Good afternoon and welcome to The 99: the home of financial news and insights made simple. You can count on accessible, trustworthy, and unbiased news insights every Monday.

This month’s explainer is replaced by an annual favourite: the GFY Crowdsourced Gift Guides. A series in which we look to you for the best gift ideas and purchases of 2024.

Your 2025 Financial Calendar 🗓️

Below you’ll find your financial calendar for 2025: a schedule of the important financial dates in the year with links that easily save to your calendar.

Community feedback 💬

As we plan for 2025, we’d love to hear about your financial priorities, interests, and goals. What would you like us to cover next year and how can we improve the weekly email? Reply to this email to let us know.

Today is the last news round-up before Christmas, but we’ll be back shortly after with plenty of New Year financial organisation support, guides, and resources. In the meantime, have a lovely Christmas break and thank you for being part of the GFY community this year.

Alice & the GFY team x

Some of the best community posts of 2024…

39%

That’s the percentage of gig workers who have run out of savings.

The number of the week is in partnership with responsible lender Creditspring who have commissioned research into the gig economy and are calling for the current system to be transformed to improve the credit market’s transparency, safety and accessibility for all in the UK. 

Data from independent research agency Opinium, who surveyed 500 gig workers between 6^th-12^th November 2024.

2025 Financial Fortune Telling

+ Your Financial Calendar

What to expect and what we know for sure

What is happening?

💡 Click on the event to save it to your calendar

What is likely to happen in 2025?

1. Gradual Easing of Interest Rates by the BoE 

The BoE is expected to gradually lower interest rates in 2025 as inflation continues to slow. However, rates are likely to remain higher than in the 2010s.

Why?

According to the OECD, Chancellor Reeves' budget measures may improve the economy in the short term but could slow the pace of borrowing cost reductions.

2. A Stronger Housing Market & Increased Demand for Homes 

Rightmove predicts a busier housing market in 2025, with increased buyer demand, anticipating around 1.15m transactions to be completed.

Why

⏱️ In anticipation of more favourable conditions in the Autumn Budget, potential home buyers have been delaying their purchases.

🤝 Buyers are looking to close more deals ahead of the reduction in stamp duty threshold in March 2025.*

• Recap: In October's Autumn Budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves cut the first-time buyer stamp duty threshold from £425,000 to £300,000.

✂️ Lower rates are anticipated to boost buyer confidence, as seen with the BoE’s November 2024 rate cut, which increased house sales by 26% and inquiries by 23% (Rightmove). Mortgage rates may gradually drop in 2025, improving affordability, though house prices are expected to rise, particularly in London, as more people return to city offices.

🏠 Further rate cuts could mean more people will choose to move in 2025.

De La Rue in discussions about external investment

De La Rue, a company headquartered in Basingstoke which produces bank notes for the Bank of England (and some other central banks) has announced that it is in active talks about potential external investment in its business.

What’s happened?

Earlier this year, De La Rue sold a different part of its group to a firm based in the US, called Crane NXT, in a deal of £300 million.

What else do De La Rue do?

As well as bank notes, De La Rue also produces identity documents, for example the page in passports which displays the personal bio-data used for security and identity verification purposes.

Key facts:

🪙 De La Rue is more than 200 years old, and its two focus areas are currency production and identification / authentication solutions.

📍The company’s head office is in Basingstoke, Hampshire, and the Group has several other locations around the world.

💷 They recently announced a half-year profit of £7.3 million (lower than the £7.9 million reported for the same period last year).

A lost contract

A few years ago De La Rue lost out on the contract to produce the new blue non-EU UK passports to Gemalto, a company which was acquired by the large international security group (Thales) in 2019 and has its global headquarters in France.

The decision to award the new passport contract to Gemalto led to criticism from Brexit supporters at the time.

De La Rue Trivia:

The UK passport’s design includes security features including UV-reactive inks, microtext, and optically variable inks (which change color depending on the viewing angle).

Christmas Tunes – who tops the rich list?

Selling out or sleighing all the way?

Many of the most popular Christmas songs started their life as one-hit wonders, but as the season (and the royalties) come around each year, all the big names in the music world know that a yuletide tune can offer a luxury retirement.

The likes of Sabrina Carpenter, Sia and Coldplay have all shaken off the cringe factor and jingled all the way to the bank with new festive hits.

But which songs generate the most cash each year (UK)?

Not in the Christmas charts but want a luxury retirement anyway? Read the Hot Girl Retirement Guide

The 2024 Crowdsourced Gift Guides

It’s GFY’s annual gift guide series! A crowdsourced project where we look to you for the best gift ideas and purchases of 2024.

How the lists work

• You submit the best purchases you've made and gifts you've received on Instagram stories.‍

• We count responses and list up to 10 items per price range.

• Where possible, we find an independent retailer to link to in addition to a mainstream retailer. See the 'Indie' link for this.

• Where affiliate links are available, we will use them but this will not inform what is featured.

• We have found the best prices at the time of publication.

/

Sources/Read More:

Bank-note makers De La Rue in discussions about external investment

• Read More on Standard

• Read More on This is Money

• Read More on Investors Chronicle

• Read more on FT

• Read more on Delarue

• Read more on Gov.UK

• Read more on ThalesGroup

What to Expect in 2025

• Read More on Money Week

• Read More on Rightmove here and here

• Read More on The Standard

• Read More on Investopedia

• Read More on Money Week

• Read More on BBC

• Read More on Vanguard

Cashing in this Christmas – who tops the Christmas song rich list?

• Read More on Finance Monthly

• Read More on Evening Standard

• Read More on The Mirror

• Read More on The Economist

• Read More on Capital FM

• Read More on NPR