Written for The Telegraph

‘I moved to Australia to be a doctor – now I’m paid double’

Dr Tom Petrie had worked as a junior doctor for only a year before he realised he needed to move abroad – for the sake of both his mental health and his career. “The moment I realised the NHS wasn’t going to be for me was when I had four 13-hour night shifts in a row, I was given five wards to watch,” says the 24-year-old. “The only assistance I was offered was the phone number of one senior doctor who was covering five times more than I was.”Now, he’s in Darwin, Australia, getting paid almost d...

The countries where you get two state pensions

Do you claim two or more state pensions from separate countries? If you’re interested in telling your story, get in touch via rob.white@telegraph.co.uk. Most people are happy to qualify for one state pension. But, by design or happy coincidence, some retirees will qualify for not one, but two state pensions – and enjoy annual increases for life.According to the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, the most basic retirement requires an annual income of £14,400 for singles and £22,400 for co...

Winter fuel raid threatens to make thousands of pensioners ill

Labour’s raid on pensioners threatens to plunge Britain into a health crisis this winter, the Government has been warned. Campaign groups, charities and Conservatives fear that thousands more elderly retirees now risk becoming ill due to Rachel Reeves’s decision to strip winter fuel payments from around 10 million pensioners. Only those who receive pension credits will be eligible for the extra support. The Chancellor withdrew the annual allowance, worth up to £300, after claiming Labour had inh...

How much it costs to send your children to Britain’s top university cities

Filling up the car with suitcases and boxes to move across the country is a rite of passage for teenagers heading to university for freshers’ week.For many students it is the first time they will live alone, dealing with rent, bills and a weekly food shop – not forgetting the annual £9,250 tuition fees.  To fund this, more than half of students take out a loan.But even for those borrowing large sums, the Bank of Mum and Dad is often still expected to make up the shortfall between what the Govern...