http://loans.scotland.org.uk personal finance explained Thu, 19 Jun 2008 07:29:58 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The news that the huge wave of immigration from Poland is reversing as Poles take their savings back to Poland and start buying homes and building businesses has that unmistakable whiff of rats leaving a sinking ship. Totally unfair of course as they built our Miller Homes for the past ... http://loans.scotland.org.uk/all-the-travails-of-work-and-some/rats-sinking-ship/ According to the government 2012 will be a year of plenty with the golden shower of the Olympic Games to sustain us; but not everyone is quite so sanguine with fool.co.uk leading the chorus of doomsayers who believe that life could get very hard for people living in the UK. Lets ... http://loans.scotland.org.uk/debt/gulp-2012-looks-like-it-will-be-fun/ All the discussion supermarkets and their prices seems to miss the point about what it costs to shop at supermarkets. Let's start with "the facts": supermarkets do drive down the cost of individual items in your shopping basket so shopping at a supermarket does on the face of it save ... http://loans.scotland.org.uk/cashflow/save-money-dont-shop-at-supermarkets/ Bankruptcy statistics always get the interest of the press mainly because they are dramatic. So for example a record number of people petitioned to go bankrupt in 2007! Woooooooooooh! In England and Wales a total of 53,114 people petitioned to bankrupt themselves after being unable to ... http://loans.scotland.org.uk/savings/bankruptcy-is-thin-edge-of-wedge/ With the savings ratio at an all time low, and more and more people struggling to balance bills at the end of the month, the government is asking what is to be done to improve people's management of their finances. Proposals to integrate financial education into secondary schools sounds far too ... http://loans.scotland.org.uk/debt/helping-scots-get-a-grip-on-their-finances/ 1.7 million people had debt problems in 2006/07 according to charity Citizens Advice, this shows that not only the US has a credit problem It's scary how much debt people on average are getting themselves into and of course, debt levels vary widely across the UK. So here are a ... http://loans.scotland.org.uk/debt/thinking-of-debt-instead-of-christmas/ Are buy to let owners speculators or investors who take otherwise undesirable properties, maintain them and provide a rental accommodation sector that local councils no longer provide? As various experts ponder on the long term future of buy to let and also question whether the sector contributes to the economy or ... http://loans.scotland.org.uk/mortgages/buy-to-let-saint-or-sinner/ Mysupermarket.com reports that prices for a basket of 25 goods has risen by an average of 12% over the past year which equates to an extra £750 extra per year for the average household. Debtbusting solution? Buy less, buy with more frequency, and buy more carefully. A visit to the supermarket and ... http://loans.scotland.org.uk/cashflow/supermarket-prices-go-up-12/ There are mixed signals on Edinburgh property market: the Edinburgh Evening News and ESPC puffing like mad and Jo Citizen saying it is nothing but propaganda - read the comments on The Scotsman. Edinburgh, like London has a mind of its own as "buy to letters" pour in to buy quality ... http://loans.scotland.org.uk/mortgages/edinburgh-market-up-or-down/ MoneyExpert believes that 1 in 3 applications have been rejected - or an estimated 372,000 of the 1.2 million people applying for a mortgage or re-mortgage in the past six months have been rejected. This is up from the 1 in 5 in the six months to March 2007. This is ... http://loans.scotland.org.uk/uncategorized/1-in-3-homebuyers-have-mortage-application-rejected/