Savers should look on the bright side

Savers have it tough at the moment, with the government particularly keen to plunder their piggy banks. But what's new? Building and keeping your wealth has never been easy - but today's savers shouldn't be too downhearted. If you can see out this latest attack on your assets, you'll have the pick of some good opportunities.

Savers can be forgiven for feeling a bit persecuted right now.

Interest rates are being slashed, so they're earning nothing on their savings. Newspaper columnists focus on how savers should be forced to spend, to bail out companies and individuals left collapsing under their self-inflicted debt burdens. Property pundits ponder how we can push house prices higher, as if high property prices are a good thing.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.