The only advice you'll ever need - don't listen to advice, says Sir Alan

I wonder? Is it now time to launch a campaign to have the word 'expert' scrubbed from the dictionary? Or if that's not possible, then at least from the internet. It maybe a rather churlish notion given that we have a popular and useful Ask an expert service on This is Money. But wasn't it 'experts' in banks who destroyed the world as we knew it?

Yes, according to Tony Shearer, former chief of finance house Singer and Friedlander, which ended up with bust Iceland bank Kaupthing Edge. The mess was caused by: 'Bad banks, run by bad people, badly.' Hardly an endorsement for financial experts, I feel. 

Listen here (about 15mins in):

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/fivelive/money/money_20090225-0636a.mp3

But surely the best resume of the mood of the nation is from Sir Alan Sugar. If you do nothing else over the weekend, read this:

>> The so-called experts know double naff-all

And don't forget to donate to his charities once you've read and learned the lesson. It could be the least costly advice you'll ever get.

Richard Browning

 

 

Cool, chemical-free water bottles for a few quid

One of the bits of research that cropped up writing this here book was that the cheapest and tastiest way to save money on drink was to keep a bottle of tap water in the fridge. It is, all things considered, free. 

But the trouble is, a growing body of evidence suggest that the plastic used in some bottles could be harmful. So it is reassuring to see that alternatives are around that are not only plastic-free but are reasonably priced and, most importance of all if you expect your children to be seen using it at school in front of people, quite cool.

Check out the latest special offers from One Green Bottle, which has a range on offer for £6-odd plus postage.

http://www.onegreenbottle.com/Special_Offers

Related

Designer water? We'd rather take tap

 

Richard Browning

The (free) Ultimate Book Guide

There aren't many books that spawn movies that are as good as the thing that took some poor writer months of thought, pain and misery to compose only to be told that chapter three needs rethinking because that's where Hollywood dictates the turning point should be.

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest did it for me; both the book and the film were masterpieces. As does Holes, the wonderfully whimsical tale of theft, murder, magic, the palindromic Stanley Yelnats and the camp where bad kids get sent to dig holes for bad guys. There must be others. Help me out here folks.

But it is Holes that leads nicely into this little tip about the Ultimate Book Guide, which is a series of books full of detail of the best reads for children and teenagers.

There's a blog and there's a website with details of where to buy the books but if you head down to your local library you can pick up cut-down versions for nothing.  They're decent reads in themselves but if you've been wondering what you ought to be reading to your kids, or what they might enjoy, they're invaluable.

Related

Another book you may be interested in, (mine)

or if you're in a financial hole, check out the advice in...

Dealing with debt

 

Free investment advice

The best things, as John Lennon once told us, in life are free. Ha, try telling that to the people on 0% credit cards when the interest-free period runs out. But never mind, I now have a legitimate excuse to publish a nice big pic of the father of the beat combo and can boast a dreadfully tenuous link into this little tip...

If you have an interest in buying shares, and if you have any money you are prepared to lose if it goes wrong and if you lack the confidence to make your own decisions, you could do a lot worse than our share dealing service that offers a free investment advice helpline.

Now, I'm not saying that you should ever trust any so-called financial expert but it just maybe that a second opinion from someone who still has a job in financial services may be worth listening to.

Find out more about our share dealing service  

Buy the Big Issue and learn important stuff for £2 or less

The way the internet has evolved I am surprised that some entrepreneurial soul doesn't buy a copy of the Big Issue every week, scan it and put it online so the world can read it for nothing.

But they haven't. And there is hope for civilisation after all.

For the unaware, the Big Issue is a great little magazine sold by fine people for a worthy cause. Find out more.

But if, like me, your interest in it had waned, it is time to take another look. It's having a good run of form. And everybody in the country should buy this week's.

It is a mental health special. Fifty thousand children in Britain are having to look after their sick parents. On in four of us suffer from mental illness - stuff like that. But it's likely to get worse if the economic pressures mount and the 0% interest credit card deals start to expire.

But the particular reason for mentioning here it is a two-page cartoon by Matthew  Johnstone that everyone in the country should read. In 14 frames is the story of how to recognise mental illness, how to react and how to get better. If people bothered to understand things we'd never be in the financial mess we are. Equally there is no reason for everyone to suffer because of ignorance. We all know people who are ill. Read this and you can help. 

