Posted on January - 06 - 2012
Consumers concerned about sharp rises in the cost of their grocery shopping should consider themselves lucky after a study by The Grocer magazine found a typical basket of goods now costs one-thirteenth of what it did in 1862.
A shopper in the Victorian era would need £1,254.17 in real terms to fill their larder each week, compared to just £93.95 today. The magazine calculated the increase in prices by applying an average earnings measure of inflation to the 1862 prices of a basket of commonly-bought goods. The study looked at 33 items such as a dozen eggs, bread, hot chocolate, grapes, a toothbrush and a litre of sherry.
The analysis found a Victorian shopper would need to spend a third of their monthly income on food. Today, modern consumers spend less than 10% of their income on groceries. T
Read full post…
Posted on January - 04 - 2012
Do you ever feel like you’re in over your head when it comes to credit card debt? There can be many reasons consumers like you get into serious debt, and it isn’t always as simple as someone being irresponsible. There can be underlying issues that you need to address if you really want to turn things around and become debt-free.
To give you some examples, here are three reasons your credit card debt might have gotten out of control, and what you can do about each of them.
1. You don’t track your spending.
Going into debt doesn’t mean every purchase you make is a bad one. In some cases, people don’t even realise how much they’re spending on certain things (like dinners out) because they don’t track that spending. They have no budget, so they have nothing to compare each month’s spending to. And if you don’
Read full post…
Posted on December - 31 - 2011
The federal government’s finances are pretty complicated and not always easy to understand, and most of CBO’s reports about the budget outlook are fairly lengthy and detailed. In fact, one of the questions we’re most frequently asked is how much the government spends and takes in each year. For those who are not very familiar with the budget, finding the answer is sometimes harder than it should be.
CBO’s newest infographic—that is, information presented in a graphic form—describes some key elements of the federal budget, including a breakdown of its major components and a visual history of the budget and federal debt over the past 40 years. This graphical budget primer is more accessible than some of our longer reports, and we’re hopeful that it will make the federal budget easier to understand.
Today’s infographic is the latest installment in our ongoing effort to present more budgetary information in a graphic form. Thi
Read full post…
Posted on December - 29 - 2011
The world of mobile payments, combined with credit cards, is growing ever crowded at the moment. Now it’s getting even more jammed, as San Francisco-centric Card.io has just stepped into the ring. And, as some analysts predict, it will give the newly launched Google Wallet a run for its money.
It’s already been in use on the iOS system (an operating system specifically geared for Smart Phones) and has made the leap to the Android brand of Smartphone, the #1 competitor of the iPhone, which is anticipating its next big roll-out in early October.
One very appealing quality about the Card.io system is that it is a lot faster than its Google counterpart, as it allows users to bypass the more time-consumer parts of the GWallet process (such as not having to type your credit card details in each and every time, which can become something of a pain).
All a user does is hold up their credit card to the phone’s camera. From t
Read full post…
