Refilling your printer toner is a notoriously expensive business, though why something as mundane as ink should cost more per gramme than gold, frankincense or indeed myrrh, has never been made clear to us. One of those nasty tricks the manufacturers pull – selling you the hardware as a loss leader and then charging you a king’s ransom everytime you want to fill it up. Anyhow, filling up the printer just got a little cheaper thanks to these Toner Giant Voucher Codes.

Toner Giant is one of the big boys, and it’s a nice usable website. Reliable service, good inventory … we’ve no complaints on that score. Once you get to the website, use Toner Giant voucher codes 6TONCAR to get 6 per cent off any toner cartridge. You need to look for the dedicated area (it will be called ‘voucher redeem’ or something similar) at the online checkout area. 3IANDK30 earns you £3 off any order of toner and ink exceeding £30, while IANDK2 gets you £2 off orders of ink and toner of any amount.

As ever, we’d like to know your success rate at using these Toner Giant voucher codes, so let us know here at Walletwatcher. Find more secret voucher codes on Walletwatcher. Related posts: Voucher codes and coupons

Tags: Online discounts, Free stuff

Has somebody sent a copy of this book to Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling yet? Well it’s probably too late anyway. The Credit Crunch by Graham Turner is as devastating a critique of Government created asset bubbles as you’ll read and is, unlike our own Government, ahead of the curve on the Credit Crunch. As Turner avers – if you think it’s bad now (and the book runs right up to spring 2008) , you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The thesis is this. The Thatcher and Reagan (and after) economies of the UK and US have seen the driving down of wages, sometimes in real terms, certainly as a share of the national pie. Much of this has been achieved by the crushing of union power and of the confidence of workers to ask, Oliver like, for more. A further downward pressure on wage demands has come with governments’ encouragement of globalisation, removing trade barriers to allow our companies to invest offshore, to tap a vast pool of cheap labour in China, India and beyond. Our consumer goods have been getting cheaper for years, and I type this review of the Credit Crunch by Graham Turner sitting in a pair of Primark shorts costing £6 and T-shirt costing £2.50 Just one scrap of evidence that a) I’m a cheapskate and b) western Europe is enjoying an extraordinary driving down in the cost of certain products.

And if Joe Public isn’t distracted enough by the cheap flood of goods offsetting the fact he hasn’t had a pay rise in years, then the government can create the illusion of wealth, by releasing the credit restrictions that prevailed for most of the 20th century and allowing people to tap the equity in their homes – turning their domicile into a giant hole in the wall. How can it go wrong?

Welcome to 2008 and the Credit Crunch, the other side of which is not just one, but a series of asset bubbles, artificially expanded by cheap credit. Worse, the unsustainable UK and US housing markets, a giddy spiral of credit which had to stop somewhere, are just two of the most obvious. Our investment outflows to offshore producers have fuelled credit bubbles there too – a froth of overinvestment and over production. From an oversupply of new build apartments in Manchester look abroad to what that credit release has also fuelled – a rash of unsaleable homes on the Costas, of garment factories in Korea, of parts suppliers in Romania, even of nightclubs and hotels in the new holiday resorts of Estonia. Go round the developing world in fact, and you see sick balance sheets disguised by vast credit inflows. Graham Turner’s Credit Crunch tours the globe revealing the candyfloss economies built by a decade of cheap credit.

Great until the party stops, and here Turner elegantly unpicks the myth of decoupling. How CAN the developing countries be decoupled from our sick economies when their trade is so dependent on ours. As our bubble bursts, argues Turner, we’ll stop spending on imports and the sickliness of those countries’ balance sheets will become clear … you’ll start to hear pops around the globe. The answer? To cut interest rates and cut them quick – and here he uses the baleful example of 1990s Japan to demonstrate the folly of tardiness, of after the curve interest rate cuts of a quarter per cent at a time. If we don’t act now, he argues, our economies will become entrenched in the ‘debt deflation’ which has gripped Japan for a generation, of money piling up in the banks and nobody spending. His description of the Japanese government’s desperate and fruitless attempts to inject liquidity into their economy makes painful reading. And we used to fear inflation? Turner wryly points out that the US Fed and the UK Treasury are still fighting yesterday’s war … it’s deflation we should really be fearing. The Credit Crunch by Graham Turner is essential reading for anyone trying to grasp what’s really gone wrong with economy.

