The money diet challenge

We’ve been talking a lot recently about how easy it is to confuse a “want” with a “need”. The fact is we need very little – food, water, somewhere to shelter and rest. Everything else is a want (yes, even new shoes and fast cars). Christmas spending is just around the corner (Black Friday, identified as a pre-festive spending peak, will take place on November 27 this year), so how can we get fighting fit and avoid wasting money on purchases that don’t really bring us any real, lasting benefit (or joy)? Welcome to the money diet challenge The aim […]

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Why spending money feels good

There are various ways of slicing and dicing consumers according to their psychological profiles. Instant gratifiers and deferred gratifiers is one broad cut. Deferred gratifiers are prepared to wait. Instant gratifiers less so. Fine when it comes to chocolate, more of an issue when it comes to high end consumer durables and credit cards. Why spending money feels good Chocolate and money are not so very different in terms of the impact they have on our brains. Think about our response to chocolate as it melts in our mouths… Long before chocolate has actually started to act on our body […]

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Packaged bank accounts – insurance you don’t want

Many years and billions of pounds of compensation for mis-sold payment protection insurance (PPI) later, customers are still being sold insurance they do not want. This week the Financial Services Ombudsman (FSO) revealed that just over half of its new complaints are still from people who were sold PPI that they did not need.  THE FSO also revealed that non-PPI complaints were up by 45% in the first half of the year. And the star performer in the complaints hit parade was packaged banks accounts. These accounts cost anything from £2 a month to £25 and offer insurance for travel, […]

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Cut home insurance costs – in minutes

I’m worth £600 an hour My time became worth £597.84 per hour this week when I challenged the price that my home insurer was planning to charge for my contents and buildings insurance. The policy is due for renewal at the end of August. It would be renewed automatically (auto renewal). It’s not a bad thing to set up, just in case, say,  you were away on holiday and forgot to get the policy renewed before departing, or had a family emergency and were distracted. Auto renewal means you are never without cover. Don’t wait for your insurer But you […]

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Get down and give us 10! Training to be money smart

If you’ve read the Money Fight Club book you already know that every chapter starts with an inspirational quote, most from boxers. As  the great Ali once said: “I’m a fighter. I believe in the eye-for-an-eye business. I’m no cheek turner. I got no respect for a man who won’t hit back. You kill my dog, you better hide your cat.” Wise words and just as applicable to your finances as your potential prowess in the ring. But, for the purposes of this blog, we want to focus on another quote in the book; from Smokin’ Joe Frazier: “You can […]

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A tale of two supermarket vouchers

The latest inflation figures showed that food prices are rising – along with petrol. This is no surprise to Money Fight Club. Part of our job is to monitor the tricks being played on us, every single week, by the supermarkets. A batch of supermarket vouchers currently doing rounds demonstrate the latest wheeze that’s designed to get us to spend more. At the till, when paying for my last weekly shop, I received a voucher that promised me five times as many points if I spent £60 or more in the following week. In other words, if I spent £20 […]

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Being human

Behavioural economics – no, don’t yawn yet While the rest of us get on with paying the bills and going to work, economists are slugging it out in grand intellectual style. What are they arguing about? Well, little old us, of course. At the centre of the fisticuffs is a big debate about whether we can be totally logical when it comes to money – weigh up the facts at hand and make coolly rationale decisions – or whether we are bound by our emotions and the merry dance they lead us across our personal financial landscape. Economic nudging This […]

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PENSIONS FREEDOM – top tips to help you avoid mistakes

1. WAIT Ignore anyone who offers help with liberating or investing your pension pot. Unless you have an urgent use or stupendous idea for how to use your pensions freedom right now – wait. Time costs a lot less than  bad decisions. Everyone over 55 has the right to a 45 minute free consultation through PensionWise. Be wary there are plenty of organisations that will pretend they can give you the same free advice. 2. THINK TAX The tax man is banking on getting an extra £3 billion from people liberating their pension pots over the next few years. While […]

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UK petrol prices – a license to burn money

For months we’ve been told that UK petrol prices could not fall further or faster because the refineries buy their fuel months ahead. Yeah, right. UK petrol prices rise again So it came as a surprise to see prices creeping up again ALREADY! The excuse, no doubt, is that this reflects the increase of a few dollars per barrel for Brent crude. The price of crude has moved from a low of $45 to above $60. With what can only be described as lightning speed the price per litre at my local filling station increased from 107.9p to 109.9p. With […]

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Blue Monday – good news about the most financially depressing day of the year

Blue Monday is coming up and so named because December’s pay cheque is often paid a day or two earlier and then January is a five week month, with many of us not seeing another pay cheque reach our bank account for another couple of weeks. When we worked out which day was Blue Monday we felt it fell on January 26. But the growing concensus is that it will actually fall on Monday, January 19. Sheeesh! You wouldn’t think people would be so keen to get there sooner, would yah? Why so blue, Monday? Credit card bills have landed […]

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