You can buy the book from which the cartoon is drawn for £7.99, but the Big Issue is just £1.50 or round it up to £2 if you're feeling generous.

Related

Should we clear our credit card debts?

 

More free legal music

(I've always wanted to start a piece with the words 'why' and 'quite' with the first line in brackets. So here goes...)

Quite why, in the days that music downloads rule the audio waves, HMV doesn't offer an in-store facility to download music on to your pod or player is beyond me. You can do it on the website. In spite of this anomaly. HMV seems to be doing pretty well. It has just bought some of the vacant Zavvi stores.

Visiting Zavvi with its ridiculous over-the-top security presence often felt like you were visiting a crime scene rather than a shop with a few CDs and loads more CDs out of stock. I gave up with them ages ago. And this is someone who used to spend all day every Saturday in the Eldon Square Virgin Megastore who still spends stupid amounts of money on music. Dear old defunct Woolies frequently offered a similar experience; like visiting a badly organised jail with heavily guarded sweets, cheap tellies and Shania Twain CDs lining the aisles instead of cells. HMV take note - from my recent experience you seem to be filling the gap on the security front these days, it's not pleasant. 

Aside in small print: I did a quick reccy yesterday in the High Street. At 1.30pm, peak lunchtime shop-a-thon time, the shops were almost all, almost completely empty - apart from Tesco (big queue at the cigarette counter) and WH Smiths (big queue at the cigarette counter). The Smiths branch is closing down at the end of the month.

If High Street retailers won't adapt the game's up. Sky has just anounced an online music service to rival iTunes. Amazon and Play.com are doing a fine job offering music downloads. There a loads of others. But these are the paid-for ones.

The free legal stuff is incredible. If you haven't checked out Spotify do it now because, frankly, I can't work out how they plan to make proper money.

And for today, here's another legal one.

Wolfgang's Vault has a smallish but worthy archive of concert and interview footage of some of the greatest bands. It won't suit people into the more modern stuff on show in last night's Brits - but hey what's modern about Duffy? There's some interesting 'old' U2 footage that fans may want to check out. They were on the Brits too.

http://concerts.wolfgangsvault.com/

You need to do a quick registration but unlike Spotify and our erstwhile music retailers it shouldn't be blocked by any workplace's overzealous security presence: the firewall, that is.

Related

>> How to get better and cheaper broadband + reader's experiences

 

How to make your own bread

One of the pitiful side effects of 25 years of debt-fuelled greed is that we now have a 'forgotten generation'. By forgotten I mean a swathe of population that has forgotten some of the basic, important things in life. Forgotten to talk - to neighbours and friends face to face; to walk - it takes but 20mins to cover a mile on foot; to manage our money - sorry but 0% credit cards as a way of managing money is an appalling idea; and to cook.

The latter is perhaps the most astonishing. Because ready meals are largely putrid overpriced gloop made without love in a factory and because cooking is so mesmerizingly easy. Almost as easy as taking a 0% credit card and falling behind with the payments.

After all, an apple pie is but flour, butter, sugar and three apples. And bread is flour and water for heaven's sake. OK, with a sprinkle of yeast and salt into the mix. But come on! 

In today's Metro there's and excellent guide to making your own bread from a new book by Daniel Stephens of River Cottage. And it goes like this...

Basic loaf
Set oven to 260°C.
The formula is 100% flour (1kg) to 60% warm water (600ml), 2% fine salt (20g) and 1% dried yeast (10g).
Mix together. Get lots of air in - knead for 10min. Then shape dough into a round (see main copy).
Rest in mixing bowl in a bin liner.
Leave to ferment, rise until doubled in size (45min to 90min).
Then deflate on your workspace by pressing with fingertips.
Form into another round. If you like, leave to rise again, up to four times.
Finally, divide the dough into two or three, shape again.
Rest for 15min, until almost double in size.
Make two slashes on top of each with a serrated knife. Spray them with water.
Put in oven.
Place a baking tray of hot water at the bottom for steam.
After the first 10min, drop to 200°C-180°C.
Bake until loaves are browned and crusty, and hollow to tap.
Makes two to three

Tips
'The slower a loaf is made, the better it is'
'Don't sieve the flour'
'Try Shipton Mill Organic White flour £1.30 or similar from Doves Farm'
'Don't knead by folding but stretch and pull it far out along the table surface with one hand, bring it back in and turn the ball'
'After kneading shape into a ball, prod with fingers to flatten, pick up the edges, turning inwards, flip over and scoop it from underneath, turn, scoop and turn'
'Spray with a lot of water for an amazing crust'

