Humour

Jan 4, 2009

Dear Janet, I’m so ashamed of my brother …

I noticed this letter sent to an Agony Aunt over the weekend: "Dear Janet, I have a new girlfriend who I am totally in love with, but I am terrified about telling her about my family. You see, my father is a convicted rapist. That's bad I know, but then my mother has been working…

Jan 3, 2009

Barclaycard’s business avoidance marketing campaign

I just had a great offer from Barclaycard for balance transfers. It was the usual thing, a marketing letter in the post with a big headline: "0% on Balance Transfers until October 2009" At the end of the letter, there's a bunch of cheques to send off to pay for things at 0% for 10…

Jan 2, 2009

Children do better with money

Welcome to 2009! I'll put some thoughtful commentary here next week about the outlook for the year, but here's an interesting idea spotted in the Telegraph the other day. The Post Office approached children to design their literature for their financial services products, and their answers are brilliant. Asked to explain 'inflation', seven year old…

Jan 2, 2009

Children do better with money

Dec 31, 2008

Gold flakes in the water cooler

Every now and then you find a comedy that people either love or hate. The IT Crowd is one of those. It's a UK minor hit comedy series on Channel 4, and here's a clip of the CEO meeting his CFO: I'm posting this because I can see every CEO meeting their bank manager or…

Dec 31, 2008

Gold flakes in the water cooler

Dec 28, 2008

Christmas Crunch levity

I received a few nice, light thoughts over the Christmas period. One was an email that told the story of the monkey buying man … Once upon a time a man appeared in a village and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each. The villagers, seeing that there were many…

Dec 28, 2008

Christmas Crunch levity

Dec 24, 2008

Banking on a good holiday

It's Christmas Eve and you're still reading my blog … having said that, it's Christmas Eve and I'm still blogging … So, I was going to post something serious, and then thought: "what the heck, it's Christmas!" and decided instead to pick on one of my favourite TV shows, Frasier. There's one particular episode that…

Dec 23, 2008

Happy holidaze and all that …

As this is the last day in the office for many of you until January 5th, I thought I would share some Christmas wishes with y’all. The biggest change I’ve noticed this year is that I’m getting lots and lots of ecards. They normally arrive wth a message like: “We aren’t sending Christmas Cards this…