Category : Current financial events

Gambling or rent?

  The mass media are finally catching up.  So are the “experts”.   We’ve started to get stories about people borrowing money from payday lenders to pay their rent, such as this in the Guardian.   I said a couple … Continue reading

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Overspending at Christmas

  There’s something about Christmas. It’s a time of giving, being happy etc.     And of spending money.   There were some figures in the papers last week, from research by the Halifax.   They said that why we … Continue reading

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Greed isn’t good, it’s one of the 7 deadly dwarfs of the apocalypse!

    Quite reasonably, people have pointed out that Boris Johnson has got it wrong     That’s a good article, although it isn’t as funny as Jeremy Hardy’s brilliant comment on The News Quiz, that formed the title of this … Continue reading

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Payday Loans

  There’s lots of furore about payday loans.  They’re being blamed for causing debt and depression, being denounced in the House of Commons, the companies offering them are vilified in the newspapers.     Now they are a really bad … Continue reading

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What do you need?

  I read a headline in the Metro the other day, “Families dragged into red by £140-a-month mobiles”.   It’s a reasonable article, about how the number of households falling behind on contract payments has trebled since the iPhone was launched … Continue reading

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Gambling

  I got asked to comment for a piece on gambling in Men’s Health magazine.  Apparently increasing numbers of people are looking to gambling as a way out of financial trouble.    Sadly, the magazine doesn’t hand out copies for … Continue reading

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Financial Education 2013

  There’s good news, and bad news.   The good is that people seem to be realising one of the core messages of this site, the training I do and the book – money isn’t a goal, it’s a means … Continue reading

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How far is poverty?

  There were some figures in a report  (by insurer L & G) recently that make quite scary reading.   Essentially, the average household in the UK is 18 days away from poverty.   So if the main breadwinner unexpectedly died or … Continue reading

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Banking regulations and tax loopholes – yawn.

  There were a couple of articles in the free London papers on Friday that suggest that the powers that be still don’t understand human behaviour.   It would be funny, except for the fact that they show that the … Continue reading

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Reward for what?

  This article was written for Mindful Money in January 2012.  They seem to have taken it off their site, but I think it is still relevant.  I wrote it for them rather than putting it here originally because it’s … Continue reading

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