Spectator money

When I lived in London, I was introduced to a whole new vocabulary. ‘Blinding’ was a new one on me (for instance, ‘that was a blinding goal’) as was Chalfont St. Giles (don’t ask). But perhaps the most sinister was ‘London bar’. Count your lucky stars if you don’t know the meaning of that last one. Put simply, it’s a metal security strip designed to reinforce door frames. As far as I understand it, the London bar is so-named because many burglaries in the London area are ‘kick in’ attacks. Using brute force, the burglar kicks at the door until the frame fails, splits or shatters. I had personal experience of this

Who do you think is the first woman you would see if you typed ‘CEO’ into the Google Images search bar? Carolyn McCall of EasyJet, perhaps, or how about Angela Ahrends, who used to run Burberry and is now a big noise at Apple? Whoever you guessed, I’m willing to bet you didn’t expect her to be 11.5 inches tall and made of plastic. But when I tried the experiment, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Sixty or so photographs of men – all but one white – flicked up before the first woman boss appeared. And this feminine titan wasn’t an actual human female – she was

Price comparison sites are being investigated by competition regulators. Good. It’s about time there was closer scrutiny of these meerkat-loving, opera-singing, stiletto-twerking financial behemoths. To be fair, this current investigation centres on ‘one or two’ energy price comparison sites who are alleged to have breached competition rules for online advertising. This isn’t my main beef with these sites. On of the face of it, they have made shopping around for energy deals, car, home and travel insurance and savings and credit a bit easier. But the assumption that they are speedy and hassle-free is nonsense. If you have an hour or two of your life to fritter away log onto

Stepping onto the property ladder has become an enormous stretch for first-time buyers. But for those with no access to the generous bank of mum and dad, could shared ownership help? Initially conceived in the 1980s with the aim of helping key workers to access the housing market, the niche housing scheme has the potential to become mainstream as a result of significant new investment. As part of its drive to reverse the decline in home-ownership, the Government has allocated an unprecedented £4.1 billion to enable the construction of 135,000 new homes for shared ownership. The rules have also changed to allow broader eligibility criteria for buyers and  a wider

There was victory for a group of mortgage borrowers last week when Court of Appeal judges ruled West Bromwich Building Society had wrongly upped interest rates for about 6,000 customers. However, despite the legal wrangle being described as a ‘David and Goliath’ type duel, not everyone was pleased for the little people winners. That’s because the borrowers concerned were landlords, a group which is fast becoming one of the most vilified sectors of society. But if the buy-to-let critics could put their prejudices aside for a moment they’d see that a victory for landlords this time is a win for consumers everywhere. The court case came about after a controversial decision

I live in a world of Post-it notes. Yellow ones, blue ones, orange ones. They are everywhere. One day someone is going to find my wizened body beneath a mountain of these infernal things. Death by Post-it note. In a world where multi-tasking has become a full-time profession, the humble Post-it note is now an integral part of modern life. The company which makes them – 3M – amassed sales of $7.4 billion in the first quarter of 2016. The first quarter! (OK, they make other stuff but you see where I’m going with this). The ubiquity of the Post-it note in my household is such that I’ve instigated a traffic level

When you drift into debt, it’s not easy to get out of it. Many end up in financial trouble for years because, instead of confronting their problems, they meander on paying a little bit back here and there. For many it becomes a way of life. I interviewed a lot of different people about their finances for a television programme this year and one of the first questions I asked was ‘what debt do you have?’. I was staggered by the number who said they didn’t have any debt and later admitted they owed a couple of thousand on credit cards. It wasn’t that they were lying or even trying to

It’s ten years since I graduated and I’ve just managed to clear my student loan, which isn’t a bad achievement on a journalist’s salary. The day I finished my politics and economics degree, my debt stood at £11,500. That covered the course and living costs for three years of study and a year spent in industry – for which I still had to pay half the annual course fee despite not setting foot on campus. In the years that followed, interest started to mount up and added another several thousand pounds onto my repayments. I count myself lucky to have repaid my loan after such a relatively short period compared