Tags: credit crunch, global liquidity crisis, deflation

The Credit Crunch: Housing Bubbles, Globalisation and the Worldwide Economic Crisis
by Graham Turner
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Pluto Press (20 Jun 2008)
ISBN-10: 0745328105
ISBN-13: 978-0745328102
£14.99

STOP PRESS: An exclusive offer to Walletwatcher readers. To receive 20% off the RRP of the book go to www.plutobooks.com and enter code PLUCRUNCH. Happy reading.

The guys who kickstarted NCP Car Parks just after World War II were geniuses. In October 1948, Ronald Hobson and Sir Donald Gosling spent £200 on a bombsite in Holborn, central London, and opened it as a car park. ‘You fools’, people laughed. ‘Hardly anyone owns a car, petrol’s rationed, and you can park by the side of the street anyway.’ The pair didn’t listen, eagerly snapping up dirt cheap inner city real estate in depressed 1950s Britain. Fine, you say, but what exactly does this have to do with NCP Parking voucher codes?

Well, I’d like to say that I tip my hat to these farsighted gents every time I park the motor in the multi storey car park in Soho’s Brewer Street, but in fact I curse them everytime I have to shell out a thousand pounds an hour or however much it is to keep my car off the parking free zone that is the central London streets. Now though, there is a measure of relief. These NCP Parking voucher codes offer a discount off parking fees at many of NCP’s biggest sites, including the airports.

Now a word of warning, these NCP Parking voucher codes sometimes work and sometimes they don’t but it’s ALWAYS worth a punt at the prices they charge. And the handy site we’ve flagged up here actually gives a percentage success rate of the various NCP Parking voucher codes, so you can see how others have got on. Good luck! Oh, and I don’t really hate Hobson and Gosling, I just wonder if they REALLY foresaw the post War rebuilding of the consumer society, growth of cheap mass car ownership, the problems with future parking et al. Now that’s foresight.

Find more secret voucher codes on Walletwatcher.Related posts: Voucher codes and coupons

Tags: Online discounts, Free stuff

This week on Wallet Watcher John Rennie talks about protecting yourself against inflation and outlines the three things you shouldn’t be doing as the credit crunch bites harder:-

• Avoid buying property
• Avoid the UK stock market
• Only buy things you need
• Methods of fighting inflation

Thanks for the emails, keep them coming in to walletwatcher@btpodshow.com. We also have fresh articles on the Wallet Watcher blog including Wikinomics, petrol is more expensive on Fridays and should I rent or should I buy?. Our secret promotional codes this week include Laughing Deals voucher codes, Amazon voucher codes July 2008, Comet voucher codes July 2008 and Jessops voucher codes July 2008.

This episode of Wallet Watcher is brought to you with GoDaddy and offers you great discounts on hosting and domain names. Use the following Wallet Watcher July 2008 GoDaddy voucher codes to save you money – wallet1 gets you 10% off domain name purchases and wallet2 gets you 20% off orders over £25. Some restrictions may apply, see the GoDaddy web site for more details.

Tags: avoid buying property, avoid the uk stock market, only buy things you need, personal finance

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This week I look at inflation, why it’s bad news for your savings, the cause effect of inflation, and how you can try to protect yourself against it with methods of fighting inflation.

But first, let’s be clear what inflation is. We define inflation as a rise in prices of goods or, to put it another way, a decline in the value of the pound.

What was the inflation rate last year? Last year your £1 bought you a half pound of butter, but this year butter’s gone up to £1.50… the current inflation rate price has lowered the value of the pound in your pocket.

Why does inflation occur and what are the causes of economic inflation? There are lots of reasons for this – too much demand chasing too little supply, a rise in the cost of raw materials, even the Government printing too many banknotes.

But what it means to you is prices have gone up. The Government has measured this for years, rather quaintly taking a basket of goods, including staples such as shoes, bread and eggs, heating and lighting, and seeing how much it increases each month. They used to call this the Retail Price Index or RPI.

This though is where we get into murky waters. A few years back the Government switched from the RPI to the Consumer Price Index, the CPI – changing thee definition types of inflation.

This supposedly representative measure of inflation inexplicably excludes council tax, mortgage interest payments, the cost of buying property… a huge part of what we spend our money on in other words. Perhaps more tellingly, it’s a lot lower than the RPI, currently nudging 3.3% to the RPI’s 4%.

How does inflation affect the economy and what are the effects of inflation on money? The Government trumpets that this is a good, wide ranging measure of inflation across the economy (though omitting housing costs as we’ve seen) but that’s partly the problem.

