Saturday 31 May 2008

Starbuck’s or megabucks?

The miracle that is compound interest never ceases to amaze me.

An improbably named financial planner Malcolm Cuthbert is quoted in today’s Times as saying that if 35 year olds put the £1.80 a day they spent on a daily cup of coffee into their pension pots instead, at age 65 they’d get £3,843 more every year for the rest of their lives.
Wow! Worth suffering chronic caffeine withdrawal for I’d say.

Sunday 25 May 2008

Simonne's hot tip for budgeting on the go!

Hey, I’ve just discovered a nifty little budgeting tool that you can download onto your mobile phone.

You keep track of day-to-day spending by recording it on your phone. It lets you set your own spending limit on things like food & drink, clothes or entertainment. Then you compare actual spending against the limit you set. Much easier than scrambling around for a notebook when you’ve spent £3.40 on a sandwich! You choose how you want your spending reported - daily, weekly or monthly.

It’s free to download (just the cost of connecting to the internet for a short while) but your phone needs to be WAP enabled. You can download the ‘spendometer’ by visiting Credit Action’s website: http://www.creditaction.org.uk/spendometer.html or by opening your phone's web browser and going to: http://www.spendometer.co.uk/spendometer2.jad or http://www.spendometer.co.uk/spendometer2.jar. It will then try to download and install automatically.

You can now have fun staying in control of your spending!

Monday 19 May 2008

Simonne’s tip for surviving the credit crunch

With the credit crunch continuing to bite, banks and building societies are becoming increasingly selective about who they’ll lend to. So, if you’re planning to borrow any money or apply for new credit in the near future, make sure you get hold of a copy of your credit report. You can then see if there are any mistakes on your record and you can use the information to help you hunt out the best deals from lenders that are likely to accept you. Use a comparison website like Money Supermarket (http://www.moneysupermarket.com/) to compare loans and credit cards without leaving a ‘footprint’ on your record. And try Experian (http://www.creditexpert.co.uk/) for a free credit report provided you sign up for monthly membership which you can cancel within 30 days.

Friday 9 May 2008

Sheconomics...Dear reader,

It's been pretty hectic on planet Sheconomics lately.

The book Sheconomics is motoring along and we've been getting onto its pages everything women have told us about their relationship with money. That's no mean feat. Or should I say no mean feet given the shoe-habits some have divulged.

Anyway we're really tuning into who will love the book. If you recognise yourself on the list below it'll be worth spending your well-earned money on a book about, well... about managing money:

o Every time you feel happy/ sad/anything, you celebrate by shopping
o You’re struggling to understand why there’s always so much month left at the end of the money
o You’re in debt up to your eye-balls and have just got to do something about it
o You tremble with fear/guilt/excitement at the mere mention of money and have decided it’s time to get a grip
o You’re incredibly sorted in all areas of your life but somehow, along the way – you forgot to get a pension/make investments/provide for your financial future.

Back soon!