Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Win a £500 lastminute.com gift card from Cross Border Financial Planning

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This week we are running another great competition.

One lucky reader will win a £500 lastminute.com gift card which can be used on anything from flights to hotels and package holidays.

This competition is sponsored Cross Border Financial Planning, a financial planning company run by a keen HfP reader. Cross Border (website here) is focused on expats (either foreign nationals living in the UK or British nationals living abroad) and people whose lifestyle sees them spending substantial amounts of time in different countries.

Cross Border Financial Planning

About Cross Border Financial Planning

A lot of Cross Border’s clients are globally mobile individuals and families who spend much more of their time in the air than the average person. Getting the most out of their frequent flyer miles is often considered to be important to them and they’re quite happy to devote time to ensuring this. However, when it comes to their cross border financial planning, many appreciate the importance of it but may not devote as much time to it.

(And let’s be frank. The savings made from effective financial planning could easily be enough to afford an upgrade to First Class! It’s just that, for many people, efficient cross border financial planning just isn’t as exciting as earning miles and then finding a creative way to convert that into a First Class suite.)

Much like collecting and spending frequent flyer miles, effective financial planning is all about understanding what you’ve got, what your options are and how you can maximise the potential use. If you are a British expatriate or a foreign national who lives in the UK, the financial planning opportunities (and potential pitfalls) are often different to those that a UK citizen living in the UK would encounter.

Understanding this and incorporating it into a financial plan is the type of work that Cross Border Financial Planning provide for their clients. The benefits of cross border financial planning can range from reducing costs and saving tax, to simply having a more streamlined plan that helps you understand how your assets in different countries come together and what they’ll provide you now and in the future.

The financial planning solutions that Cross Border Financial Planning provide take into account the tax, currency and legal implications for the country the client currently lives in and the country that they plan to move to or formerly lived in. The main areas that they specialise in are:

US / UK cross border financial planning
Australian / UK cross border financial planning
Multi-currency investment strategies
QROPS / UK pension planning for British Expats
Cross border court ordered pension sharing service

Cross Border Financial Planning Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Financial Services Register no. 736360

If you think it is time to take a fresh look at your cross border financial planning, email Edward Cole at ecole@cbfp.co.uk with any questions or current issues that you have and he can let you know if Cross Border can help. Cross Border’s website is here if you want to learn more.

Our competition

There is one prize of a £500 lastminute.com gift card to be won.

The gift card is valid for six months.

The full list of rules is in the Gleam entry widget below.

How to enter

We are using the same entry system we’ve been using for competitions in the past. Simply fill out the Gleam app at the bottom of this post (or click through to the Gleam website) and leave your name and email address. That’s it.

Your details remain confidential and will not be passed to Cross Border. Head for Points will not use your email address for any other purpose.

The rules

Here is a summary of the rules. The official version can be found by clicking ‘Terms & Conditions’ in the entry widget below.

You must be at least 18 years old

You must be a resident of the United Kingdom and must be accessing this website from inside the UK

Entries are limited to one per person

The competition closes at midnight, London time, on Sunday 7th October 2018

The winner will be selected automatically by the software which collates the entries. The winner will be contacted by email and must confirm their details, including their UK residency, within 3 days.

The competition is promoted by Cross Border Financial Planning and Head for Points. Lastminute.com is not a promoter of the competition.

If you cannot see the entry widget below, please click here and you will be directed to a special website to enter.

Good luck.

Comments (30)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Dave Barron says:

    Another great competition – well done Rob and Anika and thanks to both of you for everything you do.

    Now as with previous competitions let’s see how long it takes someone to moan they can’t enter as abroad! Personally I’m hoping everyone else is unable to enter as then by default I would win ????????

    • Louie says:

      That will be me! Just seems ironic that as a Brit living in Australia who has put many financial decisions in the “too difficult” box and thus is a prime candidate for Mr Cole’s services, I’m out by the very fact of my “expatness”.

      • Peter K says:

        Or use a VPN!

