Personal finance help
With financial waters looking rocky in the UK in 2008, ever more readers are seeking personal finance help. The reasons aren’t hard to see. For the record, a recession is called if we see “a decline in a country’s gross domestic product (GDP), or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters of a year”. The data is, thus, only readable in retrospect,. But whatever the future holds, most financial sages are saying it’s now no longer of a question of ‘if’ there’s going to be a recession, or even ‘when’ … rather, we are in the midst of one. The collapse in the sub-prime housing market in the US, the knock-on effect of the Credit Crunch, in the UK and elsewhere, and a baleful budget from the UK’s much-derided Chancellor Alistair Darling just this week.
Whether on a micro or macro level, it’s going to have an effect on all of us. Loans are harder to come by, credit cards likewise, and mortgages the same. Meanwhile, many of us are on fixed-term, fixed rate mortgages that are coming to an end. Inflation is also edging up at a time when money is tight - many of us have been scoffing at the official inflation figures for a while. Those on the lowest wages, for whom foodstuffs make up a greater proportion of their weekly budget, simply won’t believe official figures that put inflation at 2.2% (it exceeded 3% during 2007). Even the Retail Price Index, which factors in store prices more directly, is only around 4.1% just now, but anybody who pays attention to the prices of butter, a loaf of bread, or the petrol they put in their car, knows different. No amount of cheap DVD players or Playstations can disguise that fact.
With this in mind, I’m going to be looking specifically at personal finance help topics over the next few weeks. How you can budget, economise, batten down the financial hatches, and weather the fiscal storm. That’s enough financial metaphors … we’ll be seeing at how you can out the other side of the recession with your finances intact, and even enhanced.
