Lionesses and Levers

This week, I had the huge pleasure of meeting Lioness legend Jill Scott. She's England’s second most capped international footballer and was part of the winning squad for the Euros 2022.

I was chairing a lunch to launch eToro’s new Loud Investing Campaign, a campaign to debunk the myths and the negative stereotypes which can put women off investing. Jill is the face of this campaign. Her role is to learn, ask the ‘silly questions’ and to help bring investing conversations into the mainstream.

There is a truth that you cannot be what you cannot see and women are still more likely to see investing as “not for me”. There are 10 million men and 6.7 million women in the UK who invest and if we add up who has what, the Gender Investment Gap in the UK is a blistering £678 BILLION. It’s not just amongst older generations either – 41% of young men under 35 invest and just 20% of women in this age group.[1]

Jill talked about her young self growing up in Sunderland, one of four kids who loved to kick a ball, when girls playing football were still seen as weird.

I was a young girl with a dream that didn’t exist. I didn’t do long-term planning because I thought that someone would take it away.

She told me the story of the 1971 women’s game in Mexico City, when 80,000 people turned up (do they do Mexican waves in Mexico, I wondered?) to watch England vs Mexico in a (unofficial) World Cup friendly. FIFA’s response was to ban the Federation of Independent European Female Football (FIEFF), effectively banning future women’s games. Nice.

As for finance, younger readers might actually be amazed to know that women were banned from the Stock Exchange floor until 1971. And women could only open bank accounts and take out mortgages in their own names without their husband's permission or a male guarantor in 1975. If any of our older women readers would like to share their memories of getting their first account and the impact it had, I’d love to hear from you.

From Lioness to Levers

The world has moved on since 1975. The UK GDP has increased from £115 billion to around £3 trillion, today. But debt has also increased from £52 billion to about £2.9 trillion. Or expressed another way, we used to borrow less than half of what we make. And today we borrow about 97% of what we make.

This is why the UK’s finances are stuffed and the Budget is going to be a bit of a nightmare, to use technical language. Rachel Reeves needs to find about £30 billion to balance the books.

There are 5 levers which can be pulled to do this.

1. Growth. Sounds nice but it takes time and our productivity is shot. Next?

2. Borrowing. This is where the ‘fiscal rules’ come in and we’re already up to our necks in debt. Remember Liz Truss’s Mini Budget, which so catastrophically played fast and loose with the rules here and picked a fight with financial markets? Hmm, so on to...

3. Austerity. The Labour backbenchers won’t have this. In which case…

4. Inflation and interest rates. Not her call but the Bank of England’s. If the BoE felt able to reduce interest rates with inflation still at 3.8% then the interest we’re paying on debt would fall. But they are not playing ball so that leaves us with ….

5. TAX! Really the only immediate option in town. Hence the doom and gloom.

What’s in store?

There is a lot of speculation on what may or may not happen. Capital Gains Tax, tax-free cash from pensions, property tax on high value homes, rental income, gifting for inheritance tax purposes... The list goes on.

It feels inevitable that almost everyone will pay more tax over the coming 12 months as frozen thresholds progressively drag more people into higher tax brackets. And then there will be an array of other changes to collectively raise the money needed whilst avoiding the bigger levers of income tax and VAT, which Labour has promised not to do (although I wouldn’t fall off my perch if income tax were at least considered…).

I continue to get a lot of questions about this. My general response is that if you're planning to do something anyway over the coming 12 months, then you may as well get on with it. Maybe that is gifting some money to the kids, maybe it’s taking some tax-free cash from a pension. Setting up a bare trust for the grandkids. Or paying into an ISA or selling some shares.

Some things, like property sales, can’t be rushed. Some things can’t be changed, like not being allowed to take tax-free cash before you're 55. So, I’m afraid there is no point in worrying, we just wait to see what happens.

And if it’s anything else, and not something you would ordinarily be doing, I just don’t think it’s prudent to act on speculation and "What-Ifs". For bigger moves involving sizeable sums of money, taking financial advice can be worth its weight in gold.

Markets remain high

Finally, in other news, many investors are feeling quite chuffed, but also nervous. Most things are riding high, although we saw glittery gold come off this week. India is featured in a new article and I’ll be taking a look at Japan next week.

For those who want to keep it simple a ready-made option can be a fantastic option, removing all the brain-fry. You can see updated performance figures for the main options out there. The average high risk portfolio has returned 13.6% over the last 12 months and the average low-risk has returned 4.9%.

Have a lovely weekend, everyone.

Holly

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[1] Boring Money Business, Online Investing Report 2025