Private Education good for the poor?

A very interesting post over at the Adam Smith blog talks about the increasing numbers of children from poorer background attending private schools.

Debt consolidation and its risks

There's an interesting post at Finance Forums regarding debt consolidtation loans and their risks/benefits.

The major problem with these sort of loans is that that take what was previously a simple unsecured loan, and turn it into something much more serious - a loan secured against your house.

Raising cash to start a new business

There's a great post over at Finance Forums that will be useful to anyone trying to raise some money to start a business here in the UK.

Unfortunately, it's no-where near as easy as in other countries (eg the US) to raise money for a new venture, but it's certainly possible.

Thinking of paying off the mortgage?

There's a superb thread over at Finance Forums discussing whether it's better to get an interest-only portion of a mortgage when moving house, given that the poster will be looking to downsize again in 20 years.

With an ageing population, I'd expect these sort of issues to arise more and more in the future.

What's a company worth?

Ever thought about buying or selling a business, but not sure how much it would be worth?

As much as someone is prepared to pay is of course the smart-arses annoyingly correct answer, but there is also an interesting discussion here about the numerous ways of calculating it.

Card fraud, and poor customer service

There's an interesting discussion here about an author whose card details were stolen and had thousands of pounds of fraudulent transactions made against her account. Worst of all, when she reported this to the bank, they essentially accused her of lying!

Obsessed with house prices? Me?

No, of course not.

Well, maybe just a bit.

Anyway, watch this and laugh.