Related

Find loads more money saving tips like this one in my book

All our money saving tips

Richard Browning
 

Segs - the cheap way to protect your shoes

Here's a money-saving tip from my school. Anyone else remember segs? There are two ways to make your shoes last longer. One: get them properly re-heeled with a steel implant (see top picture). Or two buy a pack of segs for £1.99 (see bottom picture).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

>> Buy segs here for £1.99

Related

Shopping vouchers

£1 B&Q loft insulation (and a Valentine's shed)

DIY behemoth B&Q has one million rolls of loft insulation on sale from today for £1 each.

1m sounds like a lot, but the chain has a lot of stores (323) and there are a lot of people who like a bargain out there (about 50 million) so be quick before someone with a really big, really drafty house gets there first.

In fact, it's top-up loft insulation and is sold in packs of three for £3. And according to B&Q an average house needs 21 rolls of the stuff in this offer to insulate the loft properly.

It's not available online but you can see what it is here.

Find a store

Also this weekend B&Q has this shed - let's call it a Valentine's Shed - on offer for £65.

Related

> Cut your bills

> Insulate yourself against the credit crunch for less than a fiver: buy my book

Richard Browning

£10 hotel rooms (oh, and The Pixies)

Lastminute.com is running another £10 hotel rooms promotion from 10am this morning, Thursday 12 February.

Here's the link

http://www.lastminute.com/site/deals/birthday/wigig.html

I'd love to know if anyone manages to snare one of these deals. They've been elusive to me when I've tried before - it's likely to be a sold out by one minute past 10 kind of a deal.

Richard Browning

Related

Cut the cost of your travel and other insurance

PS

A quick thank you to what appears to be members of the Pixies who have been posting comments on the blog. For anyone not familiar with the band, here are a few pictures.

Valentine's roses? Why not try beer instead...

It's official - Private Eye take note - Valentine's Day is the new Christmas. At least it feels like it from here. Since about the first week of January, press releases started to tie-in any old event or product or other with the Day that... no... no idea what it is any more other than an excuse for spin doctors to create email landfill as they attempt increasingly desperately to link V-Day with insurance products and the like.

However, one product that caught my eye, which I should add wasn't in a press release, is the idea of Valentine's beers from Beer Here.

Or if that doesn't tickle the romantic nerves in you, get a free glass with a case of Chimay, Duval or Vedett White.

Or just buy some special offer wine.

Oh yes, and don't forget there's only 316 days till Christmas.

Related

Cheapest Valentine's roses

Credit crunch T-shirts

Anyone with any common sense and a sense of basic human decency and dignity maybe forgiven for thinking that bankers exist purely to take other people's money, cream off a percentage for the bank and a bit more for themselves, get paid an inflated monthly salary, take a share of the huge excesses of the other people's money in the form of a bonus, then disappear into the sunset for a ringside seat as the Tower of Bubble they've helped create pops.  

You'd also be forgiven for assuming there's not a lot we can do about it. Is there? Probably not. But here are two suggestions.

1. Follow the coverage of the Parliamentary grilling by the Treasury Select Committee of the bankers at the helm as their industry binged us into what may well turn out to be the 'worst recession for 100 years'.

Or ...

2. Get the T-shirt for £11.

After all what's £11 compared to £50bn? It's 0.00000002% or thereabouts.

Related

Bank chiefs profoundly sorry

The 'criminally irresponsible bonus system'

Bring back the guillotine for bankers

Oranges delivered to your door

After last week's snow-inspired shutdown of the town where I live it became obvious how fragile the supply chain can be in a country that has weather. Within one day there was no bread on the shelves. Within two, it was beginning to feel like we'd be existing on the remaining tinned food in the cupboard for the foreseeable future. By Saturday, there was still no fruit and veg stalls in the market.

And it got me thinking. Can you import the stuff directly from the suppliers? And the answer is: yes you can, at least you can when it comes to Spanish citrus fruit and pumpkins. Check this out:

http://www.valenciasoranges.com/index.php

As ever, you'll be clobbered by the euro exchange rate but if you're able to share the fruit, or have a big family, make marmalade or pumpkin soup and freshness is your thing, you'll get for example a 15kg box of tangerines for around £3.40 a kilo that are picked to order and delivered to your home. The fruit should stay fresh for two weeks if stored correctly.

