Any Questions?

We’re going to use this page to answer the questions you send us at Moneysucks? What bothers you about your money and what annoys you as a consumer? What should you do with that huge lump sum that’s burning a hole in your bank account, or which loan should you pay off first? What’s the best way to sort our your monthly budget or how can you retire at 40?  Which retailers ofer great service and which ones couldn’t spell the word?  What do you do when your brand new laptop breaks down after a week or your Blackberry won’t let you send text messages any more. Whatever your money and consumer issues we want to help.

Here’s a selection of your questions and comments from the last time we tried this:

 

Q. I have a question on the link between child benefit and the state pension. At the moment it is my understanding that a person receiving child benefit receives NI credit towards the 30 years required for a full state pension. As you know the child benefit will be removed for the person receiving child benefit if her husband/wife is a higher rate taxpayer- this seems unfair to have the wife/husband penalised in retirement for the spouse’s income. It may even be that when the carer retires she/he is not even married to the same person but has been penalised- do you know if that is the case- if so Money sucks!!

A. Good question David. My initial response would be that it’s not as simple as saying that someone receiving child benefit will automatically receive NI credit towards the 30 years required for a full state pension. There are other requirements that need to be satisfied before receiving NUI credit and these other requirements will vary from person to person. To be on the safe side I have asked the Department of Work and Pensions to look at your question and come back with a fuller answer so hopefully I’ll be able to get back to you soon. I know that there is a large scale review of the benefit system going on at the moment and it may be that any answer from DWP will reflect that but I should be in a position to answer you more fully next week.

Colin Kennedy asks a question about renting out a room in his property:

Q. I work in Crawley during the week but live in Scotland at weekends. I have a second home in Crawley and I rent out 3 rooms. I have a business which is dormant, but could I use this business as a vehicle to purchase my house in Crawley and rent it out to my tenants and myself? What benefits would I derive from this? Love the website and looking forward to your insight!

A. You could certainly use your business to purchase the property that you already own and then rent it out to others although presumably your business, if it is dormant, will not have the required funds and so effectively you would need to look at the transfer of the property to company ownership rather than your own unless your business can raise the funds to purchase the property from you.
Either way the first issue for you is that you are personally disposing of the asset and may be creating a capital gains tax liability for you since it is not your main residence.
Whether it makes sense for you or the company to own the property is in no small way dependent on your tax position. If you own the property then any rental from your tenants, after deduction of allowable expenses, will potentially be taxed at your highest rate. If the company owns the property then any profit will be liable to Corporation Tax but you may decide to retain the rest in the company until you need it. This avoids any further personal tax but means that you can’t use the money.
A further complication may be that if you transfer the property to your company, and you are a Director and employee of that company, then you may find that HMRC argue that you living in the property is a benefit in kind and that may have tax implications for you.
I hope you find this information useful but please come back to me if you have any further queries.

Jack Fraser asks an ISA question:

Q. I am the student who asked about the pension, but I would like to answer just another quick question on a different matter! If I use up my full £5100 cash ISA allowance with cash this tax year, does any interest gained on that count towards the allowance i.e. if I gained £4 and it went up to £5104 because of interest would I be exceeding the allowance?

A. Very simple answer to this question – no! The allowance relates to cash invested in the ISA – whether Cash ISA or Stocks and Shares AIS and any interest or growth in the value of your ISA won’t mean that you are exceeding your allowance, or eat into the next year’s allowance either.

Margaret Cunningham has come into some money and wants to know what to do with it.

Q. I have just inherited £22,000. The money is sitting in the Royal Bank of Scotland at the moment. Can you give me some advice how I should invest it, please?

Thanks and greetings from Germany

A. The answer to this one could go on forever and depends on so many different questions that I don’t know the answer to at the moment. These questions would include, in no particular order of importance:

Are you living in Germany and is the money in Germany or the UK?

Do you have debt that you could do with paying off?

How long will it be before you need the money?

How much risk do you want to take with your investment – are you an under the pillow type or is the 2.30pm at Cheltenham more your style?

Do you have other investments?

Could your pension do with a boost?

What is your income tax position?

