Friends and Money Blog

Tuesday, 11 March 2008

Budget Predictions

Tomorrow (Weds 12th March) Alistair Darling will deliver one of the most critical budget speeches in a decade and it will be his first speech as Chancellor.

With the UK economy slowly grinding to a halt all attention will be on his announcements and the hope that he can kickstart our sluggish UK economy back into life. This year has been a difficult year for the global economy, firstly with the collapse of the sub prime market in the US, where US banking corporations lent too much to many people with too few concerns about their capacity to repay these sums. This on top of an increasingly competitive market that has seen China, Russia and India demanding more materials to feed the demands of their rapidly expanding consumer societies. Instability and rogue trading in the European banking sector has also caused banks to reduce the amount that they are prepared to loan to each other and as a result almost certainly contributed to the run on Northern Rock bank, which first in British society for over 100 years.
So in light of all this doom and gloom what can we expect from Alistair Darling's first speech?

Here are my hot picks:

- Tax on alcohol is almost certainly due to go up. This seems popular with the current anti binge drinking arguments that are kicking around at the moment. I think that it is more likely to happen on beers than on wines and spirits, so expect your weekly night out to cost you a few more quid.

- Fuel - I think this will remain the same, even Alistair Darling wouldn't be stupid enough to increase tax on petrol prices in the current climate that has seen wholesale oil prices raise dramatically. It would be political suicide to increase this!

We'll find out more tomorrow!!!

Labels: Alistair Darling, budget, budget speech

posted by Lone Duck Blogger @ 12:44 0 comments

Monday, 4 February 2008

friendsandmoney Competition Thread

Welcome to our first friendsandmoney competition where you can earn points just for contributing to our site and help the friendsandmoney community to grow. We want to reward your efforts in return.

Please read the full competition details here:

Please post details of your activities on this thread so that we can correctly attribute any points to your hard efforts and include your email address in the post so that we can contact you if you win any of the prizes on offer. If you would prefer to email us directly with this information that's no problem at all just send an email to prizes@friendsandmoney.co.uk.

Please be clear about any activity that you think qualifies for points.

Depending on the success of this competition we may make it a regular monthly feature.

Labels: competition, friends, money

posted by Lone Duck Blogger @ 02:32 5 comments

Friday, 25 January 2008

Paid Survey Sites Feedback

We want your opinions and views! Your experiences of a paid survey site could really help other members of the friendsandmoney community make an informed choice about which paid survey sites to join.

We welcome any feedback, even of a negative nature, providing that it is constructive and helpful. Any abusive comments will not be published.

Here's a few ideas about how to structure your response:

How frequently did you receive paid surveys?
How interesting were the paid surveys themselves?
What was the incentive and rewards scheme like?
What was the online support like?
How quickly were you paid and how smooth was the payment process?

Please only comment if you have actually used the paid survey site in question, do not base your comments on another person's experiences.

Important:

By posting your comments on our blog you agree to letting us use them in the paid survey section of our website. If you include a website/blog address on any comments you make on this blog thread, we will happily place this under your comments on in our paid survey section, enabling you some fee advertising for your site.

Thanks in advance for your comments, your feedback is important and valued.

posted by Lone Duck Blogger @ 11:28 0 comments

Friday, 18 January 2008

Money Saving Offers - Weekly Round Up

Labels: money saving, offers

posted by Lone Duck Blogger @ 06:08 0 comments

Thursday, 17 January 2008

Building Your Financial Safety Net

The new year is often a great time to re think our financial circumstances and consider just how prepared we are for future uncertainties. For example ask yourself this question “Could I and/or my family cope with an unexpected financial crisis?”

If you have any doubts about paying the bills or meeting monthly mortgage or rent payments then now is a good time to sit back and think about building a financial safety net. Unfortunately many people don’t think about how they will deal with unexpected financial difficulties like illness or loss of employment until it happens and by this time it’s too late to make arrangements to have your financial commitments taken care of.

So how easy is it to build a financial safety net and where exactly do you start? There are actually many ways in which you can do this but different people will favour different options depending upon their personal circumstances and the level of risk they are willing to except. Anyone can build a financial safety net regardless of their income and we have written a comprehensive article to help you consider some of the major ways in which you can do this including Savings and Investments, Budgeting, Insurance Polices and Antiques and Collectibles.

You can read our full article here: http://www.friendsandmoney.co.uk/financial-safety-net.html

Also Pinyo at Moolanomy has written a superb post with a host of money related giveaway why not check it out: http://www.moolanomy.com/463/free-ebook-taxcut-giveaway-carnivals-and-dave-ramsey/

Labels: financial, financial saftey net

posted by Lone Duck Blogger @ 11:40 0 comments

About Me