The Financial Ombudsman Service is currently receiving a large number of complaints regarding mortgage endowment policies which have offered a poor return for investors. A mortgage endowment policy is supposed to have a separate investment policy which enables the mortgage capital  to be paid off at the end of the term. However, many of these [...]

These are products which can seriously damage your financial wealth. In some cases, the products can be OK if used carefully. But, often the principle seems to be merely taking advantage of the unwary consumer. Some of these products are blatantly bad value; but, others have their charges cleverly hidden. Make sure you don’t get [...]

Call centres are an unavoidable fact of modern life. They rarely offer much joy. These are some of the problems I have encountered with call centres. I’m sure our readers could add quite a few more. 1. Please choose from the following 6 options. We could easily invent a competition – which company requires you [...]

The UK banking system is highly consolidated. In theory, this makes them less vulnerable to a run on their assets. However, the recent case of Northern Rock (one of the UK’s top 5 mortgage lenders) shows that no bank is invincible. Recently, the governor of the Bank of England suggested that more Banks may be [...]

1. Spending on Useless Things. We can work very hard to earn money and then we can easily waste our hard earned efforts by purchasing things on a whim. If you are in the habit of spending on things you rarely use or don’t need. Try to be discriminating. Think how many hours of work [...]