Financial & Travel Musings

One thing you can be sure of is that the car insurance companies will use any excuse to increase the car insurance rates and the icy weather is the excuse that they’ll be using when the rates go up the next time.

You can’t really blame them this time around as there definitely has been a rise in the number of small accidents arising from the icy roads. Unfortunately, they can’t claim anything back from the various branches of the government that should have been doing something about those roads so instead it’s the insurance companies and hence us that end up paying for this.

Still, at least it’s not so daft as the argument put forward this morning by the local government representative who claimed that they couldn’t do the work as it would mean that their ratepayers would end up paying for it. Her argument was that since “the department” had loads of money, they should pay for it. Actually, it makes no difference in the end as those ratepayers are the tax payers who provided the “loads of money” so the choice is between paying it via the council taxes or through income taxes but they’ll end up paying for it either way.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Most people would say that they do if they have a mortgage but that’s not the case at all.

Instead of looking for a life insurance quote, what you should really be hunting for is a good term assurance quote. The difference is that the life insurance is for your whole life whereas term assurance would be merely for the term of your mortgage. That difference makes for a substantial reduction in the cost of the insurance and you can even reduce it more if you have a repayment mortgage by getting reducing term assurance which matches the cover to the amount of the outstanding mortgage.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Having to get a cash advance on a credit card is generally considered as the most expensive way to get money. After all, you’re usually paying interest from the moment you get the advance so it’s bound to be expensive, isn’t it?

Well, yes, but if you’re stuck in some far flung spot towards the end of your holiday and ain’t got any cash left there’s rarely any other option. The key thing to remember in such situations is that even a cash advance isn’t astronomically expensive so long as you are aware of how the charges work. It varies depending on your bank but in most cases there will be a charge of around 2% with a minimum of £2 or so for the cash advance and interest of around 2% per month from the day you take the advance. Thus if you take £100 and pay it back within a month it’s going to cost you around £4 which isn’t all that bad really.

Popularity: 3% [?]