Mastercard have signed up as the official sponsor of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, which should boost the commercial base of the 4-yearly tournament.
The 2011 World Cup is being held in New Zealand. Emirates Airlines have also been announced a sponsor. 4 more agreements are yet to be announced.
Credit crunch? What credit crunch? It doesn't seem to have phased the spending of the premier league football clubs, as the January transfer window saw record highs of £160million being spent.
Man City and Tottenham Hotspurs have been flashing the most cash, having spent more than £50million and £45million during the transfer window.
I'm too often reading about the latest high street redundancies, and businesses failing due to the credit crunch, so it's nice when you read some good news for a change - this time, the good news comes from Asda, as they plan to create 7,000 new jobs this year.
They are planning to open 14 new stores as well as expanding 15 existing ones, providing jobs at a time when they are very much needed. The jobs will also be offered to 3,000 long-term unemployed people, including the option of part-time roles. I like a bit of good news!
Before now, 25% of card transactions were screened to help monitor the levels of fraud and finding fraudulent transactions. But now, HSBC have announced that they will be monitoring all transactions in an attempt to tackle rising levels of fraud.
The new technolog, made by SAS UK, will automatically check transactions against normal levels of use of the card being used. It's all well and good, except that the process may query legit transactions as well, leaving the consumer with the risk of their transactions being cancelled. Not that handy when you are, for example, abroad. Good idea though.
Did anybody listen to the Radio One Breakfast Show this morning? They had Peter Jones (of Dragons Den fame) on, talking all about the credit crunch, the recession and how best to survive it all.
Now I'm not normally a fan of Radio One and the Chris Moyles lot, but this morning I thought it was absolutely brilliant and gave an amazingly simple yet completely useful overview of the whole thing.
If you didn't listen to it and you want to understand a little more about why we're all tightening our belts, have a listen to this morning's show on the BBC iPlayer - it's well worth it!
A bit of a long shot, but has anybody out there had experience of IVAs?
I've got a colleague who's in a bit of money trouble and it looks like an IVA could be the last option without him having to resort to bankruptcy. I know a fair bit about the economy and a little about debts, but I must admit that IVAs aren't really my thing.
So if anyone has gone through an IVA, or can recommend a good debt management provider to help with it all, please do get in touch! Thanks very much! :-)
The average interest rate paid on an instant access account is now just 0.81% - plummetting alongside the Bank of England base rates.
And, the official cost of borrowing is not at its lowest level since the Bank of England was founded, back in the 17th Ceury.
It was also found that some savings accounts don't pay any interest at all!
I don't know whether you've seen these adverts on the TV - they've been shown for quite some time now, claiming that you can feed your family for fiver at Sainsbury's.
The idea looks quite appealing - especially at the moment with the economy being how it is and things being so expensive. So I thought I'd share some of the ideas I found on the Sainsbury's website. There's some excellent ideas, and they don't cost the earth. What's more - they are healthy.
Last week, the MPC slashed the Bank of England base rate again - it now lies at 1.5%. This chop takes almost £30 per month off monthly mortgage costs.
It's good news for mortgage policy holders who have their mortgage with banks who are actually passing on the rate cuts to their customers. Not so great for people who are lending from banks who have decided to not pass on the cuts.
The more the consumers borrow, the greater the savings will be - a £100,000 mortgage with a rate cut of 4.9% to 4.4% will have £29.14 less to pay each month. A £150,000 mortgage will be saving £43.70 and a £200,000 mortgage will be cut by £58.27 a month.
All we need now, is for more lenders to pass on the savings, and the economy could have a boost.
Tesco are offering double points on their petrol and diesel at the moment - After all, every little helps!
Just hand your clubcard in when you pay for your fuel, or keep hold of your receipt and get them added at a later date.