The vast majority of our spending goes on a smaller number of core goods – petrol, butter, bread, heating the house – and we all know that these have risen a lot more than 3.3% this year.

A consultancy, Capital Economics has calculated that the average middle class family in the UK is seeing inflation of 6.3%. A higher rate taxpayer would need a pay rise of 10.5% this year just to keep pace.

And it gets worse for lower income families. They spend a higher chunk of their disposal cash on food and power – the very commodities that have seen the biggest inflation. Some newspapers have estimated this ‘REAL‘ national inflation rates at closer to 10%.

So inflation limits your spending power, but its more quietly destructive effect is upon your savings.

You may think you’re being prudent tucking away your money in a high interest account, but with inflation at 3.3%, a higher rate taxpayer needs to earn 5% gross before they break even. And as we’ve seen, inflation’s a lot higher than that.

Okay, now I’ve got you thoroughly depressed, let’s look at a little damage limitation. The big risers are going to be gas and electric bills, soaring again this winter.

The best methods of fighting inflation are disappearing fast but, if you haven’t changed already, go to uswitch.com to find a cheaper tariff and switch now. Capped deals are a good bet, as though you may pay more short term you’ll save long term.

Conversely, phone and broadband are among the few costs actually to have fallen over the last year, so looking for a switch there should save you money straightaway on your current tariff.

As I noted at the start of the show – fuel stocks are one of the few actually performing well just now. If you must pay a fortune to fill the car or heat the house you might as well take a share of the profits at least!

And if you are firmly risk averse, then an index linked Bond from National Savings and Investments will at least protect your savings’ real value. Their five year bond pays a guaranteed rate of RPI plus .35%… not spectacular but safe.

However you do it, these methods of fighting inflation are damage limitation. We can at least be glad we don’t live in 1975. Recent additions to the Retail Price Index then included coffee powder, dried mashed potato, cod in butter sauce and hardboard. Ah how we lived in the seventies! Oh, and the rate of inflation? 27.9%. With real coffee, real spuds and inflation at below 10%, things don’t look so bad after all.

Related articles: Britons living standards will fall

Related links: National Savings and Investments, Best buy credit cards, Price comparisons, Capital Economics, RPI and CPI

Tags: inflation, methods of fighting inflation, protect against inflation, why does inflation occur, effects of inflation on money,  inflation rates

At the risk of donning my hairshirt… don’t go buying things you don’t need. In fact, this might be a good time for some of us to whip out the dictionary and rediscover the difference between ‘need‘ and ‘want‘. You don’t need a new flatscreen TV, car or holiday in the Bahamas. And you certainly don’t need to be paying for it on your credit card. If you’re on a super cheap or free credit card deal just now, expect to find it much harder to get cheap credit when that deal ends.

Now is the time to be paying down debt and seeing how much you can save from your monthly budget. The next couple of years are going to be a very rocky financial road for the UK and US given the current U.S. inflation rate… so get your finances sorted.

Tags: current u.s. inflation rate, personal finance advice

Don’t go buying UK stocks and shares. If you think the FTSE 100 and 250 look rocky now, wait till the end of the year. Certain stocks, such as oil, gas and engineering are supporting the stockmarket, but as the bad news stories pile up – construction, banking, retail and the rest – the balancing act looks ever more precarious. What is a stock market security today? Unless you are a practised stock picker, leave your money in the bank.

Related links: Where can i learn about stock market?, Markets data

Tags: what is a stock market security, finance tips

I may be stating the obvious here, but don’t go for property buying… please. Having heard an estate agent on Radio 4 this morning affirming that ‘I can see light at the end of the tunnel‘, I can only assume that he’s either being absurdly bullish or that he’s got extremely good eyesight – I suggest avoid buying property.

I also read this week of big foreign property companies snapping up job lots of offplan flats in London just now, at a 25% discount. These of course are people looking at long term places to stash their cash – in the firm knowledge that prices will probably drop a good bit further from the discounted price.

It’s very hard to get mortgages just now and they are expensive, so many purchases simply fall through anyway. Unless you absolutely MUST move, sit tight and don’t go 4 property… there will be bargains later, much later. Stay put, ask yourself how much is my property worth and how can I improve the value so when the market does pick up you’ll profit.

