:09 pm
Entry tags:
Catch 22
It being the end of the financial year, my bank invited me in last week in order to discuss my savings and investments. So I struggled in and explained that, despite the savings I racked up during a couple of decades of work, not to mention my redundancy payment, I am currently receiving ESA (disability benefit), which doesn’t cover all of my outgoings, and, as it is Contributions Related ESA, at the start of the next financial year it will drop to nothing, so I really need to optimise my savings and investments.
What I wasn’t expecting to be told in reply was 'Sorry, the FSA won't let us give you financial advice if you have outgoings exceeding earnings.’ So, the government is going to force, by its own estimates, 300,000 contributions-based ESA claimants to live on their savings as of next April, but won't, for that very same reason, allow the banks to give them financial advice on how to maximize the income from those same savings.
I seem to have wandered into Joseph Heller’s ‘Catch 22’....
Also posted to Where's the Benefit along with a larger piece on the abuses of WCA.
What I wasn’t expecting to be told in reply was 'Sorry, the FSA won't let us give you financial advice if you have outgoings exceeding earnings.’ So, the government is going to force, by its own estimates, 300,000 contributions-based ESA claimants to live on their savings as of next April, but won't, for that very same reason, allow the banks to give them financial advice on how to maximize the income from those same savings.
I seem to have wandered into Joseph Heller’s ‘Catch 22’....
Also posted to Where's the Benefit along with a larger piece on the abuses of WCA.