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Stakeholders can prove expensive

Figures released this month sbow that most parents with a Child Trust Fund (CTF) are choosing to open a Stakeholder fund for their children’s money.

How to book a tidy profit

I discovered this week that a book I bought new in 1998 for £10.99 is selling for £324.50 at Biblion Mayfair, a respected West End bookseller. It is a signed first edition of Spike Milligan’s Robin Hood, bought on impulse as a could-be investment. I wish I had bought ten.

Automatic upgrades

Banks were criticised today for automatically upgrading their customers from free current accounts to expensive accounts without their consent.

Research from Uswitch found that 1.3 million current account holders believe they have been switched without warning to accounts that cost up to £222 a year.

The big four banks have flatly denied the practice. So RBS found it difficult to explain when asked why it had upgraded me without my prior knowledge three years ago.

Junk mail mountain

It’s that time of year again and my car insurance is up for renewal. The cost has risen yet again, but mostly because I made a claim in January after scraping against a particularly awkward bollard.  But the most annoying thing is the barrage of letters I receive from rival companies offering me the “cheapest deal”.  How do these companies know when I need to renew my insurance?

Indexed growth

There's been much talk about new stock market indices this week. FTSE, the company which acts as custodian of the well-known FTSE 100 index of Britain's leading shares, is working on a new index which will weight its constituents not by market value but by their "fundamental" characteristics.

Cover at college

I remember my first day at college.  It was in October 1993 and I was wearing a lumberjack shirt (the shame) and jeans.  I can remember what was on my mind. It had a lot to do with making friends and panicking that I hadn't read the books on my reading list.  Funnily enough, insurance didn't feature at all.

Older travellers pay too much for cover

Thousands of older people are risking travelling the world without insurance because insurers load their policies with such high premiums that buying cover would push the cost of their trip out of reach, research shows. However, with new rules coming in to combat age discrimination in the workplace on October 1, companies are coming under growing pressure to drop their prices - and not a moment too soon.

What's happening to the housing market?

I was overwhelmed last weekend when I helped a friend go flat hunting in my rather grotty London neighbourhood.

Is your bank a hero or villain?

... With mine, Alliance & Leicester, it is difficult to tell. On the surface, it looks like a hero, offering attractive in-credit interest rates, a 0 per cent overdraft and a market beating regular savings account. But scratch the surface, and a villain lurks within. Poor customer service, slow transactions, payments to other accounts that disappear into the ether for no apparent reason and a website that works only when it feels like it, are problems I now encounter daily.

Return to zero

Remembrance of losses past lives on a painfully long time in the memories of investors. A bad smell continues to hang around zero dividend preference shares, despite the fact that the worst of the losses incurred by investors in these slightly exotic beasts happened several years ago. So is it in poor taste to rehabilitate zeros? I don't think so.

A tale of mice and men…

My House is under invasion. The enemy has made initial forays of the kitchen-dining room and bases are being established in the rooms where linen is stored. Upper floors are about to be colonised. The mice are back.

Online banking frustration

Banking over the Internet is one of the most useful things the web offers, but last week I was faced with a long wait on the phone to clear up a yet another “problem” with my online account.

Norwich Union to use upfront commission to boost regular savings

Norwich Union is attempting to boost the number of people who invest regularly in its funds.
It argues, persuasively, that there should be a better balance between lump sum investments and regular savings into funds

Punishment should fit the crime

Ever been charged up to £30 by your bank for slipping over your overdraft limit? You remember -  the time the direct debit pushed you over the edge, or that night where you hopefully popped your card in the ATM machine and it miraculously spat out £10...pushing you into the red as a result.  Well today is your lucky day.

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is...

What is it about estate agents that make them so cavalier in their relationship to accuracy? The latest wheeze I have discovered during my eight-month long search for a property is the misleading use of websites.

Watch out Orange customers

If, like me, you’re an Orange mobile phone customer watch out for a sneaky charge it introduced in July.

I say sneaky because Orange hasn’t gone out of its way to let its customers know about the new fee.

Bye Bye Natwest

I probably shouldn't be admitting this, given that I write about current accounts quite a lot and urge people who bank with one of the big four banks - Natwest, Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds TSB - to switch and take advantage of better offers available eslewhere, but I still have a current account with Natwest. Not for much longer, however.

Time to be contrarian?

The bears' picnic I was talking about last month looks like becoming a feast.  Many people seem to have given up on the stock market. Sales of investment funds slumped by a quarter in July, while private investors are said to have sold nearly £10 billion-worth of shares in the first six months of the year. More worryingly, this bearishness amongst the share-buying public is now spreading to the professionals.