Meat is off the menu

I haven’t been to many BBQs this August, mainly because of the miserable weather. But I wonder if there is another, more money-orientated, reason why so few of my friends have flung open their garden gates for charred bangers, soggy buns and undercooked chicken this summer?

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Northern Rock deal smells fishy to me

Am I the only person with an uneasy feeling about the Northern Rock and Lloyds TSB tie-up?

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The fail-safe way to avoid bank charges

Last week Barclays grabbed some headlines by giving its current accounts something of an overhaul – changes included the introduction of ‘personal reserves’ for people that slip into the red, reduced overdraft fees and the abolition of in-credit interest on its standard current accounts.

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House price stats don't tell the whole story

You can’t pick up a newspaper these days without coming across a headline about falling house prices. One week the figures come from the Land Registry, the next from the Bank of England and the next from a specific mortgage lender.

As a journalist, the latest housing market statistics are always good for a story especially at the moment when all eyes are on the housing market. But it does sometimes feel as though I’m drowning in a flood of different house price data that is often contradictory and rarely tells us what is really going on with house prices.

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Trendy banks don't do it for me

Having just spent most of my lunch break queuing in my local branch of Barclays, I noticed something that my peers probably realised a long time ago. Barclays got hip. Well, as hip as a bank can be which isn’t very. What I mean is that its marketing material seems to be more akin to that of a sixth-form college than a bank’s.

Shame on me for not noticing this change sooner. In fact, it was around two years ago that Barclays first decided to ‘funk-up’ its branches in an attempt to make them more appealing to customers. It did two things - firstly, it replaced the traditional pens-on-chain with blue biros that implore writers to not only use them but take them home.

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What's hot and what's not?

The first few weeks of January can be a slow for news but thanks to the ongoing credit crunch any bit of financial news is still worthy of dissection and intense scrutiny. So here is my review of what was hot and what was not this week.

Hot: Apple, for promising to bring the cost of its iTunes music downloads in the UK inline with the rest of Europe. Okay, so it took a European Commission investigation for it to reach this decision, but better late than never. Next step, please can we pay the same as the Americans?

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New Year Resolutions

I love New Year not because it’s an excuse to go out until the early hours but because it’s an opportunity to start afresh and make changes in my life. It’s psychological – I would never dream of writing down my ambitions for the other 364 days in the year, but on 31 December you can normally find me scribbling down various lofty goals on a scrap of paper that is invariably lost before the clock hits midnight.

Most years, at least one of my resolutions is financial – for example, last year I wanted to buy my own house (which, I’m glad to report, I did) and take out a pension (ditto).

But in 2008 my financial resolutions are going to be set a little lower, although I know they will make a massive different in the long term.

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What's hot and what's not?

In case you’ve missed all the other signs, a quick glance at the headlines of most national newspapers should make the penny hit home. Yes, it’s Christmas, a time for over-indulging and celebrating with your family. It is also a pretty slow time for news and therefore papers fill up white space with seasonal stories about albino robins and turkey shortages.

But when you turn to the personal finance sections the news keeps on coming – especially this year as firms continue to battle with the credit crunch. So, here’s my roundup of what’s hot and what’s not in the world of personal finance.

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