So as you see it’s not an exact science. And these are only a sample of the questions you would want to consider before making a decision. The starting point is to examine your current situation and for you to decide what it is you would like the money to do for you. If you have any debt – mortgage or non-mortgage – then it might makes sense to pay that off since it might be costing you more in interest than you will receive on money you invest. If you have no debt and you want to put it away somewhere for a ‘rainy day’ then it would be a case of looking at how to do that tax efficiently and with a level or ‘risk’ that is acceptable to you and for a length of time that suits.

And Cathy Austin has a question on the finances of long-term care.

Q. I saw the piece you did on financial advice on long-term care on BBC the other night. My father is in a care home in Scotland. He pays his care-home fees from his “savings” (house sale!) The bank manager told us that it is possible for him to gift £3000 to each of his children & £1500 to each grandchild, each year, which would obviously reduce his capital, without the authorities being able to question this. Do you know if this is the case? We don’t want to do anything dodgy, just want to know if this is correct.

A. Maybe is the perhaps unhelpful answer! The £3000 and £1500 limits that your bank manager talked to you about are the maximum amounts that can be ‘gifted’ to children and grandchildren annually so that they don’t form part of your father’s estate for inheritance tax purposes – and there is often confusion about the rules on Inheritance Tax and the rules that apply to care issues. The local authority is not interested in IHT rules, only that your father hasn’t given money away to ‘deliberately deprive’ his estate to save him paying for his own care. So whether your dad gifts his children £3000 or £30,000 the local authority might want to know why. It may do his case no harm if he is able to explain that it is part of a tax planning exercise.

Moneysucks Monthly Challenge

Another week goes by for our Moneysucks Monthly Challenge guinea pigs and so let’s start with a particularly detailed account of Zoe’s spending:

Date Item bought Expense Total Comments
Monday 27/02 Petrol £30
Chewing Gum £0.57 £30.57
Tuesday 28/02 Tapas £5.50
Wine £4.10
Hot Chocolate £2.20 £11.80 I have just started back working as a support worker on Tuesday evenings and make around £17 so I basically justified eating out that night due to this! I had enough food to eat in before I left the house.
Wednesday 29/02 Bread
Milk and Chocolate £1.00
£0.85
£1.00 £2.85
Thursday 01/03 Gingerbread Latte

Rent

£2.00

£365.00 I was craving a coffee so bought one in a little coffee shop in Paisley before a meeting I was having.
Friday 02/03 Stuffed chicken breast £5.00 I decided to treat myself to a Marks and Spencers lunch as I was off work today. It was very expensive for the amount of food I actually bought. Not the best value for money!
Iced Buns £2.70 £7.70
Egg, Cheese and Milk £3
Eye Brow Threading £4.00 £4.00 For those who don’t know what this is it is an ancient technique used to shape your eye brows!
Saturday 03/03 Lunch:
Soup and Toast, Coffee and Cake
£7.25 £7.25 Went for a drive to out of town with my friend and we decided to eat lunch out at a little café.
Tip for food £2.00 £2.00 Saturday night was my joint birthday party with my sister. Our parents bought us a meal I contributed the tip
3 x pints of beer £9.00 £9.00 I drank more pints but since it was a birthday celebration many drinks were bought for me this night.
Taxi £10.00 £10.00 I shared a taxi home with my sister and her husband. I had no change so gave them £10. The total by the time I got out was £7. It was a black cab. My flatmates got home later after ordering a private cab and said they had just paid £4.
Sunday 04/03 Food shop £27.64 £27.64 Me and my sister decided to take a Sunday drive to the new Whole food shop in Giffnock. For the amount I paid I really didn’t get many items. This is the first time I have shopped there and I wont be going back in a hurry. Within this price though I bought my Dad’s birthday present.
Car Hoover from E-bay £6.78 My car is looking very dusty so decided to purchase a hoover. I received it the other day but I am sceptical that it will work well due to its low price! I will update you once I have tried it.
Monday 05/03 NO MONEY SPENT !
Tuesday 06/03 Coffee and Apple Juice £2.65 Had two meetings today out of the office so bought a drink both times.
Wednesday 07/03 Petrol £20.00
Sweets .65
Gym Trousers £20.00 I am always at the gym and only have one pair of gym trousers. It was getting annoying so I decided to buy another pair.
CupCake £ 1.50 For my sister
Present for sister £ 7.50
Meal out for my sisters birthday (my treat) £ 35.20 Took my sister out to treat her for her birthday. This total included two cocktails at £6.50 each.
Thursday 08/03 Food Shopping Sainburys £ 16.89 The amount that I got here was loads more than I got at Wholefoods. Definitely better value for money.

