Money
How to solve the student debt crisis
England’s student debt is staggering. It comes to £270 billion – that’s larger than the budget for the NHS and…
Frugal chic, the movement changing the way women shop
It is, apparently, a novel concept in our age of overconsumption, that life can still be enjoyable even if you…
The rise of the pocket money app
I am standing in the village Co-op with my eight-year-old daughter when she asks, inevitably, to be bought a magazine.…
The taxman is coming for the self-employed
Spare a thought for Mrs McClafferty & Co. Like thousands of small business owners, she has spent years managing things…
The only living being on our banknotes should be the monarch
This Middle East conflict ought to be much easier than the oil embargo which followed the Yom Kippur war of…
A fogey’s guide to cryptocurrency
All innovations seem unseemly to fogeys. When bitcoin, the first of the cryptocurrencies, was launched in 2009, we dismissed it…
Want to get rich? Invest like an American
Ramit Sethi wants to make you rich. He is not a household name in Britain, but the Stanford psychology graduate…
Is any other investment as good as gold?
Last year might have proved a good time to own shares in the chip-maker Nvidia, along with the booming American…
Where are you on the tightwad scale?
I once stood in a queue behind a Scotsman checking out of a hotel in Germany. After he had finished…
Save our charity shops!
If, like me, your tailor of choice is the British Heart Foundation or Save the Children, it is beginning to…
My plan for a wealth tax – with a difference
Reading Careless People, an exposé of life within Facebook written by a Kiwi, it occurred to me that one potential…
In defence of fat cats’ growing pay packets
News from the High Pay Centre – the revolutionary guard of left-wing thinktanks – that average FTSE100 chief executive pay…
Was the car finance judgment fair?
I must modestly doubt that the Supreme Court justices took account of my 12 July column in their ruling on…
Britain is hooked on car finance
It’s unnerving to think how close Britain came to financial disaster last Friday, ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on…
Is Len McCluskey a Manchurian candidate for the Tory party?
At Stansted on Monday, a currency kiosk offered me €270 for £300. ‘Wrong way round,’ I said, having swiftly figured…
Don’t compensate drivers for mis-sold car loans
Surprisingly big numbers are the theme of this week’s column, several having flashed up to disturb the pleasures of a…
Marriage, motherhood and money: Show Don’t Tell, by Curtis Sittenfeld, reviewed
Funny, smart stories explore the ‘stale’ married state, the anxieties of parenthood and the sweet-sour nature of female friendship. But do they go far enough?
Beware the £5 coffee
It wasn’t until I received a notification from the Monzo app that I realised I’d spent nearly £10 on two…
What’s the point in spending a fortune on a wedding?
I follow the YouTube postings of a maverick young economist called Gary Stevenson, author of The Trading Game. Whatever you…
BMW’s Oxford retreat signals deep trouble for UK carmaking
Among British car factories, Nissan at Sunderland is the most productive and Jaguar Land Rover at Solihull probably the most…
Is Britain funding organisations that wish us harm?
Frivolous state funding isn’t only going to chancers, the plain lucky and the devious, but also to those who would…
My impossible task as ‘minister for efficiency’
I am delighted that The Spectator is launching a campaign to highlight the grotesque levels of financial waste in government.…
Heaven is a Trad Dad
M y husband earns more than me. A lot more. I am, of course, extremely fortunate to be in such…
My wife earns more than me – and it doesn’t feel great
This is the article I have thought about writing for years, but I have always ended up asking what would…
