John Terry has not had the best 2010 so far. The crisis began when a woman famous for being out and about in her underwear was said to have had an affair with him. Since then, the knives have been out, and every aspect of his life has been fair game.

He has been accused of trying to make a little extra cash from renting out his box, although there's no confirmation he has actually ever done this. He has been accused of having a roving eye, and now the papers are focusing on his mortgage, which grew dramatically last year.

John has paid quite a price for all of this. He has been stripped of his captaincy, and suffered a huge blow to his reputation, and potentially his earning capacity. Who knows what is going on with his personal life, but it doesn't look terribly comfortable.

But the question is whether he is unusual. Are these unfortunate-looking activities the sign of a man who is too flawed to be relied on to kick a ball about the park, or would we all struggle if the heat was turned up on our finances?

Conversations about money are never easy, but when you've got bad news, or you need to broach something delicate, it can be easy for a constructive conversation about getting your finances back on track to descend into a destructive row.

Fortunately there are five tips which should help you tackle the subject and come out with your temper and your relationships intact.

Smoking in office doorways, bus shelters and beer gardens could soon be banned, as the government is considering an extension to the smoking ban.

The government has set a target of halving the proportion of adult smokers from more than one in five to one in ten by 2020. It could also decree plain packaging for cigarettes and impose a complete ban on cigarette vending machines.

And there's a hidden cost for smokers that could prove very expensive.

Both British expatriates working overseas, and foreigners with jobs in the UK are being stung with sky-high transfer fees and poor exchange rates.

Someone making three foreign exchange transactions through a high street bank each month would pay more than £1,000 in transfer fees and commission alone, a new study claims.

And that's without counting how much they could lose due to getting a poor exchange rate.

Maybe it says something about how our politicians live on a different planet and have no understanding of how us little people in the real world operate.

Or maybe it's just incompetence, but the Government's debt service, set up to help people struggling in one way or another to meet their financial commitments, is having to turn people away after a surge of 28% in the number of those seeking help, according to a report by the National Audit Office out today.

It has to be said that the service is well-received, with 81% of those who have used it saying that it helped them, it's just that the Government was obviously ill-prepared to deal with the numbers that flocked to use it. Clearly, that must mean they have no real idea of the extent of the debt problem with which ordinary people are seriously struggling.

I know, this is hardly the time of year to be talking about solar panels. When the sun came out this week and it was almost lunchtime before we had to turn the lights on, it was quite a shock to the system. The gloomy weather, and the UK's unique ability to generate cloudy skies all year round would seem to indicate that solar panels may not be such a brilliant idea in this country.

However, the government has announced a couple of schemes which mean it may just be worth considering solar panels.

So how does it work?

As January becomes a distant memory, I am now in a position to assess how well my cost-cutting resolutions have gone.

I'm feeling pretty virtuous and have certainly spent the month with the sense that I have denied myself quite a lot. I've been careful about what I buy and where I buy it. I've have only had one small impulse purchase (Sutton Seeds had an offer on perennials and I just couldn't resist).

So has it revolutionised my finances?

Moving out from home is a vital part of growing up. We flee the nest, find our financial feet, and make our own way in life. Of course, if we do it at a tender age, we're not going to move into a swanky new pad. The chances are we have to give up our comfortable home and parental TLC in favour of cheap, grim, shared accommodation. The sharing of a house with six people and only one shower is an important rite of passage.

Except it looks like the current generation of younger people are giving it a miss. Tempted by the comforts of home, they are just staying put.

So what's going on, and why is it such a disaster?

Most of us are probably aware that we spend more on our mobile phone tariff than we really need to; in fact a study of UK mobile customers found that 82% of us are on plans with minutes we don't use. That means we could save as much as £197 a year by switching to a cheaper tariff. Who really wants to spend hours trying to work out if a different deal would be cheaper though?

Luckily you don't have to. New service BillMonitor will do it for you! See how it works over the jump.

According to the latest YouGov poll on savings, we tucked away, on average, £776 over the three months to the end of December last year.

I can tell you one thing for certain: I didn't and I don't know anyone who did.

What planet are these mystery savers from? If they were squirreling away that sort of cash then I bet they didn't have much of a Christmas, because survey or not, disposable income is still extremely tight and the luxury of saving anything is one that few can afford.

Interestingly, the YouGov report uses the phrase "people claim" when referring to the supposed £776, so even they are not committing to factual accuracy here.

That figure is also double what it was for the same time in 2008 so you might think the 'Save not Spend' message we've all be hammered with over the past 12 months was hitting home.