If you decide to do this make sure you read the small print and that the admin costs are not going to eat away at your lump sum payout.

There will then be an increase in State pension age for everyone to 66 by 2020. But it means 330,000 women aged between 56 and 57 now would have to wait up to two years longer to collect their State pension – losing the equivalent of up to £5,000 in income each year. Age UK claims unmarried women and women who are widowed or divorced will be particularly affected. Many women in this age group are also unable to work because of their family commitments. Today currently women can expect to retire on an average pension income of £12,900 a year compared with £19,400 for men. About 330,000 women aged between 56 and 57 will be hit hardest by the Pension Bill reforms. If you are affected, the first step is to find out exactly when you will get the State pension under the new rules.

The universal State pension, which promises a flat rate income (expected to be the equivalent of about £155 a week) should start in 2016 – thereby benefiting women now aged between 56 and 57. This new pension will remove means-testing so people should benefit from every penny saved. If you are concerned, the best thing to do is to check your employer’s pension provision to see whether you are eligible to join, or if you can increase contributions. See whether your employer offers a salary exchange, which is a tax-efficient way to invest more of your wage in a pension. Review existing savings and investments to see how they are performing and switch where necessary. Don’t take big risks with investments and pensions, particularly in your 50s.

You should spread the risk by investing in a broad range of equity funds, fixed-interest bonds and deposit savings.

One of the problems with packaged investments and particularly tax privileged investments such as IRA investments is that the investment element tends to get neglected or at least it’s overshadowed by the magic words “tax deductible”. Yes, it’s clearly to your advantage to get those tax deductions but don’t forget that it’s an investment that you’re making and any tax deduction can be far outweighed by charges or duff performance.

And what about those people today who have never worked a day, having spent their most productive years on benefits – who will pay for their retirement and will there be any Govt pensions to go around at all in the future? my guess is they are in very big trouble.

Parents these days are remortgaging their homes to give money to their children to help them on to the property ladder. Others use their house as a ‘cash machine’, taking out money to put into a business, fund a better lifestyle or pay off debt and one can only blame those ‘cash equity’ tv commercials for the increase in such activity. I feel they are very bad decisions to make at such a time in your life. In the past, a typical pre-retiree would have had no mortgage, more savings and would have retired by the age of 65. Separate research yesterday highlighted the nightmare facing pensioners who have been saving all their lives – with little to show for it.

People approaching pension/retirement age need to seriously look at their finances and the lifestyle they will be able to afford; this might mean telling ‘the kids’ to find their own desposit for the house they want to buy – your retirement is at stake, let them work out their own problems.

Now thousands who hoped to have their meagre monthly incomes boosted by the deal, are having their cheques returned. At the last count more than 1,000 a day were being posted back. Many more applications are still to be received from savers who never realised the rates had been withdrawn. They will now be forced to seek out one of the lesser deals from elsewhere on the high street – the Post Office is doing a one year growth bond at 3.70% fixed for one year and a 4.25% rate for the two year deal.

This will be a further blow to those whose incomes have been devastated by the fall in the Bank of England base rate to a record low of 0.5 per cent. In some cases investors are getting just £8 interest a year for £10,000 of savings. If you do not need to depend on an income from your savings for the time being it would also do to look at investing in gold, shares or otherwise.

One of the policies put forward will be cancelling the newborn baby-payouts to those at the higher end of the earning scale. I do not have too much of a problem with this however I do not want to see this payment being made solely to the children of chronically unemployed people who come under the heading of ‘the poorest of families’ and live a better life of benefits than retired folk on pensions do.  Not surprisingly many unambitious parents do not even bother to open a new account for their child to get the benefit of this £250 payment – just as well the money is locked away for the child.

Under the new scheme only disabled children will receive the payment as well as those from the poorest sector of society; I am hoping though that the Tories will acknowledge the fact that many married couples who work and support their own families often fall into that category…not just unmarried mothers.

Let’s face it, we all will need a funeral someday in some form and if you cared to take a look at the spiralling costs of a funeral these days I am sure it would make you sit down and think carefully about the issue. There’s the coffin, the church, transport, burial site/cremation…it is not a cheap thing to do; do you think it is fair to bequeath to your family a huge bill for your final resting place?

I guess you cannot really expect people in their 20′s and 30′s to give this issue much thought but if you are reading this, despite your age, make a mental note to give it some consideration in the not too distant future. Many older folk now opt for funeral insurance as a way of organising details and ensuring that everything is planned and paid for ‘if and when’.

Taking this option also allows you to have the send off you want (even though you won’t be around to enjoy it); this means that your bereaved family won’t have the financial and emotional burden to contend with or any heavy decisions to make at a stressful time. By doing this you will be ensuring that they, too, are taken care of.

Many people do not realise that purchasing a good quality piece of jewellery can actually make a good investment, in my partner’s case, it is a watch and one that appears to have just as good a resale value as a new one. Why not consider investing in something similar…? choose a top brand of course, Chopard are a brand of timepiece that have been around since 1860 and would make an excellent gift for a child – albeit a teen maybe – as well as something for their future.

What is your special talent…are you great at drawing, painting, making something out of nothing…writing? then you too could put this to good use and actually use your skills to make some money for yourself.

My sister makes these lovely baby dolls (left)…they look like real babies without being creepy at the same time. She simply loves to create. She buys the basic models online and then puts them together from scratch. She dresses them with real baby clothes and has even kept some for herself as she has become so attached to many of them that she cannot bear to sell them.

Anyway, what she wants to sell she advertises on Ebay and really does quite well. Just another way in which we women can use our innate creative talent to earn our own money from the home.

By the way; if you would like to buy one of these beautiful baby dolls then just drop me an email and I’ll put you in contact with my sister.

These are my sister’s home-made ’Triplets’. So cute!

A bit skeptical? well, consider the master himself, Van Gogh. He sat around the market squares of Arles in France just sketching and painting people he saw sitting in cafes or just standing by. No-one took any notice of him as he was a known eccentric yet he never sold a painting. He simply gave them away, and sometimes, people did not want them! imagine if those folk were alive today and knew the value of the paintings that strange little man tried to fob off to them…

Okay, whilst the artists at this Fair will not being toting their art for free all the same there are bound to be some famous names of the future there. And it is not a bad idea to pick up a nice work and sit on it for a few years, many have and found that their few dollars/pounds was the best investment they ever made.

This weekend the Fair is at London Battersea Park, so if you can get there and want something interesting to put in the house take some spare cash and take advantage of the 120 Galleries that will be exhibiting all kinds of painting, sculptures and photography. If you cannot get to this event still keep this in mind and check out any art exhibitions that are within reach of you.

You never know, it just might make a handy investment some day.

Pictured above: ‘The Yellow House’ – Van Gogh 1888, Arles. Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam.