Build wealth. Love your life
Have you seen a movie called ‘When Sally met Harry’; if not, go see it! Apart from it being one of my all-time favourites I recently had an occasion to remember a conversation between Harry and Sally that went something like this: Sally: One day soon I’ll be forty and…
My interest in giving is long standing. During the communist totalitarian regime in Bulgaria there were begging Roma people, despite all effort to hide them and/or get them to work – I couldn’t pass a beggar without giving them the most I could afford. When I first came to Manchester…
Politicians on both sides of the pond have become exercised over the issue of tax avoidance this past 6 months or so, but this problem that has been around for quite some time. Maybe it is the silver lining to the financial crash cloud because for far too long, certain…
Last week I wrote about the way in which foreign exchange speculation sets the relative values of currencies. The value of ‘things’ can also be a mystery. Every day items like a bottle of milk or a loaf of bread are pretty easy to value. It’s how much you need…
I have long been interested – no fascinated – by currencies. When I was young, I would wonder what decides the price of a loaf of bread in France and Britain? Or cake, come to that. Who sets the exchange rate between currencies? And how do we compare the economies…
Having returned from our Easter-free break in Bulgaria (we missed the Western Easter and the Orthodox Easter is not until May this year so we miss that too), it was time to catch up with reading, some of which had deposited itself on the doormat. Among these were back-issues…
Over thirty years ago, I was sitting in my friend Bill’s front room watching the results of the 1979 UK General Election with horror. Britain certainly had many internal problems – low productivity, general malaise, strikes and so on – but the solution did not appear to be the increase…
What happened? It’s simple. Cypriot banks ran out of money. When this sort of thing happens, the national government will generally stump up the cash but the government didn’t have that sort of money. In which case, the sovereign bank (like the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England) would…
Editor’s note: This post was written in collaboration with EMCAS: they kindly provided the data but the analysis and sentiments are mine. For more information about how EMCAS can help you to make a claim for financial mis-selling please visit: www.missing-millions.co.uk I still remember the day I got my first…
Since childhood we hear that we should not be greedy, we shouldn’t take (have) more that ‘enough’. In adulthood, we are told how important ‘knowing our enough’ really is: in food, play, love and money. Heck, even I have written articles in this blog about working out how much…
In last week’s post I gave a critique of George Osborne’s budget which was just a little scathing. Now I do try very hard not to be too political – some of our readers may well be supporters and that is their right. But having pointed out that we did…
Editor’s note: This is another article by Alex; and if you have not guessed already I have given him the Friday slot for the time being. Today’s article tells a story of a man who, like all of us, seems to have his own set of troubles. In this case…