GRAND TOTAL:

£652.53

Zoe comments. “Was rather shocked when I saw this total but then remembered my rent is included in this total. Still it seems a lot. I am beginning to think I may spend more money than I bring in! The last week of budgeting and then doing the sums will reveal if this is true. Writing down everything you spend in a month is definitely a challenge just remembering when you purchase something you have to record it is a task in itself. However the task has made me aware that all the little expenses do add up in a month. I think from now on I will think before I spend. I would love to get out of my overdraft and this is only going to happen if I do start to be a little careful with how I spend my money.”

Mary Louise has been slightly less detailed than Zoe, but interesting reading nonetheless. “I’m into the third week of the Money Management Challenge and things have somewhat improved from my first shocking week of spending!
In the second week of the money challenge I only spent £47.82 and was very chuffed with that! It had been on the usual sort of stuff – food, train tickets and odds and ends. I had also been away up in the Highlands for the weekend and I think the lack of any shops beside the co-op curbed my spending somewhat! This week, I’ve had to pay my rent which is my biggest pay out of the month. My rent is £230 and I pay £30 a month for electricity. On top of this I’ve paid an electricity bill and eaten out a few times so I think it might be another expensive week… I’m really looking forward to the end of the challenge to see what I spend in total in a month – I’m beginning to realise it’s more than I thought it was! It’s definitely made me think more about what I can really afford and how I should start looking for a rich husband as soon as possible.”

And lastly Jennifer has spent as follows:

28th Feb – 5th March

This week I have spent £144.18 in the following way.

Make-up: £7.74
Public Transport: £19.40
Food: £12.29
Haircut: £30.75
Hair Products: £9.50
Shoes: £24.50
Spa Day: £40

I have not needed to pay any bills this week and I didn’t need to buy much food. I have treated myself with a spa day, new shoes and a haircut so most of my money this week has been spent on me! I probably won’t be so indulgent now for the rest of the month.

6th March – 12th March

I have spent £357.33 this week which is by far the biggest spending week I will have in the month. I have spent most of the money on my rent but I have still spent a little on myself.

Rent: £250
Travel: £22.10
Food: £19
Charity Donations: £5
Toiletries: £11.23
Eating Out: £10
Drinks: £10
Jeans: £15
Top: £15

I have been less indulgent this week but still had fun at the weekend. I went for a cheaper dinner and treated myself to some new clothes but I didn’t over spend.

They are all finding it to be a really interesting and useful exercise and it will be fascinating to see the totals at the end of the month.

Do you have the guts to be honest about your spending for a month?

Moneysucks Challenge – the first week

Zoe Nisbet and Mary-Louise Stone have both been keeping a note of their expenditure for the first week of their Moneysucks Challenge. Here’s the results so far, With Zoe going first:

Monday 20/02 Went out for dinner. Dinner itself was £5 and a shandy was £3.50 £8.50
Tuesday 21/02 Two slices of cake to take to my parents £2.50 each £5.00
Wednesday 22/02 Forgot my lunch today so bought water 0.75 and a salad £1.70 £2.45
Thursday 23/02 Loaf of bread £1 and train into town £1.50 £2.50
Friday 24/02 On Friday someone in our office bakes cake I put a donation of £1 in.

Finished work and went immediately to silverburn to try and find a dress for my birthday. I ended up buying a pair of jeans £17.49, then spent £12.35 in superdrug on shampoo and other hair products. Went to a charity shop and bought two cardigans totalling £4.75. I then went to get my fringe cut at the hairdressers for £4. While getting this done I got a £30 parking fee! I then went to the shops and bought some milk 0.79 £70.38
Saturday 25/02 Decided I needed to find a birthday dress, it is tradition to buy a new dress on my birthday. I spent a total of £40.97 in new look on the dress, tights and jewellery.
I then popped into a charity shop on the way home and found 3 dresses that were £2 each I couldn’t resist so that was another £6.
After my birthday dinner that my parents paid for as a gift. I bought some cranberry beer for £5 and then got two taxis to my friend’s house totally £6 £57.97
Sunday 26/02 Me and my parents visited the Polmadie car boot sale where I spent £6.50. I then went home and discovered I had nothing I wanted to eat in the house so I popped over to the shop near my house and bought crackers, flavoured water, butter, Philadelphia this little shopping totalled £7.50 £13.50
Monday 27/02 Filled up my car with £30 petrol and bought some chewing gum £0.57 £30.57

