Hiya
This is an area of finance I specialise in and have a good bit of information on. I'd say overall, you'd be best off finding out as much as you can from resources online and then buying recommended books etc if you so wish.
I think you'll find Moneysavingexpert as being the most popular and well known of personal finance websites that covers all and more of the sections/elements you've mentioned so far. The forum is very busy there as you'd imagine with it being so popular!
I personally find the overall look and feel of the site to be very 'overcrowded' and only visit every so often, for building up your knowledge of what suits you're particular individual circumstances - it's still an excellent resource.
I really recommend The Motley Fool - I've been on that site now for around 4/5 years and find the layout and use to be better than MSE. Great thing with it is that is also has a USA site as well, and I think with one log in you can access both - The discussion forums are fantastic - alot of fantastic advice and insights etc.
I've mentioned it before and semi shamless plug - I'm revamping my own Personal finance website with an evolution of ideas to cover personal finance tracking and monitoring - using the information from the above two, and many more specific financial sites - your own aims and goals are easily viewable and crucially, allow 'adjustments' or 'changes' if required. More on that once I get more of the framework built by my Web Developer!
My background is Financial Accounting and Tax application IT, with a bias on Technical and Systems, as I worked for what many of you have probably heard, Intuit, I worked on the devlopment, support and testing of the well known Quicken program and the UK version of TurboTax, so I'm going to be re-launching one of my websites to give a specific slant on personal finance tracking.
To give you more URL's - the following are the ones I have in my own favourites list, some of the more specialised ones I'll leave out as they cover specific technical aspects.
www.ft.com - quite in depth analysis and reports but does have alot of information
Yahoo Finance pages - yahoo home page and click on finance
MSN Money pages - MSN home page and 'money' link
Experian -
www.creditexpert.co.uk - it's a good idea to track your credit rating over time
Quidco - I'm sure you know about this one - great for getting money back on everyday items as well as more shopping related things.
www.hmrc.gov.uk - dont forget to look up on the 'official' line of things and info provided by the government
www.direct.gov.uk - great for checking various elements and being able to file online etc
I think a good strategy would be to research as much as you can about the elements important to you and get a good basic understanding and then search out some good recommended IFA's (independant financial advisor) so discuss more - be careful as many of them will have 'specific' products they'll want to push/sell than others and they do get bit of stick similar to what Estate Agents get sometimes! but shouldn't be too hard to speak to a few to get a good view overall
Other posters will of course hopefully provide more links too!
cheers, hope this helps!
DtM! West London & Slough UK!
