Helping you keep your finances healthy!

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.

Houses cost an arm and a leg to keep going these days, with mortgages, council tax, household bills and regular repairs, the cost of running a home is getting higher and higher – leaving us with less cash to put away for the enjoyable things in life.

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…

Official figures show that the gender pay gap has narrowed dramatically over the last 13
years. which sounds like great news if you are a woman working in the UK.

The age of austerity is upon us and spending is down, right? Well, no, according to the latest figures. Barclaycard says that not only are we not spending less, we’re spending more on debit and credit cards – over 9% more, compared to the previous year in August. And it wasn’t just August – May, June and July also saw higher spending.
 
Barclaycard sees this as an indication that consumers are feeling confident, so have we learned to live with austerity – or are we just doing better at ignoring it?