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A BBC Panorama investigation screened on Monday accused the UK’s big four supermarkets of confusing customers with misleading pricing and less than transparent special offers. The program claimed its findings could leave the stores open to prosecution and enforcement action from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).

Reporter Sophie Raworth skulked around branches of the big four’s stores near to her home with a hidden camera and uncovered a range of bogus deals, pricing mistakes and misleading claims that could leave customers out of pocket.

The country’s biggest supermarkets – Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons – are in the middle a price war to tempt cash-strapped consumers into their stores over the Christmas period. They all claim to be slashing their prices in an effort to make life a little easier for their hard-pressed customers as seven years of austerity looms the other side of the holiday season.

Richard Perks, a retail analyst, told Panorama these cost cutting exercises are nothing more than a cynical marketing ploy to boost the supermarkets profits: “If there was a price war going on… Continue To Read This Post..

… Continue To Read This Post..

Ignoring the emotional side of life is a recipe for disaster. Everything we do is ruled by emotion. Think about your debts — don’t you want to be debt-free in order to be there for your family? To have more time to spend with your mates? To be able to take care of the special someone in your life? Debt robs you of all those things and hurts you in the long run.

Yet a lot of people try to only think about the logical side and they fail to realize the power of emotion in the matter. Debt is very emotional — you’re always going to feel like there’s no way to actually get things done and that can really cripple you before too long.

Now is the time to recover emotionally. In order to get out of debt, you have to first handle the emotional side of it.

If you are a person that likes to reflect, one of the first things that we recommend to you is to actually take a journal of all of your thoughts.… Continue To Read This Post..

… Continue To Read This Post..

The net annual profit big energy firms make on each customer rose to £125 in October, says Ofgem.

The regulator announced that the average amount energy suppliers make per customer rose by 733% from £15 in June after a raft of price hikes across the industry.

Ofgem said the average dual-fuel bill has increased by £175 and will reach £1,345 in November.

The watchdog said wholesale prices had risen by 40% to £115 per customer over the past year and could increase further in the next few months. Rising wholesale prices are often cited by suppliers when they increase their charges.

Although Ofgem predicted that profits were likely to fall back to £90 per customer next year, it confirmed that it will press ahead with plans to force suppliers to introduce simplified tariffs and easier ways for customers to compare the market.

Consumers currently face a bewildering array of 400 tariffs to choose from. Ofgem plans to set a fixed standing charge on top of which companies will be able to offer a variable unit price. This would allow consumers… Continue To Read This Post..

E.ON this morning became the fourth of the big six energy firms to announce double digit prices rises.

The power company said it would increase its gas and electricity prices by 18.1% and 11.4% respectively from 13 September.

Today’s announcement will push the average household bill for the average dual fuel E.ON customer up from £1,033 to £1,189, an increase of £156 or 15.1%.

Scottish Power, British Gas and Scottish & Southern Energy have all announced similar price rises in last few months leaving just EDF and npower to mop up customers looking to switch provider before they follow suit.

All of the energy firms that have increased their prices have blamed a 30% rise in wholesale energy costs over the course of the last year. MPs recently criticised the industry for being quick to raise prices when their costs were going up, but slow to pass savings onto customers when wholesale prices fall.

E.ON said almost 600,000 of its customers will be unaffected by the rise, including its most vulnerable on WarmAssist tariffs.

Graham Bartlett, Managing Director of E.ON’s… Continue To Read This Post..

Much of the UK’s workforce may discover that they are unable to stop working once they reach retirement age, according to a leading actuaries firm.

A report from LCP said the problem is mainly due to the decline in final-salary pension schemes.

Few large employers now provide a final salary pension scheme for new starters, while many firms are closing down existing schemes for employees already enrolled.

The actuaries consultancy’s report, Accounting for Pensions, said: “From 2012, as companies face the cost and administrative complexity of auto enrolment, further downgrading of existing schemes is likely.

“In the short-term, this may help the companies’ finances but, in the longer term, many people could find that they simply cannot afford to retire.”

Although private pensions firms have managed to reduce the aggregate FTSE 100 pension deficit to £19bn, down from £51 billion the previous year, much of the savings have come from higher employer contribution and a change in the inflation measure from the Retail Price Index (RPI) to the lower Consumer Price Index (CPI).

The report said UK employers stand to… Continue To Read This Post..