Financial & Travel Musings

It seems like every week there are another batch of airport closures due to the Icelandic volcano.

It’s so common now that it’s hardly even mentioned on the news and it looks like the only way to know for sure whether your flight is on is to call the airport. Even then, the other week that didn’t even work as some airports listed as closed had flights during at least part of the day.

There neither seems to be an end in sight of this nor does there seem to be any move towards consistency in reporting what’s happening. If it were anything else, you’d have seen a website set up to collect together all the information but that hasn’t happened yet, probably because a) it continually looks like it might be over soon and b) nobody seems to have the full picture of closures.

The only clear certainty in all this is that it would be crazy to even think about any holiday this summer that involved flying anywhere.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Locked phones are a major hassle. No chance of changing your SIM card to take advantage of the latest offer or even popping in one of the many international use SIM cards that are commonplace these days.

Given all that, an unlocked phone can sometimes seem the only sensible choice. And so it would be, if it weren’t for the subsidy. The problem is that the locking is applied to make sure that the company supplying the phone gets fully paid for the phone. Bearing in mind that some fairly common phones actually cost well over £500 that subsidy can be quite substantial: many of those phones are available on contracts from £10 or so.

So, choose to pay heaps, or a little with a lock-in or perhaps go for somewhere in the middle ground.

Popularity: 1% [?]

When choosing a diet pill, most people don’t even bother to think about safe diet pills but they should.

Oh, it’s not that the pills have some dangerous ingredients in them. No, it’s rather that some of the ingredients could cause problems for you. For instance, if you have high blood pressure then some pills are no-go areas as they have a mix of ingredients which will tend to raise it even more.

So, read those lists of ingredients carefully and read the leaflet with the side-effects too.

Popularity: 1% [?]