Related

Find a credit card - they don't take cash

Time to get a better deal for your broadband (TV and phone)

Here's an interesting offer from the Argos website today. Buying this near-£5,000 TV entitles you to a be able to buy a half-price extension lead! Blimey. If I spent five grand on a telly I'd expect the company to supply a fully vetted team of domestic servants for a period of not less than three and a half years. Not a discount on a length of electrical cable.

Anyway, on the subject of TVs and the like... you can't open the papers at the moment without seeing any number of adverts for bundled up TV, phone and broadband at some extremely competitive prices. So here's the trick, if you do have a similar package already it's time to call your current provider, threaten to leave but first ask what they can offer to keep you. It works. One colleague is enjoying a range of free movie and sports channels for a year as a result.

Remember, if you do leave and are in a tied-in contract of 12 or 18 months, they may stuff you for an exit charge. And remember too that years ago Bruce Springsteen sang the prophetic '57 Channels and Nothin' On'. And now there's a whole lot more of these kinds of channels.

So remember also, that if you only want a broadband supplier you shouldn't be tempted to go for the whole caboodle. Ask yourself: how much TV do you actually watch? In spite of the ads, the market is not a BT, Virgin, Sky oligopoloy. There are scores of broadband providers. It only takes a few minutes to compare the market.

>> Check the broadband suppliers in your area

Alll done? Now sit back and enjoy...

Bruce Springsteen singing 57 Channels and Nothin' On

Richard Browning

The world's cheapest meal?

As I continue the publicity tour for my How to Survive the Credit Crunch book I am more often than not asked to recount the bit entitled: 'Make the cheapest meal in the world for 10p.' It is an amusing, I'm told, account of tomatoes on toast. Home grown of course. Or as Brian Flynn from Radio Clare FM said yesterday: 'Two slices of bread and two tomatoes? We call that a four-course meal.'

But as the snow continues to fall here in the increasingly isolated state of Surrey and bread deliveries are not getting through, maybe it's time to look for an alternative and cheap meal. I give you soup. No bread.

You can make soup out of anything. An Italian friend of mine makes a delicious iceberg lettuce concoction. The base ingredients are always the same. Fry chopped onion, maybe add a medium potato or two for consistency, add anything else you fancy, gently cook it for a bit, add water (how much is up to you) and a stock cube or two and simmer for 10 to 20 minutes. Then zap. Done - for but a few 10s of pence each for a family.

But if, like here this week, there are no potatoes left in the shops, we need to get a bit more adventurous. Here is a recipe for sweet potato soup from the Soup Nazi. It's either delicioius or revolting depending on which of the reviews you choose to believe.

Or if none of this is of any interest, at least watch this short sketch, 'Soup Nazi' - or as I like to see it: what would happen if Seinfeld came to Britain.

Related

Eat out for less - book online

Frozen food £1 offers

If you were reading this blog in November you'd have sorted your 15%-off snow chains and today's weather-related problems would be but a minor irritant. The snow chains are no longer on offer but, perhaps appropriately, some of the £1 frozen foods offers from Birds Eye are.

As everyone knows*, the world's best meal is fish and chips from the fish and chip shop, second is beans on toast and third is a fish finger sandwich. And you can make the latter for less this month if you're able trudge into one of the supermarkets.

Check out these £1 offers (usual price in brackets):

Omega 3 fish fingers (£1.99), Crispy chicken (2 pcs, £1.69), Arctic roll (£1.99), Oven crispy battered fish fingers (£1.99), Seaside specials (£1.79), Meatballs (£1.69), 2 Original chargrills (£1.69), 4 Original burgers (£1.39), 4 chicken burgers (£1.79), 2 chicken ¼ pounders (£1.99), Southern fried chicken / hot & spicy chicken (£1.69), Chargrills grills (£1.69), Lemon fish fingers (£1.99), Green beans (£1.79), Steam fresh veg (£1.49), Fish melts (£1.79).

Not all products are available in all stores but the dates are as follows...

Asda: until 16 February
Sainsbury: until 24 February
Morrisons: until 15 February
Iceland: until 21 February
Waitrose: until 25 February
Tesco: until 9 February

*Just an educated guess

Related

As Sir Fred Goodwin is finally frozen out of RBS... There's only one way to treat bankers