ABOUT
Bill Tyson
I cover personal finance and consumer affairs for the Irish Daily Mail and The Irish Mail On Sunday.
Before that I worked for The Consumer Show on RTE and way back further (<2006) I was personal finance editor with the Irish Independent. I also love history and occasionally write articles on this subject, which will pop up on the blog.
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As everyone is expected to win some kind of award these days, I have to inform you I'm not an exception to the rule and have three ESB National Media Awards. Two of these were for highlighting widespread malpractices within the Irish Nationwide Building Society. I also published eight annual editions of personal finance guide Your Money, which featured among the top-ten best-selling Irish non-fiction books for a good few years.
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This Blog
Why can’t we ever seem to make ends meet?
No matter how hard we work, how well we do in our careers and how much we cut back during the financial crisis, the bills just keep piling up.
There are many reasons for this.
First the good news
One of them is because we have so much good stuff to buy.
Your parents didn’t have pay for broadband, TV packages, mobile phones, foreign holidays, laptops, iPads etc etc.
They may not have had to worry about soaring car and health insurance bills so much – because they didn’t have two cars and health cover was cheap, because services were so rudimentary (without MRIs, CAT scans etc).
These consumer expectations are rising all the time, so expect the cost of living to go up along with them.
Yet, you’re right to feel short changed. We’re also getting ripped off, right left and centre. We’re short changed by the State with poor value services for the money spent on them.
We’re ripped off by banks, insurers, energy providers, investment firms, phone companies and financial advisors.
This isn’t done in an wrongful or even underhand way. It’s quite upfront and legit.
They don’t use cartels or a monopoly – that would be illegal. Instead they rely on the confusopoly that is today’s consumer market.
There are so many things to pay for, we are so time-poor and attention spans have decreased so much that few of us have the time or inclination to really assess, compare and switch the many services and financial products we have to buy on a regular basis.
They lure us in with tempting short term deals for mortgages, health insurance, energy, TV and broadband bundles. But when they run out, relatively few people will switch. Only 15% switch energy and TV/broadband bundles – while only a handful change mortgage providers despite the
And when they don’t you get absolutely clobbered with ‘standard rates’ that really men ‘mugs rates.’
The old cliché of personal finance advice was ‘shop around’, and you might get a better deal.
The market has moved on since then – now it’s shop around and switch regularly and pro-actively – or else you will be absolutely fleeced.
But despair not! Help is at hand.
You don’t have to spend hours wading through great wads of boring data to pinpoint the best deals.
We do all that for you – and break it down into some simple tips.
These can not only potentially save you tens of thousands, they also give you a great grounding in what everyone needs to know.
You don’t need to bone up on everything about finance – just a few basic principles that will help keep the rip-off merchants at bay.
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