Total: £190.87

Now Mary-Louise:

Monday 20th February I bought my train ticket (£71.50) which lasts for a month and does save money, but is quite a big upfront cost.
Later in the day I went to a carvery for dinner (£8.50) £80.00

Tuesday 21st February I saw a good deal for a cut and colour on groupon so bought that (£25.00)
I’m running in a charity race in March (as a tiger…) so bought my costume too (7.98) £32.98

Friday 22nd February On Friday I bought a train ticket (£2.00), a bottle of mile (£1.30) and a chocolate bar (£0.69). What a mad Friday night that was… £3.99

Saturday 25th February My internet bill came in on Saturday (£10.30) and I then went into town to get some food shopping (£16.74), some cosmetics/toiletries (£12.00) and some rewriteable CDs (£9.99). In the evening I took a train to my friend’s flat (£1.30) and bought a bottle of wine on route (£4.99). £55.32

Sunday 26th February To save money (ha!) I bought a train ticket in advance for when I go to Dundee in a couple weeks time (£16.05). I also paid the entrance fee for the race I’m doing in March (£45) and lastly sponsored a friend who is raising money for Cancer Research (£30.) £91.05

Total: £263.34

Mary-Louise satys of her spending “It’s only one week into the money challenge and I was more than a little bit shocked when I added up how much I had already spent. In my defence, I had had some unavoidable costs such as bills… but I had also spent quite a lot of money on chocolate, make-up and socialising! My spending at the weekend was about double what it had been the entire week, I think mainly due to the fact that I had the time to go shopping, meet friends and eat large amounts of chocolate. I think that this first week did have quite a high number of ‘big’ costs (e.g. bills, food shops, travel tickets) and that hopefully, in weeks to come, my spending should even out. Otherwise I might be in trouble! Also, Zoe is beating me right now and that is very upsetting.

Zoe noticed a big difference between her spending during the week and that at the weekends, and is going to check her bank balance this week to see what other money is being spent for her. “I have been doing the money challenge for a week now. I have found there to be a big difference between my spending habits during the week compared to the weekend. During the week I don’t actually spend that much money my biggest expense will be filling up my car and doing a big food shop. I am in the habit of taking my lunch to work with me, so after the one off big expenses my day-to- day costs during the week are very small. Then the weekend hits. It was my birthday weekend so I ended up doing a lot of shopping. I needed a new dress for my birthday dinner and of course alongside the dress I needed jewellery! On Friday I am ashamed to say I got a parking ticket for £30. That was annoying expense that I didn’t expect. So all in all with shopping and parking tickets I managed to spend over the weekend £131.35 my total during the week came to £18.45. So week two begins my weekly expenditure will be more this week as I need to fill up my car and go do a food shopping. I have realised that to pop to the little shop just over the road from where I live and get groceries is a lot more expensive than going to a big supermarket and since I have a car now it is actually a lot easier to do a big food shopping and I believe this saves me money. Still haven’t checked my bank balance to see expenses that are coming out from my account. I will do that this week and account for these expenses. Week two begins my little notebook remains by my side so that I am able to account for everything I spend. An interesting challenge indeed.”

Are the banks really open for business?

Our Banks are telling us that they’re lending again, and that they are reaching their lending targets – nearly!

But we keep hearing stories of agreed facilities being withdrwan, or only being renewed at huge extra costs. And of continuting difficulties for people trying to move house, or buy their first property.

On top of that the banks are still not paying decent rates of interest on many of their accounts and millions of us haver money floating about in accounts paying no interest at all.

We own many of the banks, or so we’re constantly being told. Should we not expect better of them?

What’s your experience of our Banks.

Are they lending eonugh money, and quickly enough? And if not how do you think we should get them to increase their lending?

Tell us what you think.

My house, my home?

Some sections of the press are still full of dire warnings of 25% drops in property prices in parts of the UK this year or while others give us the the good news that prices will stabilise, and may even start to rise during 2012

We’ve decided not to get involved in that argument right now.

