Spectator money

Sterling has fallen to its lowest level against the dollar since early July after Theresa May set a date for starting Brexit negotiations. The Prime Minister said she would trigger Article 50, the clause needed to start the process, by the end of March 2017. That means the UK is likely to leave the EU by mid-2019. A short while ago the pound was down about 1 per cent against the dollar at $1.2854 and nearly 1 per cent against the euro at €1.1440. Housing In a sign that the Government is planning to reset its fiscal policy, the new Chancellor, Phillip Hammond, is to unveil a £5 billion house-building stimulus package later

My name is Helen Nugent and yesterday I turned the heating on. I daren’t tell my dad, a man who resolutely refuses to even approach the thermostat until November because ‘once you turn on the radiators there’s no going back’. I was nine-years-old before I realised we had central heating. During the bitter Northern winter months, my mum would lay mine and my sister’s clothes in front of the fire before we got up for school. I have many memories of getting dressed in the half-light, silently lamenting the face that our radiators were just for show. I’m still cross about that. Now I fear the cold. So it felt good

If I had £1 for every press release I’ve received in the past fortnight telling me how to save money on the new iPhone 7, well…I could buy an iPhone 7. But I wouldn’t because my existing phone (a Samsung something or other which cost about £200 a couple of years ago) works perfectly well. The press releases landing in my inbox have been full of big ideas. ‘Best time to buy iPhone 7 is six weeks after launch,’ advises MoneySuperMarket, which can apparently see into the future. ‘Hold the handset! Don’t buy a new iPhone 7 until you find out this trick to save £100s,’ screams Gocompare.com. The price

When you write for The Spectator, it’s tempting to stick to the more cerebral issues of the day. As money editor, this can include tracking the progress of Sterling post-Brexit, ruminating on the downward trajectory of house price growth or reflecting on the merits of equity release. Some days, however, that’s the last thing you want to do – Monday mornings being a case in point. We’re only a few hours in to the working week and already I’ve been invited to breakfast with the Austrian federal minister of finance, Hans Jörg Schelling, to an obesity lecture, a hotel show, and a FinTech launch. Sometimes I wish I’d never gotten out

Spenders and savers alike would no doubt appreciate some kind of reward for staying loyal to their bank or building society, but it’s highly unlikely that they will be able to get a better deal than if they were to switch. Savers At a time when savings rates are hitting new lows, consumers who have managed to rustle up a sizeable nest egg have had little to celebrate. In addition, those who are considering putting money aside are starting to lose the confidence to do so – an attitude that was highlighted in a recent study by GfK. This is likely to be a result of the Brexit vote, but at

If your child is about to head off to university they can expect to leave with a debt as well as a degree. The typical student in England graduates owing more than £44,000, according to the Sutton Trust – and that’s a lot of debt. But student debt isn’t like ordinary debt, because you don’t necessarily have to pay it back. Students don’t start to repay their loans until they earn at least £21,000 a year. They then pay back a fixed 9 per cent of the amount above the threshold. In other words, if your child leaves university and lands a job earning £22,000, they would pay £90. Anyone

It’s with a shiver down my spine and clenched teeth that I recall my first rented flat in London. I was 22-years-old, looking for work and had never lived south of Manchester. Looking back, I was terribly naive and, truth be told, absolutely petrified about moving to the big city. Put simply, I was fair game for an unscrupulous letting agent. To say the agent took his duties lightly would be an understatement. From the gas boiler which broke down repeatedly to the coin-operated lekky, it wasn’t an easy time. Add into the mix a bitterly cold winter and damp in the bathroom and these weren’t exactly halcyon days. When it

It might seem far-fetched, but in recent years a couple of financial companies have started hiring from the gaming industry in an attempt to make their products more appealing to consumers. Let’s face it, most of us find pensions, savings and investments dull and confusing. Could more engaging money management apps, or elements of ‘gamification’ help to overcome these difficulties? The theory is that if people take more interest in their finances, they’ll be encouraged to save more. So perhaps an app where users have to make a million from a fantasy portfolio could help plug the savings gap. Like Pokémon, this could marry real-world data – up-to-date share prices,

At the height of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the dead and dying lined the streets, locals too scared to remove the bodies or aid the stricken for fear of contracting the virus. Entire communities were wiped out as aid organisations came under fire for lacking a sense of urgency in the face of this humanitarian crisis. Meanwhile, in the comfort and safety of London, the individual in charge of a leading international charity responding to the crisis was telling the readers of a luxury magazine about his ideal weekend in the capital. This person revealed a fondness for Mediterranean food at fashionably authentic little eateries, exotic cocktails at

Community share schemes are becoming an important weapon in the long-standing fight to save our communities. Numbers of local pubs, shops and schools continue to decline as they have for many years. But the rapidly increasing use of community share schemes to save such assets is striking a new, positive note among the usual stream of negative stories about communities. To give an indication, the number of community share scheme offerings in 2015 was 200, which is more than double the number of initial public offerings on the alternative investment market, albeit that the sums involved would usually be much smaller. At this time of decentralisation – when so many

It is more than half a century since Jessica Mitford published her landmark work of investigative journalism, The American Way of Death. But her exposé of the specific and often nefarious ways the funeral industry had made the average service more expensive remain pertinent today. Back in 1963, Mitford, one of the celebrated aristocratic Mitford sisters, reflected on the mortuary’s talent for re-branding — bury became inter, coffins became caskets, morgues became preparation rooms. This, she argued, sanitised the funeral business and allowed those in the trade to hike up prices. An updated version of Mitford’s book was published in 1998, two years after her own death, and is still widely available and widely read. Perhaps it’s no surprise