Will you be a millionaire by 2016?
By Chris Gilchrist

An astonishing one-in-four of British households will be worth a million in just ten years say Barclays – but, unsurprisingly, the figures are fudged.

Now that a US dollar is worth just over 50p, a million bucks is not a big deal, and you need just £527,000 make you a dollar millionaire. But suppose your house is worth £200,000 then you only have enough money left over to generate an annual income of £16,000. Not exactly enough for a James Bond lifestyle.

More millionaires per capita than the US!
The more surprising point in the Barclays report is that it expects that by 2016 the UK will have a higher proportion (26%) of people with over $1 million than the US (16%) or Japan (22%).

An entrepreneur-friendly environment is one big factor. Another is soaring house prices in the South East (land and house prices in most of the US are still low by comparison with Europe because the US has plenty of spare land).

Halifax now reckons that by 2020 over 4.2 million homes (one-in-four) will be worth more than the threshold for inheritance tax. And that already, in one-in-seven parliamentary constituencies, the average house buyer pays over £7,500 in Stamp Duty.

Most of these areas are in the South East.
Diversities in wealth between North and South, city and country, London and the rest, and company bosses and workers have grown so wide that it often seems that several different countries occupy Great Britain at the same time (as well the constituent nations).

The phrase 'government help' should chill the blood
In one of these 'countries' first-time buyers can barely afford to climb aboard the wealth-building gravy train. Another survey undertaken by the Council of Mortgage Lenders says that over half of us think the government should do more to help them. Now that really is a bad idea.

Any attempt to subsidise FTBs simply results in escalating prices that make it even harder for them to buy, so it's completely pointless (study 1987-90 if you want the proof). All this survey shows is that most of us would rather be NIMBYs and pretend to have a conscience than accept the need to have more houses built near our nice little village or on a bit of over-subsidised, environmentally-unfriendly farmland.

So, against this background of Funny Money Land financial fantasy, let me welcome a really useful financial gimmick: the Lloyds TSB 'Save the Change' card. When you buy anything with your debit card, it will round the price up to the next pound and sweep the difference, from 1p to 99p, into a savings account.

You can't just rely on gimmicks
The Save the Change card imitates several successful American schemes that are claimed to be restoring the habit of virtuous savings to a profligate nation. I call it a gimmick because if you don't discipline yourself to save, really save, a meaningful proportion of your income, you will be poor in your old age and the extra 50ps and 60ps you put into your electronic Lloyds piggybank won't save you from disaster.