That might sound like a bit of a cop-out, and in a way it is. But that is only because there is another point that is sometimes missed out in this ongoing debate about the future of property values. Whether prices rise or fall, and whether you make money or lose money, you need a roof over your head. And if more of us thought about that rather than how much money we were going to make out of the buying and selling of our houses, then perhaps the many answers that the pundits are giving to the question over the future of property prices will be less relevant.

Your house can either be somewhere to live, in which case it’s your home, or it can be for investment, in which case it can provide an income or some cash when you sell it.

It can’t be both!

If you continue to live in it it’s your home not an investment and if you don’t live in it because it’s rented, or because you sell it to realise the capital you have tied up in it, then it might be ‘your house’ but it certainly won’t be your home!

I know, this is becoming a circular argument. But it is an important one. Huge rises in property prices over the last couple of decades have meant that more and more of us are taking this ‘property can’t fail’ line to justifying not having a good mix of investments, or more importantly as an excuse for not making proper arrangements for retirement as in “I don’t need a pension, I’ll just sell my house when I retire.”

Property has been king for years now, and returns from property have outstripped those from most other assets, although detailed analysis will show that timing could have a major impact on your profit.

Now I happen to think that property can be effectively used as part of a well structured plan for retirement. But it generally only works if it’s a second or third property purchased specifically for rental with no requirement for you to have to live in it yourself.  The ease with which mortgage money could be obtained up until a couple of years ago flooded the market with amateur landlords who thought there were quick bucks to be made from buying and selling flats up and down the country.

There is still money to be made from the property market if you’re looking to but for rental, but generally only as part of a longer term strategy, and generally still only if you are borrowing to help fund a purchase, and effectively using someone else’s rental to build up your capital.

For those of us with one property that we live in, we should start to enjoy it as such, rather than worrying about how we can ‘maximise our profit’ when we sell!

Moneysucks Monthly Challenge is underway

Zoe Nisbet starts her monthly challenge today. For a whole month she is going to keep a note of everything she spends, and at the end of the month we’ll have a chat about what lessons she has learned about the way she uses her money.

Zoe will be blogging regularly during the month to keep us updated on her progress.

Here is what she says so far:

“So the challenge begins today. I have my little notebook ready where I will record everything I spend. I am excited about this exercise as money is something I tend not to think about. I seldom check my bank balance during the month I guess because I am scared to do so. If I think I have spent a lot of money I will just be careful for the next few weeks until my pay has gone in. I am hoping this challenge will shed light on how much I actually spend during a month placing me in a position to make informed decisions in the future about my money.

A few of my friends have decided to do the challenge with me.

Mary-Louise (ML) who works next to me has decided to do this monthly challenge. She says “I have never really kept much of a tab on my spending. If you asked me how much I spend in a month I would really have no idea!! So I think it’ll be really interesting to find out how much I am spending and on what! At the moment, I’m trying to work my way out of a fairly substantial overdraft and so it would be great to get some tips on how I can be more careful with my spending. It’s the first morning and I’ve already spent £71.50 so I’m doing well!”

Let us know if you want to join in!

Moneysucks Monthly Challenge

Fergus Muirhead visited Pulse FM Radio station in East Renfrewshire to help the team from St Luke’s High School with their Money for Life challenge (read more about the challenge here and their Pounds, Pence and Common Sense campaign.

After the programme he got talking to Zoe Nisbet, who is running the project on behalf of East Renfrewshire Council.

Zoe agreed to take part in this month’s Money Challenge. She, and hopefully a few of her friends, are going to keep a note of everything they spend for a whole month, starting on Monday 20th February. You can read their updates here as they go along and Fergus will be back on Pulse FM after the month is over to find out what they have learned about their spending.

It promises to be a fascinating and fun way of helping to make sure that they are dealing sensibly with their money, but already they are worried about who is going to have to admit to the biggest ‘silly spend’ of the month. Watch this space for details!

Let us know if you want to take part in your own monthly money challenge by leaving a message at the bottom ot this page.

Are we fooling oursleves with interest-only loans?

Over the last ten years or so more and more of us have been switching our home loans to interest-only, where all we do is service the loan every month by paying interest. In some respects we’re renting the property since we are not repaying the money we borrowed to ‘buy’ it and we are effectively gambling on the fact that increasing capital values will give us a bit of equity when we come to sell. And of course the upside in the short term is that our monthly home loan bills are smaller. At a time when money is tight generally this can be a great help.

