Cut last minute Christmas costs – exclusive interview with Santa

‘Twas the night before Christmas, well… almost You’re tired, stressed and your bank account looks as if it’s done 10 rounds with Joe Frasier. Yet still we plunge into the crowded high street to buy more food and presents. Are we brave or just plain foolhardy? The good news is that it’s still possible to cut those last minute Christmas costs and you don’t have to take our word for it. For these final tips before Christmas (watch out for our New Year advice) we’ve turned to the man himself, Santa. In this exclusive interview he gives us the snowdown […]

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Christmas shopping tricks designed to make us spend & how to counteract them

1. In posh shops it’s about establishing relationships We all hate bored shop assistants who seem more interested in what’s going on under their nails than our desire to purchase. But shops which train and encourage friendly, helpful assistants are being very astute. The better the relationship between assistant and shopper the harder it is not to buy. Glamorous, high-end shops  with lots of space, but not very intiutive layouts, are actually creating the ideal environment for friendly, well-informed assistants to step forward and offer to help: “I’m sure we have that in modoms (sic) colour and there is a […]

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Stamp duty changes

The planned stamp duty changes announced by Chancellor George Osborne in his autumn statement come into effect today. HM Treasury has produced a really useful two page guide and you can download a copy here Under the old rules, you would have paid tax at a single rate on the entire property price. Now you will only pay the rate of tax on the part of the property price within each tax band – like income tax. 98% of home buyers should benefit. […]

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Cyber Monday 2014 poses a very real danger to your wallet

Cyber Monday 2014 is this Monday, December 1. It follows hard on the heels of Black Friday, is yet another American import and once again is about retailers netting profits rather than you netting a bargain. Pay attention. Just in the same way that Black Friday ‘bargains’ generate a shopping surge on the high street, so Cyber Monday tempts us to spend with an array of online bargains and deals. But if you get caught up in all the marketing hype how do you actually know you’re gettting a real bargain? And unlike phsyical sales in stores, it’s just so […]

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Why Black Friday 2014 gives retailers a rosy glow

Black Friday 2014 falls on November 28. If there’s anything black about it’s the feeling your liable to get when you look at next month’s bank statement and discover that your desire to bag a bargain has put you in the red. We imported Black Friday from the US. It  always takes place on the last Friday in November, which has long been the start of Christmas shopping on the other side of the Atlantic and follows on from the spending and consumption that surrounds Thanksgiving. Black Friday 2014 is a tricksy little marketing device. Under the guise of ‘bargains’ […]

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Full competition inquiry into banking

Don’t wait for the verdict on banks, energy companies and supermarkets. Treat them as guilty if you want to look after your money. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) today announced it will carry out a ‘full competition inquiry’ into current account and small business banking markets. In its cross hairs are ‘the big 4′ – Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Lloyds and HSBC, who together control around 75% of the current account market. It has widened the scope of its inquiry into banking first announced in July. Only last week the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) announced an investigation into […]

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Do rich people think differently?

Or does thinking differently make you rich? Okay, here’s a thing… At Money Fight Club, we’ve long been interested in whether people who are wealthy, or who become wealthy, are psychologically different to the rest of us? Articles and documentaries abound showing us how self-made billionaires work 36 hours a day, never sleep or take holidays and have a singularity of purpose and an appetite for risk that makes the rest of us look like lightweights. Do we humble, not so wealthy mortals want to endure the pain that comes with the gain? Yes, it would be nice to be […]

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Save money on your supermarket shop

Okay, I know we bang on and on about how to save money on food in the supermarket; the importance of checking what you already have in your fridge and cupboards and making a list so you don’t get smoozed by all that supermarket marketing. But it really does make a difference to the cost of your shop. Whether you shop at Aldi, Lidl, Asda, Sainsbury’s or the Harrods food hall, shed loads of your dosh goes on baked beans and aubergines (sometime mouldy aubergines, found rank and disgusting at the bottom of the veg chiller two weeks later ‘cos […]

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Bank interest rates – will they never learn

Just when we in the Money Fight Club dojo think the banks cannot get any worse, Barclays does its best to prove us wrong. Way to go Barclays. The bank has announced it’s moving 2.3 million savers (that’s you folks) into new tax-free individual savings accounts (ISAs) from November. Two thirds of them will be getting a worse interest rates than the one they are at the moment. Worse interest rate? Now. Surely some mistake? The best rates at the moment are over 2% but from November the best rates on accounts holding up to £14,999 will be 1.39%. Yet, […]

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Gas doesn’t just come out of pipes

Centrica, who own British Gas, have just announced operating profits for the first half of the year down 35%. It blames warmer weather. Yeah. Right. It was soooooooooooooo warm in January, February, March… (The figures cover the six months to June). Positively balmy. Or do we mean barmy? If people were spending less on fuel it reflects only one thing – that the cost of heating our homes has risen ridiculously. People would rather be cold than face sky high bills. The only people feeling comfortably cozy are the energy firms. Energy regulator Ofgem is reported as estimating that ‘the […]

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