Christmas is over and done with for another year and the tree has been taken down in the Bloomfield Household. It was a lovely Christmas seeing the children open their presents and get excited at all the lovely new toys they had received.

The shopping was predominantly done by me this year and to be honest, I could not tell you the exact figure of how much we spent on the kids, each other, family members, even though we did agree on a budget. Then you have to take into consideration the extra food we bought as well as extra Christmas decorations, gift wrap etc the list could go on! The fact that I didn’t know what I had spent scares me a little and this left me with one question,

What is/was the average amount spent for Christmas 2019?

Having recently suffered a loss of my own and simultaneously having the family of a client go through the same my mind has turned to the various ways in which we can fund our funerals to remove the burden from our families of worrying about how to pay for the funeral.

"How much will my funeral cost?" is a difficult question to answer there are a huge number of variables from the obvious like cremation or burial to where you happen to be living at the moment, the table below from the Royal London National Funeral Costs Index shows the variation even just in the North East of England.

Many moons ago John wrote a helpful guide for first-time homebuyers that not only covered mortgages and associated insurances but also a lot of practical advice on buying your first home including viewings, estate agents, conveyancing and practical tips for budgeting etc. we used to get great feedback on how useful it was. As things changed over time it became a little out of date so he withdrew it intending to update it at some point and now that I have taken over the vast majority of the mortgage work here at Bloomfield Financial I thought I would pick up where he left off and get a new guide out there.

So I thought before I get going properly I would ask you what as a First Time Buyer you would like to see in the guide? And if you're not a first-time buyer then what do you wish you had been told when you were?