The facility to repay a mortgage on an interest-only basis has helped tens of thousands get their feet on the first rung of the housing ladder where otherwise it would have been too expensive to do so – and allowed others to trade up during the boom years. Not that this is always a good thing with hindsight since there is no question that this in part fuelled the ridiculous rise in house prices we have seen over the last couple of decades.

Now a new report from the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association suggests that this method of repaying a loan – or not repaying the loan as the case may be – could become obsolete if new Financial Services Authority rules are implemented.

The FSA is concerned that people who take on interest-only mortgages are in effect taking on larger mortgages then they can realistically afford to repay and that extra checks on affordability at the point or purchase will make sure that new borrowers will only take on debt that is repayable. Critics of these new rules argue that they will make it more difficult for lenders to justify arranging new loans on an interest-only basis and that by default we will all end up with repayment mortgages going forward – increasing our monthly outgoings but ensuring that we repay our debt as we go along.

The important thing to remember if you are arranging your mortgage on an interest-only basis, or indeed have already done so, is that at some point you will need to convert it to repayment, meaning that your mortgage payment period is likely to be much longer than you originally considered – unless you are able to cope with a big jump in monthly payments when you switch to repayment.

It could be, of course, that you are happy to continue with an interest-only loan because you can show that you have some money coming to you to repay your loan at some point in the future – from other savings or from an inheritance, or perhaps from the sale of an interest you have in a company you run. If that is the case then even if the new rules do come into force it is likely that lenders will continue to offer interest only mortgages in these circumstances

Would you credit it?

Research from MoneySupermarket has shown that over one in six people missed a payment for at least one bill in the last 12 months, potentially putting their credit profiles at risk.

With many consumers expected to apply for a personal loan or credit card this year, the research found that around three million people had missed a credit card bill in the last year. It also suggested that council tax is another bill regularly unpaid, as 1.9 million people missed a council tax payment. Mobile phones, personal loans, broadband, Sky and gas and electricity bills were also high up on the list as payments most missed.

The Scots and Welsh were the biggest culprits for missing a bill payment with 22 per cent neglecting their finances, while people in the East Midlands were the least likely to miss a payment, with almost 9 out of 10 not missing a payment on any major bill within the last 12 months.

These missed payments can have a dramatic effect on your credit rating but can also lead to the loss of promotional rates on the card, which can be a costly mistake, as Kevin Mountford, from MoneySupermarket, points out. “Missing your first payment on a 12 month 0% credit card deal would cost an additional £300 in interest over the 12 months if you moved on to an average credit card rate of 17.29 per cent. Therefore, prioritising your monthly obligations and setting up a direct debit for the most vital bills is a must for those who tend to forget to pay on their deadline.

“Missing a payment could also have a knock-on effect for future applications such as credit cards and mortgages. Those applying for a credit card need to prove they can make regular and stable payments and any black marks against a credit profile would hinder chances of being approved. For those who have missed payments affecting their credit file, MoneySupermarket has a SmartSearch credit profiling tool which matches applicants with the most suitable products based on their individual credit score, but does so without leaving a footprint on the applicant’s file.”

Repayments on credit cards and other financial transactions such as mortgages and use of overdraft facilities are all recorded on your credit file. The majority of household bills and government related fines and payments aren’t recorded but contract mobile phone payments are, so it can be very easy to get caught out by not paying bills on certain products, especially if you are not aware of the consequences of your actions.

If you are worried about what might be on your credit profile then you can very easily check it by getting in touch with www.equifax.co.uk or www.experian.co.uk. It’s a useful exercise ahead of any credit application you are going to make.

Do you know where your money is?

Right, here we go. No long lists of New Year resolutions for 2012. Just one simple message that will help you no end with your money this year.

Get involved!

Don’t let everything happen passively. It’s your money and you need to take control of it all and it starts by taking an interest:

What rate am I paying on my mortgage?

Can I find a better rate?

Is my house insurance competitive?

Should I take back that faulty TV that I just put up with because I don’t really understand my rights?

Are my tax payments up-to-date?

What income will my pension give me and when?

Could I borrow more cheaply than I am at present?

How much am I spending every week? And why?

Can I afford that new car I really want?

I could go on but you get the picture by now. Make 2012 the year you start to take an interest in your money and to make it work a bit harder for you.

That’s all.

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