Helping you keep your finances healthy!

There isn’t a UK adult who hasn’t contributed to the bank bailout in some way. But now there looks fair chance of recovering some of that money – maybe even making some profit. So how should that be shared out? Is it time for you & me to get a little banker’s bonus of our own? And how about bank staff themselves?

With the cost of living rising and our disposable incomes declining, are we Brits being backed into an economic corner?

I fear we are. The news shows that the squeeze is coming from both sides:

1. Our cost of living is rising at the fastest rate in a generation.
2. Our take-home pay is in decline, thanks to job cuts, pay freezes and higher tax.

Unless you have been living on the moon for the last couple of years, it is hardly a secret that the economy is in a mess. There is a common misconception that it is almost exclusively those who have lost their job, or who are on low incomes, that are suffering.

You’d think the credit crunch, the catastrophic near-collapse of banks, had knocked some sense into Britain’s money industry.

You’d think the recession and the ensuing economic pain had ground those lessons in nicely.

But it seems not. Just a glance over three recent headlines goes to show that in “money world”, everything’s still topsy turvy…

Hands up if you think people should be allowed to live on benefits for years, without ever bothering to look for work.
 
No hands? I’m not surprised. ‘Workshy’, ‘feckless’, ‘layabout’, ‘scroungers’ – you’ll be hard pressed to find much support for people labelled like that. So how about the government’s latest idea: force long-term Jobseekers’ claimants to work 30 hours a week, doing menial work such as litter clearance, being paid an absolute pittance to do so, for up to three months at a time, or lose their benefits?
 
Can people who ‘wilfully avoid getting a job’ be forced to develop a work ethic for less than £40 a week?

Child benefit for higher-rate tax payers will be axed in 2013, it was announced today. Already there’s a vigorous debate about the fact that families with two basic rate tax payers who earn £87,000 between them will receive the benefit, while those with one higher-rate tax earner earning £44,000 will not. What do you think?
 
But then, maybe in a climate of austerity, it’s logical that high earners shouldn’t be receiving any benefits at all, from winter fuel payments to free bus passes. Have your say in our debate today.