Believe it our not, people abandon their valuables all the time, to the tune of billions of dollars of unclaimed assets sitting in accounts around the world. Perhaps someone moves away from home and forgets about their local bank account or safe deposit box. Or a property passes on to an heir who cannot be [more...]
Payday Loan is the name given to a short-term loan or cash advance which as its name suggests is only required until the borrower’s next payday when it can be paid back. A tide-you-over loan is often seen as a quick answer to a temporary shortage of money, but it is not designed as a [more...]
Britain’s newest high street bank has just opened. Metro Bank plc is the first new public bank to be created for over 100 years. The last public bank was the Co-operative (originally CWS Loan and Deposit Department) established in 1872. Metro Bank is completely independent and not associated with any other bank. The bank is [more...]
The National Savings and Investments, also known as NS&I, is one of the largest savings banks in the United Kingdom, accounting for 10% of the UK retail savings investments market. It has 27 million customers and manages over £66 billion in investments. Unlike other banks which are ultimately owned by shareholders, the NS&I is an [more...]
When you buy a share in a company you are hoping that the company will be successful and it will offer good shareholder dividends and that the share price will also increase. But many people forget that there are a surprising number of companies which also offer perks and benefits to their shareholders. Companies offer [more...]
As we have all seen recently, the banking system is unstable. In the event that a bank goes bust and the bank’s liquidators are unable to repay your money, then the government’s Financial Services Compensation Scheme is available as place of last resort. However, there is a potential problem with the scheme which one must [more...]
The state welfare system in the UK provides a number of benefits which are intended for the relief of, and protection against poverty. Some of these are known as Means Tested Benefits and they include Income Support, Employment and Support Allowance, Jobseeker’s Allowance, Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit. As the name Means [more...]
Three terms—percentage, percentage point and basis point—are widely used in finance. Their meanings are different, and getting them mixed up can lead to an expensive mistake. A percentage is a way of expressing a ratio as parts per hundred. Five parts per hundred can be written as 20%. To convert any ratio to a percentage, [more...]
A “spread”, in finance, is a pair of prices—one for buying and one for selling. The most common type of financial spread is the bid-offer spread. The offer price is the price at which a broker or market maker will sell you shares (or some other financial instrument). The bid price is the price at [more...]
Once a year is Budget Day in the UK when the Chancellor of the Exchequer of behalf of the government attends the House of Commons and makes a speech to the Members of Parliament outlining a summary of the current economic situation and a more detailed account of how the government intends to raise money [more...]
The G-7 is an informal forum for the finance ministers of seven big industrial economies: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. It was formed in 1976 to discuss economic issues and seek agreement. It superseded the G-6 which didn’t include Canada. There’s also the G-8 which adds [more...]
The insurance industry makes important contributions to the UK’s economy, is a major employer, and source of overseas income. It is the second largest insurance industry in the world with its premium income at 11% of the world’s total. It is still some way behind the United States insurance industry which has 30 % of the [more...]
Although stocks and bonds are very popular types of investments, they are far from the same thing. Stock refers to ownership in a corporation. If you buy stock, you are buying a share in the company (in fact, the basic unit of stock is called a share, and they typically range in price from a [more...]
Credit cardholders According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 173 million credit cardholders in the United States in 2006 and that number is projected to grow to 181 million in 2010.(1) Number of cards There were 1,488,000,000 credit cards in use 2006 and that number is projected to grow to 1,618,000,000 in 2010. Number [more...]
The phrase “printing money” is loaded with all kinds of negative connotations. It’s something we associate with Robert Mugabe, destroying the value of Zimbabwe’s currency. But now “quantitative easing” is about to begin. How does that work, and is it really the same as printing money? Most of the money in circulation is not in [more...]
According to the AVMA (1), there are more than 72 million pet dogs in the U.S. and nearly 82 million pet cats. Ownership A little more than 43 million households own dogs and nearly 37.5 million households own cats. The average number of dogs per household is 1.7. Cat owning households have an average of [more...]
There are more than 56,000 pharmacies in the United States. The NACDS reports that there are over 39,000 pharmacies operated by traditional chain pharmacy companies, supermarkets and mass merchants. In addition there are nearly 17,000 independent pharmacies. (1) Walgreens and CVS dominate the drug store chain market with the largest number of stores and the highest [more...]
The terms Bull Market and Bear Market are jargon relating primarily to the stock market, although they can be applied to any kind of investment that is openly traded and therefore has a market price. A Bull Market refers to a sustained period of time when the prices are generally rising faster than the historical [more...]
Deflation is the opposite of inflation. Deflation is what we call it when things get cheaper. What could possibly be wrong with that? And yet some people argue that deflation is one of the worst things that could happen. How can that be? Suppose flat panel TVs keep getting cheaper. Some people will spend less [more...]
The UK’s HM Customs have recently been very active in their attempts to counter and prevent tax evasion and avoidance, and track down money hidden in off-shore accounts which should have been disclosed to the tax man in the UK. In the past six months several off-shore jurisdictions previously thought of as safe tax havens [more...]