Finance

Are you in debt? It’s such a horrible feeling. As the StepChange TV ad shows, it’s enough to keep you awake at night. So it’s good to know there’s a bunch of sensible and creative advice available about dealing with existing debts and steering clear of debt in the first place. The StepChange Debt Charity helps around…read more

Martin Lewis from Moneysupermarket has been campaigning for ages to get money-savvy skills taught in British schools. When you think about it, it seems crazy not to. But the process of change is ridiculously slow and it doesn’t look like schools will be adopting the policy any time soon. Luckily the Aussie author Vivi Friedgut,…read more

Ah, the olden days. When I was a student back in the early 1980s, we got a grant. And we didn’t have to pay it back. I only qualified for the minimum grant because my folks were reasonably well off. They paid me an allowance for the three years while I was at art college…read more

I spent fifteen years in financial services direct marketing. During my time in career purgatory I made it my mission to bring Plain English into insurance. I gave it my best shot, making myself very unpopular in the process, but completely and utterly failed! Four top ten British insurers later, when I finally escaped the…read more

When I was a little girl I had a savings account, set up for me by my granny Molly. Over the years I lost my bank book and forgot about it, and at the same time poor Granny Moll descended into dementia. When she died we found the paperwork and tracked the account down. It…read more

I’ve covered numerous ways to save energy over the past three years or so, everything from room-by-room energy saving tips to revolutionary energy efficient thermostats and free solar panels. But I’ve almost come to a halt. Unless someone does something drastic or invents some mind-blowing gadget, what else is there to say? This is what…read more

Good old BBC. To complement their consumer rights focused Ripoff Britain TV series, there’s a wealth of excellent information on their website about how to safeguard your finances. There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’ve been taken for a ride. If you let it, it can prey on your mind and wake you up at…read more

A bit of fun for a cold, wet March Friday… We’ve already scoured the Oxford English dictionary for phrases that mean ‘broke’ and  ’rolling in it’, so I though I’d gather together all the words I can possibly find for ‘money’. Here they are, sixty three of them,  a huge number of words and phrases…read more