Being self-employed can give you greater freedom over how you work, who you work with and how you build your future. However, that independence also means taking greater responsibility for your own financial safety net. For an employee, being unable to work might mean turning to employer sick pay, workplace life cover or other company benefits. If you work for yourself, those protections may simply not exist, which poses the question: what would happen financially if illness,

Investing always involves risk. The challenge is not avoiding it completely, but understanding how much risk is appropriate for you. Some people are comfortable seeing their investments rise and fall in value. Others find even relatively small market movements unsettling. Neither reaction is necessarily right or wrong. What matters is whether the level of risk you are taking reflects your goals, your timescale, your wider finances and how much loss you could realistically cop

When people think about life insurance, they often picture one large lump sum being paid to their family after they die. That money might be used to repay the mortgage, clear debts or provide financial security for the years ahead. However, a lump sum is not the only way life cover can support the people you leave behind. Family income benefit is a form of term life insurance that pays regular amounts over a set period following a valid claim. Instead of asking your family to