      • Jane says:

        Google Chrome. Download extension FreeMyBrowser. Works with iPlayer too. I have recently used in Portugal, Spain, Germany, Finland and the three Baltic’s – you can completely turn off the extension when not required.

        • fadi9714@gmail.com says:

          FreeMyBrowser and seemingly all VPN won’t work for iPlayer TV because BBC auto block based on using a VPN. (I’m in Jordan)

          “BBC iPlayer only works in the UK. Sorry, it’s due to rights issues.”

        • Shoestring says:

          Cheers Jane I’ll give it a go

        • Jane says:

          Replying to message below: clear your browser cache. Choose United Kingdom. It does work, although I haven’t tested in Jordan. But 15+ other countries.

    • ankomonkey says:

      How long until someone complains about not being able to enter from outside UK and how long before someone posts the last 3 characters from their postcode?

  • Crafty says:

    Suggestion – competitions only open for 24 hours, rather than a week, which should help to ensure they are won by legit HFP readers rather than being picked up by comping forums and won by volume players?

    • Rob says:

      Basically …. the bigger the prize, the more exposure the prize provider wants in return. This generally means a week – or, as we did for Qatar giving away flights once, a month. Anything under £250 will be 24 hours.

      We can actually track inbound clicks from comping sites and it isn’t that much.

  • Sam says:

    Very good timing. I was searching for this yesterday

  • Peter K says:

    Thanks for organising the comp Rob & Anika.

  • mike says:

    rob – are we to expect these plugs, prizes aside, instead of proper articles on a regular basis going forward?

    • Rob says:

      This is the last one in the diary at the moment 🙂 But as our overheads are £1250 per week before I earn a penny, we need to squeeze out a few quid where we can.

      Cross Border seem to be good guys, they came into the office to meet us and seem to know their stuff. Being based in Wiltshire they don’t have the overheads of a London-based advisory group.

  • Martin says:

    Err Rob

    Surely they would want British expats to be enterting this? I.e non-residents!

  • daban says:

    Cross Border Financial Planning is all about avoiding taxes. It is immoral

    • Shoestring says:

      There’s never been anything immoral about avoiding taxes! Most people in most countries do their best to arrange their affairs to minimise taxes due. All (it is hoped) within the law, of course.

      • Mark2 says:

        If not within the law it’s Tax Evasion.

        • Shoestring says:

          daban was talking about tax avoidance, which is normal, morally acceptable behaviour. No different to choosing ISAs to park your money rather than high st bank a/cs.

        • Genghis says:

          Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance is what everyone should be doing.

        • Mark2 says:

          ISAs are Tax Avoidance, as is flying from Dublin etc. to avoid APD.

    • John says:

      Taxes are immoral.

      • Shoestring says:

        Grossly unfair in the extent of their reach & application, certainly!

    • James says:

      There are however substantial grey areas now in tax avoidance schemes which border on evasion [avoidance on a Monday becoming evasion on a Tuesday] – it’s not as clear cut as the 1912 definition of avoidance/evasion. And on top of that, I wouldn’t classify government mandated schemes [such as ISAs] as tax avoidance at all – those are more akin to tax minimisation. On the other hand – cross border taxation often means double taxation. So ‘avoiding’ double taxation is – in my books a good thing. Unfortunately, the same schemes trying to stop double taxation can lead to double non-taxation – the classic definition of tax evasion. Which is why anyone that says ‘tax avoidance is legal’ and ‘tax evasion is illegal’ really should get up to speed within the tax world of the past thirty years.

      • Shoestring says:

        Not planning on paying any income tax on my pension 🙂

        There’s jurisdictions & jurisdictions…!

    • Rob says:

      But if you are working and/or living across different countries it isn’t that simple.

      If you are concerned about this, I recommend putting all of your Amazon purchases through our link, as I pay very substantial amounts of tax on the commission they pay me, whilst Amazon will pay nothing on that bit of the money if you don’t 🙂

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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