I am not surprised. For far too many years the financial service industry has smothered itself in complete jargon, essentially to bewilder the consumer and conceal poor value for money .

Successive UK governments have not helped, making some areas of personal finance such as pension or tax related issues impenetrable to understand, to some of the finest brains in Britain.

Indeed, on such occasion they have been instrumental in causing some of the biggest problems to impact up personal finance world. A good example is mortgages interest rates.

It is against this existing backdrop that I write a series of articles related to personal finance and then seek to further discuss Planning your retirement.

Wherever possible, I will try compare personal finance views and then seek to cut the verbiage and highlight complex financial areas in simple, good old plain English.

And I don't suspect that this will be no easy task. Indeed, I will spend many a Friday or even Saturday night burning the midnight oil and banging my head against the study wall in attempt to penetrate the deepest bowels of the current personal finance world.

This and subsequent articles on the topic of personal finance will not actively solve your personal finance worries - that is completely down to you.

But if it helps to expand your knowledge or indeed understanding of the personal finance world, or if provides you with just one tip to go out and improve your knowledge of personal finance, these articles may indeed proved a worthy aim.