Money

In Lockdown we’ve read townies want to be country bumpkins and you could be just as productive in West Dorset as you could in West London. For most this is a binary choice so what’s it going to be? Bucolic imagery is no substitute for real life and despite repeated promises from Whitehall, BTopenworld and a mobile industry criminally unable to deal with roaming, the reality for a significant minority, if not majority, of rural dwellers is that countryside communications are woeful. Last time I checked you got a mobile signal and fibre in W6. For several decades the demographic shift has been very much to live in conurbations. Particularly

Will Britain turn into Zimbabwe or Japan? In other words, will the fallout from the economic crisis precipitated by Covid 19 lead to hyper-inflation or to deflation? Are we going back to the 1970s – or to a strange world of which no living Briton has any recollection? Or, more graphically, will it be savers and bond-holders who get ripped off to pay to bills of the crisis – or do borrowers face being buried by their debts? In May, the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) fell to an annualised 0.5 per cent. A fall was expected thanks to plunging oil prices. But many people fear it will only be temporary

As we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, you can find statistics to prove pretty much any movement in the housing market. Up. Down. Sideways. At the beginning of the month, the Nationwide reported that house prices fell 1.7 per cent in May. The largest fall in 11 years. The latest data from Zoopla revealed that demand for housing is 54 per cent higher than at the start of March. And Savills reported a significant rise in activity across their offices in England with deals agreed, new instructions and exchanges all sharply up on previous weeks. Meanwhile the RICS says surveyors are recording falling house prices but increased activity. So, what

With nights out and trips to favourite restaurants currently off the menu, many people are turning to companies that deliver food boxes and meal kits straight to their door. Food boxes can be convenient at a time when many of us are juggling childcare, home schooling and work. With social distancing in place at supermarkets and online delivery slots almost impossible to find, having fresh ingredients and step-by-step recipes dropped off on your doorstep is one less thing to worry about. Plus, it can feel a little more special than simply cooking the usual meals at home. But do food boxes and meal kits offer value-for-money? With the average weekly

What joy it has been to have some cash over the past two months. For gamblers, to be sure, there have been opportunities to take advantage of a volatile stock market (and even more opportunities to get it wrong and lose a packet). But cash is cash – it just sits there holding its value, without having to watch the markets with dread every day. Well, certainly over the short term. But history teaches us a painful lesson in these circumstances: while investing in stock markets is full of sorrows, investing in cash offers few pleasures. It is ordinary savers ultimately who were made to pay for the economic crisis

If you need to self-isolate in the coming days or weeks due to the coronavirus outbreak, you may find yourself running out of ways to keep yourself occupied. In which case, it could be a good opportunity to go through your finances and potentially put some money back in your pocket. Here are some ways to do just that. Go through your bank statements It might not sound particularly thrilling, but you’ll be surprised by what you find if you take the time to read through your bank statements. For instance, do you know exactly how much you spend on food bills, socialising or subscriptions each month? Are you aware

Remember day trading, the fad for retail investors trying to emulate the hotshots of Wall Street from their spare bedrooms, and losing much of their money in the process? It is back with a vengeance, this time driven by a range of ‘disruptor’ apps which seek to lure risk-hungry traders by eliminating the cost of buying and selling assets. This time, the bets are even bigger. Controversially, some apps offer traders the chance to ‘leverage’ their bets: that is to borrow money to increase their gains. Or losses. The story of canny investors looking to outsmart the system — and the charismatic ‘experts’ that lead them — is as old

A headline in the Times this week appeared to speak of a boom in house prices since the general election: “Housing Market Enjoys Boris Boost as Prices Rise at Record Rate”. Given Britain’s history of house price booms and busts that sounded dramatic indeed, so what did it really mean? The ‘record’ which turned out to have been broken turned out to be the change in asking prices – as measured by property website Rightmove – between December and January. This month, the average asking price for a property in Britain is £306,810, £6785 or 2.3 percent higher than it was in December. The previous highest uplift that Rightmove has

With four cats and two children to feed, I’m not very Fire. But then I am not sure I want to be. ‘Fire’ is the ‘Financial independence, retire early’ movement that has proved popular among burnt-out millennials wanting to quit the corporate rat race.  It began in America with a 1992 book, Your Money or Your Life, which advised followers to live frugally and simply in order to achieve financial independence. One of its biggest proponents is a man dubbed Mr Money Moustache, who describes himself to his 112,000 Twitter followers as a ‘thirtysomething retiree who now writes about how we can all lead a frugal yet badass life of

A few months ago we brought you the best commuter villages around London to live out your bucolic fantasies. The switch to a village from the bright lights of the capital can be a daunting one though. For that reason, we’ve come up with a list of commuter towns to strike a medium between town and country. You may lose the ability to get obscure takeaway food delivered at 1am, but, in many ways, you have the best of both worlds – somewhere to stretch out, with a few more bedrooms and some options for going out of an evening. All our selections are within roughly an hour of London,

New analysis of house prices and schools across London shows that, out of London’s 32 boroughs, Sutton and Richmond upon Thames are best for families. When comparing size of property, the amount of green space and, most importantly, quality of schools, Sutton soared to the top of the rankings with an average house price of £508,679 for a semi-detached property – not bad considering the average house price in London is £485,830. For this price, families will be getting approximately 100 square metres of property, in an area with the lowest crime rate in all of London. When it comes to giving the kids a chance to let off steam,

Innovative, transparent, simple, easy, fair, open, helpful, honest, smart and caring. These are the top ten words customers use when describing Monzo’s culture on Smart Money People. It comes as little wonder then that since launching in 2015, Monzo has picked-up some two million current account customers, is valued at two billion pounds, and now has its sights set on cracking America. Young Brits have flocked to Monzo, and its bright coral card, in their droves, because carrying around a Monzo card is cool. Gimmicks like a rumoured £70 metal card which confers no additional benefits other than looking good in your hand as you pay for your chai latte,