Hi,

Welcome to our latest newsletter covering all the latest from Farillio.

• New content: Expert career coach, Fay Wallis, will have you creating stand-out CVs, smashing your interviews, getting promoted, and getting on top of your workplace blues in our new career coaching series.

• Introducing our ‘Cyber-safe Home’ self-assessment tool: be on top of all today’s vulnerabilities, from home listening devices and connected doorbells and fridges, to children’s online adventures and WiFi choices.

• Smelly, messy, noisy neighbours driving you mad? You’re not alone. Check your rights and take effective action using our new ‘nuisance neighbours’ templates. The first ones are up now, and more will be uploaded over the next few weeks.

• Expert corner: Ellie Holland makes creating or updating a will simple and cost-effective. See her in action showing you, using one of Farillio’s templates, just how easy it is.

• News: it’s Budget month, so we’ve highlighted below what’s included, and what’s predicted. The news is not great for households, especially coming on top of fuel shortages, energy price hikes and shops running out of stock on all kinds of home essentials.

• And finally: this month, we’re in the news again too! We won another award: The UK’s longest running index of disruptive start-ups, the Startups 100, has released its 2021 line-up and Farillio has made the list for the third year in a row, jumping 30 places to #36. Read the press release here.

New content: Taking control of your career

We teamed up with expert career coach, Fay Wallis from BrightSky, to produce a suite of ‘how-to videos’, checklists and other self-serve materials covering CVs, interviews, getting promoted, deciding what to do when you’re not happy with your job and lots more.

Ensure your CV never gets passed over by CV-crawler technology, that you go into every interview brilliantly well-prepared, that you get the career recognition and/or promotion you’d like and, - a topic that’s in a lot of demand right now – you feel in control of your own future and choices, including when you experience the workplace blues.

See Fay in action narrating her brilliant CV essentials infographic:

Take your career to the next level – and find confidence and happiness at work – with Fay’s excellent suite of materials here. All available in your Farillio account.

And look out for our separate student career choices suite filmed and produced with yet another superb Farillio community expert, launching later this Autumn.

New content: Keeping your family and home safe from cyber attacks

Check how cyber-secure your home is with our handy self-assessment checklist and activity tool. Watch how our handy self-assessment tool works in the video below to check if you’re on top of all today’s cyber-vulnerabilities, from home listening devices and connected doorbells and fridges, to monitoring and limiting children’s online adventures and making smart WiFi choices.

Filmed and produced with leading cyber expert, Ryan Rubin from Ankura, this easy self-assessment checklist and tool takes you step by step through the most essential cyber-safe measures so you can best protect your home, your finances, your property and your loved ones.

See how it works here:

Start your own Cyber-Safe Home assessment here.

New content: Nuisance neighbours and what to do about them

Smelly, messy, noisy neighbours driving you mad? You’re not alone. Though most of us would prefer to get along with our neighbours, noisy activities, planning disputes, anti-social behaviour, choices of pets (and their behaviour), rubbish-handling and other upsetting habits are frequent problems that many home owners and renters complain of.

According to some sources, during the peak of the pandemic, there were over 1000 noisy neighbour complaints a day. A whopping 268,000 complaints were lodged with 267 councils across the UK during 2020-21, according to a Freedom of Information request requested by Churchill Home Insurance. Noise definitely comes top of the list of complaints – but lots of other behaviours cause just as much aggravation, stress and, in some cases, intimidation.

Check your rights and take effective action using our new ‘nuisance neighbours’ templates.

Stop suffering noisy neighbours using this particular template here.

News: it’s all about the budget, and 27th October is looking a bit gloomy

We’ve highlighted what’s already been announced, and what leading commentators and economists are also predicting:

• An increase in National Insurance contributions set at 1.25% for employees, employers and the self-employed from April 2022.
• Plans to freeze the income tax personal allowance at £12,750 (the amount of your earnings on which no tax is payable) and the higher rate income tax threshold from next April until 2026 – meaning an ongoing reducing tax-free benefit to individuals as costs of living still rise; allowances not rising as wages/inflation goes up means more tax is collected.
• The biggest rise in personal taxes for two decades, to help fund social care and the NHS’ recovery (creating a pot worth an extra £12bn per year).
• Student loan reforms are back in the spotlight, with the government reportedly wanting to reduce the taxpayer burden of funding university courses. Reform plans include lowering the earnings threshold that triggers the start of a student’s repayment obligation so that more former students start repaying a lot earlier – an estimated £2bn in added funds would be released, while heavily increasing the burden on graduates also hit by the increases in NI contributions.
• Rumours still persist of the lowering of thresholds for inheritance and capital gains tax (enabling HMRC to capture more money from individual tax-payers). They weren’t changed in March 2021 but have been on the Treasury’s radar as a source of more funding for a while.
• Despite pressure to increase benefits to compensate for loss of the £20 uplift to universal credit during the pandemic, the Chancellor seems to be resisting any form of support package.
• The state pension ‘triple lock’ mechanism, designed to ensure that the state pension increases each year in line with inflation, average wave earnings growth or 2.5%, whichever is highest, will be temporarily suspended for 2022 The government’s already announced a 1.25% increase in the tax on dividends for shareholders from April 2022 – with social care and the NHS being intended beneficiaries. It will not apply to investments held in ISAs and. the majority of pensions but anyone investing outside of ISAs and pensions should review their dividend arrangements to ensure they’re making the most they can from their individual tax allowances. Company directors, especially the self-employed and contractors, are likely to be heavily hit by this.
• On a slightly more positive note, the government’s also just announced £500m of new funding in the form of a Household Support Fund, for councils to distribute to those struggling to pay their bills this winter; but many charities are already warning that won’t be sufficient to compensate for the loss of the £20 universal credit uplift.

Meet the expert: Ellie Holland, Wills @ The Wilkes Partnership

If you die and you haven’t got a will (or nobody can find it!), the law takes over and dictates who gets what from what you leave behind. It can be a hugely traumatic experience for grieving family and friends. In addition, big life events like marriage, divorce and having a family can automatically make fundamental changes to your will, so it’s important to keep your will up-to-date.

Whether you’re single or wanting to make joint wills, Ellie Holland makes creating and/or updating wills straightforward and cost-effective. See her in action showing you just how easy it is, using one of her Farillio templates.

Not got a will in place yet? Use our handy Make a Will workflow tool and get drafting here.

Reach out to Ellie for advice on wills via your Farillio account.

Dear Farillio Expert: Top tips for friends going into business together

Our Dear Farillio expert content brings you answers to some of life’s important questions – maybe related to your home, maybe your career, your ambitions or your relationships with others.

Our most recent sessions feature award-winning entrepreneurs, best-selling authors, and great friends, Gayle Mann and Lucy-Rose Walker from Misadventures in Entrepreneuring, talking about deciding to launch a business together and what it meant for their friendship.

See Gayle and Lucy-Rose in action, answering questions like:

Question: “What are your top tips for friends working together?”

Catch their advice here:

Want to hear more of Gayle and Lucy-Rose’s experiences and advice for friends in business? Listen to the extended podcast with them here or watch them on our #GoFarFast talkshow here.