Money Tips Daily by Charles Kelly, former IFA and author of

Avoid litigation. The well-known phrase "I'll see you in court" often ends in the bankruptcy court or losing your house to pay legal costs, which can run into millions. Not only is litigation costly in terms of legal fees, but it can also take up an awful lot of time and energy, and literally drain you emotionally.

I once got involved in a dispute over a £500 unfair charge by a freeholder on a leasehold flat I owned. To cut a long story short, they kept escalating to so-called ‘costs’, like a game of poker, and we ended up going to court, but by this time they were claiming £14,000! The case took two years of my life fighting this small dispute. In the end, with the help of a great city barrister, who charged me £2000 upfront, I won the case and got my legal costs back. However, in reality I had lost hundreds of hours of my time, energy and sleepless nights.

At all costs, avoid going to court and use arbitration services or just common sense to settle disputes.

Courts and Judges are no

I still think property is one of the best investments an ordinary investor put his or her money into. Let me tell you why.

Firstly, you can enjoy an income from your residential buy-to-let or commercial property.

Secondly, you can also benefit from capital growth in the value of the property over the longer term, as it has done in the past, although this is by no means guaranteed.

Lastly, there is another reason why property has proved such a popular investment and why I think it has the edge over the vast majority of investment schemes that a financial advisor or bank will try and sell you.

Leverage, or the ability to borrow money not only to help purchase the asset, but also secured against the asset you are buying.

If you would like to learn more about property investment and attend a seminar, I have a limited supply of complimentary tickets for an event with a leading training provider - email me [email protected].

What’s All The Fuss About Property Prices Anyway? Find Out Why You Should Care.

The recent price drop might be good news for buyers but bad news for sellers.

For people who already own property the news of small fluctuations in values might not be good or bad, as they will still be sitting on an asset whether the value is increasing or decreasing.

If you own a buy to let property let to a tenant, the rent is not going to change month on month even if the value increases or decreases.

But if prices continued to fall and or there was a crash, the banks might start getting nervous and could ‘call in’ (ask for their money back) loans for borrowers who are highly geared – mortgaged up to a high loan-to-value (LTV), e.g. you owe £90,000 on a property valued at £100,000 or 90% LTV.

This will affect the whole economy and jobs even of you don’t own a property or work in the sector.

The Nationwide index revealed a 0.3pc month-on-month fall taking the average UK house price to £210,402, down from £211,756 in January. This marks the first time since August 2017 that house prices have fallen month on month.

The price-to-earnings ratio is now around 10 times average salaries, making London one of the most expensive and difficult places for people to get on the property ladder.

The rental market remains strong, but thousands of landlords have been deterred by recent tax changes which will dramatically reduce their net earnings from but-to-let properties. Tough new rules on HMO lettings coming in this autumn will be another blow to landlords.

What does this all mean for buyers and investors and where are property prices going? The answer is nobody really knows for sure. The more experts you listen to, the confused you’ll become!

There is still a shortage of homes in the UK and the Prime Minster Theresa May announced measures to force builders to build more homes faster

Your Network is your Net Worth.

I attended a breakfast networking meeting today and it reminded me of that old saying. Your network really does reflect your net worth and success in business, or some would say it’s not what you know but who you know, which is still some truth even in today’s digital age.

In this structured BNI networking meeting, the membership of 23 consisted of various local trades and professions. Started in America in 1985 by Ivan Misner, BNI now operates in 70 countries worldwide with over 8000 chapters and 227,000 members. The cost of this group is around £1,000 per year plus a £150 joining fee.

Bonus Tip. Follow-up. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve observed in networking is the failure to follow up. People go to all the trouble of going to a meeting, cornering you in the room to tell you about their business and after you say, “sure, give me a call or email me to set up a meeting”, you hear nothing!

Bonus Tip No 2. When you get home after a meeting put them on y

Did you know that you are sitting on a potential goldmine, situated right between your ears? It’s called your ‘intellectual property’ (IP) and it’s where the real money’s made long after the product has been created.

The renowned author and speaker, Tom Hopkins, said “You are your greatest asset. Put your time, effort and money into training, grooming, and encouraging your greatest asset”.

What are you good at doing?

What are you passionate about and enjoy doing in your spare time?

What service would you or do you offer to people for free, just because it’s fun?

What would you do with the rest your life if you won the lottery tomorrow?

You may take it for granted that you are very good with children, cars, dogs or you have a special skill like writing, speaking, knitting, photography, relationships and dating, IT or social media.

We’ve had the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Industrial Age. Now, the new Information Age and digital economy is upon us.

People want information and solutio

Sir Roger Bannister, one of the all-time greats of athletics and sports died today at his home in Oxford.

Sir Roger was a great British hero and the first break the four-minute mile barrier that many said was impossible. They said the human body could not survive such a feat. Yet in the year that followed several other athletes also ran a sub 4 minute mile, and the Australian runner, John Landy, beat Bannister's record by 2 seconds the following month with a time of 3:57.9. This goes to show that when we have the belief that something is possible we go after it with a different attitude and more often than not achieve it.

There are two things to remember about Bannister’s achievement.

Firstly, it was no accident or stroke of luck. He set a goal to break the record, planned and worked his training regime and record breaking race down to the smallest detail.

Secondly, it was his ironclad belief that help push him through that tape at under 4 minutes.

In my forthcoming book, Yes, Money C

Stop wasting food. On average, people in the west throw away around a third of the food they buy. Considering that food is one of our major areas of expenditure, apart from anything else, that’s a lot of money we are throwing away. Let’s say a family spends £100 per week on food and throws away a third of it. Over a year, that’s £1,716 going straight into the dustbin.

There is also a moral aspect to this. We all know that there are millions of people who go hungry every day, even on our own doorstep, while many of us overindulge and then throw millions of tons of food in the bin – much of which ends up in landfill.

Here are my 5 C’s to Stop Food Waste:

1. Cook it – cooked food will last longer and will not go off so quickly. You can store or freeze cooked dishes it to last even longer.

2. Chill or refrigerate most food and fruit to avoid going bad in a hot kitchen. In the days before fridges were common, kitchens had larders which faced an outside wall and stayed cool. Houses were also

The UK government recently announced tough new minimum space requirements for private lettings in a bid to reduce overcrowding and other problems in the HMO rental sector.

The widely expected new rules for HMOs (Houses in Multiple Occupation) will bring the national mandatory licensing, currently only applying if properties are three or more storeys, to all flats and one and two-storey properties.

The new rules will allow local councils to force more landlords to register their HMO properties, which should raise standards. My own local authority has around ten times as many unlicensed houses in some form of multiple occupation as those licensed as HMO’s.

The majority of buy-to-let landlords in the UK are law abiding and should have no problems complying with new regulations. However, based on the previous experience of other local authorities, which have brought in blanket licensing for all rental properties, many landlords will be probably fall short of the minimum safety requirements

As the UK is hit with the big freeze from the ‘Beast from the East’ and ‘Storm Emma’ snow falls, insurance companies will soon be paying out millions of pounds in claims for accidents, burst pipes and flooding.

Whilst we are thinking about insurance, this might be a good opportunity to check your insured items on your home buildings and contents policy, as well as other forms of insurance.

Make sure you have the right insurance cover for your home, and review it every year for price and sum insured.

People often assume that all policies are pretty much the same and only find out the real truth when they put in a claim and get that sick feeling in their stomach when they realise they are not covered for what they thought they were.

For instance, are you covered for losses caused by accidental damage or shattered glass, does it cover your garage or outbuildings, garden equipment, how high is your excess (the amount you pay for each claim) and how much interest are you being charged to sp