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 tied-you-over loan is often seen as a quick answer to a temporary shortage of money, but it is not designed as a [more...]
Inflation has eroded the value of the penny to the point where many people will no longer pick up a penny when they see one in the street. But how does this stand up to cold-blooded economic analysis? Suppose it takes three seconds to pick up a penny. There are 3600 seconds in an hour, [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...]
You would think that in most countries banks, exchange offices, stores should be delighted to be paid with your good, “hard” currency. The problem is that in most countries your dollar bills, Euros or pound notes are just paper until the holder can sell them and get his local currency, either in cash or as [more...]
The best place to buy foreign currency depends on how that currency is traded. If there are serious exchange controls in the country you intend to visit, you will probably get a bad deal at the official rate of exchange in the country, whereas in your country banks or other sellers will be eager to [more...]
Several decades ago, a bank would usually be the best place to change money from one currency to another. There was always a feeling that a money-changing business would be more likely to “rip you off”. Now the tables have turned, and specialist currency exchange businesses are often the best value when buying travel money. [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...]
If you visit the bustling county town of Lewes in East Sussex and go into of the shops or pubs, you will be offered the opportunity of exchanging your UK Sterling pounds for the local Lewes pounds. The exchange rate is one-to-one and there are no commission fees to worry about. In exchange you will [more...]
Answerfinder’s article about Burial Clubs reminded me that many people worry about burial costs. Funeral insurance is big business, with a funeral home generally being the beneficiary of funeral expenses policies. This insurance pays for the casket (coffin), the flowers, the funeral service etc. This enables the policyholder to pay “up front” for their own [more...]
There is a thriving wine investment market, and some people manage to turn a reasonable profit by investing in quality wines at the right price, and buying and selling at the right time. But there’s one way you almost certainly won’t make a profit—and that’s by buying into a wine investment “opportunity” that is offered [more...]
Seven countries other than the United States use the U.S. dollar as their official currency. Most of them are Latin American countries or island nations with small populations. The country that has used the U.S. dollar the longest is Panama, which adopted the balboa, pegged directly on a 1:1 to the dollar, as its currency [more...]
The pound sterling (GBP) is the legal currency throughout the United Kingdom, and the Bank of England prints banknotes for this currency. Due to a quirk of history, three Scottish banks and four Northern Ireland banks also print notes denominated in United Kingdom pounds. Before 1844-45, each bank issued their own notes. The Bank Charter [more...]
It’s a dreadful experience, that sinking feeling as it dawns on you that the pair of jeans you’ve just put in the washing machine contains two £20 notes. It brings a whole new meaning to money laundering. As you take them out of the machine, you find that they are creased, crumpled and soggy. No [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...]
The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street is a nickname for the Bank of England situated in Threadneedle Street, in the City of London. It is obvious as to why the name of the street forms part of the nickname, but why ‘Old Lady’? The nickname comes from a Thomas Gillray cartoon published in May 1797. [more...]
Ethical banking is a sector of the banking industry which takes ethical considerations into account when making business decisions. Sometimes it represents little more than a marketing catchphrase, but at the other end of the spectrum there are financial institutions whose entire reason for existence is to further a particular ethical goal. Ethical concerns may [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...]
Many mathematicians and economists have investigated the idea that optimum taxation rates can be mathematically derived. However, depending on the underlying assumptions different conclusions can be reached. We can illustrate the situation with a simple example. Suppose tax rates are nil. Zero tax causes no disincentive to work (and therefore to produce), however, the government [more...]
For those who have not heard of Mechanical Turk (MT), it is a marketplace for work, operated by Amazon.com, Inc. After registration and acceptance, as an MT worker you can work from home on your computer, choose your own hours of work, select the work you want to undertake, and get paid for it. Your [more...]