Christmas
December retail sales a washout, with poor discounts for shoppers
Filed under: Financial Crisis, Christmas
Retail sales were a washout last month, because shops kept their prices high. So retailers actually had quite a good Christmas, with higher prices sending the shop tills ringing. But it was bad news for shoppers.By contrast, last Christmas, at the height of the recession, many retailers panicked and brought their sales forward. There was much less discounting this time round as the feeling was that the economy is over the worst.
Loan sharks bombard people with unwanted calls
It turns out I'm not the only one to run to the phone all the time to find that it's yet another pre-recorded sales message from a loan company.People were plagued by record numbers of calls from loan and debt management companies in the run-up to Christmas.
They sought to capitalise on last-minute spending sprees by trying to persuade people to take on more debt, whilst pushing up interest rates.
100,000 families stuck with crippling debt to loan sharks
Filed under: Christmas, Budgeting & Planning
For many people the year has started with a rude awakening. Thousands borrowed money from loan sharks to pay for Christmas and are now stuck with crippling debts for the rest of the year.In fact, more than 100,000 of Britain's poorest families have run up combined debts of £82 million after borrowing money from doorstep lenders to pay for Christmas.
What should you do if this has happened to you? And what can you do if money is getting tight again?
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Spending figures offer nothing but bad news
Filed under: Financial Crisis, Savvy Shopper, Christmas
Why are we so convinced that increased spending figures are such a good thing? The British Retail Consortium has revealed that December's sales figures were up 4.2%.
Apparently sales of clothes were their highest in five years, food spending was the highest since June as everyone upgraded their shop, and internet sales made up a bigger proportion of the total than ever.
It was the biggest December growth since 2001, and has been followed by a host of positive trading announcements from everyone from House of Fraser to Blacks Leisure.
But while this is undoubtedly good news for retailers, and everyone who works for them, it's not so great news for the rest of us.
Make the most of your unwanted gifts
Filed under: Technology and Online, Christmas
You may be an expert at faking joy at unwanted Christmas presents, but by now it will be fairly obvious to everyone which gifts you are using at every available opportunity, and which ones are destined to be gathering dust for the rest of the year.So, with most of the re-gifting opportunities gone for another year, we're left with the choice of binning the bric-a-brac or finding a way to make money from it.
At this point most of us turn to classified ads or sites like eBay or Gumtree to make a bit of cash from our unwanted stuff - or swap it for something better.
So it's worth getting to grips with the five key rules of how to list your stuff to make the most of it.
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The five best things you can do for your finances in 2010
Filed under: Christmas, Budgeting & Planning
Imagine how lovely it would be to feel that your finances were really in shape: You were putting something aside for the future, you had something set aside for those proverbial rainy days, you could actually open your bank statements.For this personal finance nirvana to come about, you may have to make a few changes. With that in mind, these are the best things you could do for your finances this year?
Best of 2009: Skips - and other more interesting signs of recovery
Filed under: Financial Crisis, Property, Weird and Wonderful, Christmas
The facts and figures people trot out when they are predicting what's going to happen next to the economy are all very confusing, contradictory, and often downright dull. So I was pleased to discover the latest sign is crystal clear.... We are in a recovery because home renovators are hiring more skips. According to rental site erento, demand for skips surged 38% in July. It means we're doing cool things with our homes, and we're dumping things instead of freecycling or eBaying them.
So forget the dull figures, we present the five more interesting ways to tell whether we are in a recovery phase.
Abbey customers caught short before Christmas due to IT glitch
Filed under: Christmas, Budgeting & Planning
Thousands of Abbey customers were caught short in the run-up to Christmas when their wages and benefits didn't reach their accounts due to a technical glitch.Payments due to be processed Tuesday night were not credited to people's accounts because of the computer error, while any direct debits and standing orders were also not paid out.
The IT failure came at the worst possible time for those planning a last-minute Christmas shopping spree. Some people were left without enough money to travel or to feed their power meters.
Don't forget the post-Christmas joy
Filed under: Christmas
Every year, I promise to write thank you cards for everyone who sent me a present. But, once you've got over the post-New Year hangover, you're back at work and Christmas seems like a million years ago.
But be warned, if you want to stay on someone's Christmas list, it's well worth writing those thank you notes.
Make the most of the January sales
Filed under: Savvy Shopper, Christmas
As much as I love a bargain, the January sales fill me with terror. They're horrible. Under no circumstances will I wake up at 6am to go to Next on a freezing cold Boxing Day. Boxing Day is for eating ham and being cosy! Watching bad films! Pictionary!
But, if you must brave the sales, there are a few tips to make sure you get the best bargains. We've gone through some of them before, but these sales are the good ones, so apply them ten fold. Shopping is about to get serious.
