The Government has set up a new money advice website which can offer free, clear and unbiased advice to people who want help managing their money. This website has been set up as part of a national awareness campaign which aims to help the nation take charge of its money.

There are different sections on the website aimed at people in different phases of their life, you can do a money health check, get advice and use interactive money planners to help you work things out. There is a parents guide to money for those with families wanting to plan, budget and save, a divorce and separation section to help you look at financial implications of separating from your partner, a pensions and retirement section for people wanting to maximise their finances in retirement and more.

Within each of the sections, the site is further broken down and offers some really excellent help and advice for people. For example, in the Parents guide to money section, you can look at everything from planning for your baby financially, to going back to work and childcare, entitlements such as child benefit, tax credits, free vitamins and extra money for kids with disabilities. There are sections about saving schemes for children, and how your state pension is protected if you look after a child, and how dads can pay into a pension for their partner too. There are also sections about borrowing money that explain different options from store cards and catalogue shopping to credit unions, and give information on which methods are expensive and which are less so.

Each section of the site is laid out clearly and gives lots of easy to read information that makes it much easier to follow and understand what is being said than many money sites do.
One section of the site is about money news and looks at things which are important as they happen. For example at the moment it has a piece on ‘contactless payment cards’ explaining what they are, and how they work, who they’re available to, and what the difference is between these and chip and pin cards.

There’s a whole section dedicated to comparison charts. These relate to different types of products, from mortgages to savings accounts, endowments and more, and each takes you through a series of questions before showing you anything so that when you do get shown the information, it’s relevant to your personal situation and not just generic information that might pertain to anyone. The tables won’t recommend which product you should go for, but they do let you do a comprehensive comparison of what’s out there.

Overall this is a site which many people may well find useful and one which the government has actually set up really well. It’s laid out well, and is easy to navigate as well as being full of some really useful information.