Links: Buying offplan in London

Laughing Deals voucher codes: A useful website for voucher code deals has veered onto our radar, and this one has an extra twist. Laughing deals not only posts current voucher codes but combines them with a price comparison engine and a forum so people can request information about current deals. Whether that makes a practical difference over and above myvouchercodes. co.uk, www.vouchercodes.com, voucherheaven.com and the plethora of other voucher code sites online remains to be seen but it’s certainly worth a look.

Current Laughing deals voucher codes when we looked included some very nice Comet deals (which they’ve cheekily tagged as a ‘Wimbledon’ deal, for no other reason than the tennis happens to be on), and voucher code deals from Gadgetshop and Toner Giant. Not, on the face of it, anything that nobody else has, but it’s quite a nicely packaged website and you can get new deals sent to your desktop by RSS feed.

For more on Laughing Deals voucher codes and for a host of other voucher code deals, as well as personal finance news, views and rants, keep checking Walletwatcher on a daily basis … there’s generally something new! Find more secret voucher codes on Walletwatcher. Related posts: Voucher codes and coupons

Tags: Online discounts, Free stuff

Popular books about economics and the ‘new paradigm’ offered by the web are coming thick and fast these days, and Wikinomics has proved a huge hit with people from the old economy trying to understand the new economy. You’re likely to find it on bookshelves (mine at any rate) alongside The Wisdom of Crowds, The Tipping Point, Freakonomics and covered with dust now, the venerable ‘Being Digital’ by Nicholas Negroponte.

Wikinomics’ thesis is this – that the old company, if not dead, is rotting fishlike from the head. Because new companies, new organisations, new groups and commonalities of interest, are not hierarchical, but self-organising. That ‘the knowledge, resources and computing power of billions of people are self organising into a massive new collective force, interconnected and self orchestrated via blogs, wikis, chat rooms, peer-to-peer networks and personal broadcasting.’ And indeed here we are on Walletwatcher with me commenting unmediated by a conventional publishing house, and you sending me back comments telling me how stupid my points are and how I spelled ‘organising’ wrong.

This then is Web 2.0, not top down anymore, the web gets interactive. Now going into paperback, Wikinomics has won stunning plaudits (though every book I pick up these days appears to be ‘best ever’), including ‘dazzlingly timely’ from the Guardian, it’s an FT and Economist Book of the year, and so on. But perhaps the coollest and most sensible puff comes from Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, who talks of the ‘opportunities’ Web 2.0 presents for companies. And there are fascinating examples of companies throwing out their research programmes to open wiki access, breaking out of the lab to access huge amounts of knowhow among users of the internet. You may be a retired chemist who has discovered a better way to bottle soap? You can submit your ideas to Proctor and Gamble. Wikinomics takes the models of Linux and Wikipedia as examples of how open source and co-operative work can add up to a very big deal. Just as a swarm of ants can collectively move a huge log, our collective intelligence (and we’re getting into Wisdom of Crowds territory here) can produce goods and services better, faster and with more and quicker innovations.

Where Wikinomics is best is in describing these new self forming channels and groups, and talking about the way the next generation is already using them. CEOs may sniff at the idea of social networking, Technorati, Digg et al but they’re already out there and they are changing the way people work, think, talk and communicate about big companies. Think you can ignore Technorati in your company? Go online … you’ll find it’s not ignoring you. The writers also freely acknowledge the limitations of global collaboration – what does this mean for company security and protection of patents for example. What does it mean for workers’ pay and rights. Where it’s weakest is in the sheer weight of words the authors haul into place to make their thesis. Having slogged through ‘The Prosumers’,'Ideogoras’ and ‘the New Alexandrians’ I was struggling a little. This though could be mental flabbiness caused by too much dipping in and out of websites … A whole book? Not me!

And I chafe a little at their sympathetic description of how the BBC is changing itself into a collaborative news medium – yes, with enormous amounts of public money while making commercial capital, a situation bitterly resented by some of its commercial rivals. I’d also argue that the ‘mashup’ approach to music wasn’t invented by the rappers of Sugahill et al in the late seventies, but that they in turn simply copped the technique from Jamaican toasting in the early seventies. Wikinomics is required reading for anyone who runs a company.

Wikinomics (Paperback)
by Don Tapscott (Author), Anthony Williams (Author)
ISBN-10: 184354637X
ISBN-13: 978-1843546375
£8.99

Tags: Wikinomics, web 2.0, don tapscott, wiki, web2.0, wikis, mass collaboration, anthony williams,