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While most people are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to get the best deals on most things in life, it is amazing how many people will put up with a poorly performing bank account. How happy are you with your bank account? Most people think that if they are getting their current account without having to pay any fees then they are doing well. Some will even get a small amount of interest free credit. However, the true cost of your bank account is not so much how much they charge you for having it, but rather, how much you are loosing each year by not earning any interest on your current account balance.

If you are a typical UK banking customer then you will usually have a positive balance on your current account. This will range from a couple of hundred or even over a thousand after you get paid, to probably quite a bit less by the end of the month. If you were to have this money in a savings account for the entire year, you could earn well over a hundred pounds in interest. However, because most bank accounts pay as low as 0.1% interest, you will be getting nothing near this amount. This means that you have actually paid hundreds in lost interest for your current account.

However, there are some bank accounts that pay as much as four, five or even six per cent on your current account balance. One example of such an account is Alliance and Leicester’s Premier Account. Provided you earn at least £6,500 a year, this account will be available to you. You will then earn over 6% for the first year and currently 4% after that. This is a huge benefit and you should look into benefits like this when you are choosing your current account.

One third of all UK adults will receive a horrific shock when they apply for a homeowner loan, secured loan, or credit card.

One in three Britons face credit refusal because of a missed mobile phone payment, according to the consumer credit reporting agency, Checkmyfile.

They analysed the credit files of 1000 consumers, taken at random. At least 36.6 per cent of UK consumers had mobile phone accounts with missed payments. These lead to exclusion from the loan market or can result in higher interest rates, arising from the increasing practice of lenders to ‘price for risk’.

Barry Stamp, Joint Managing Director, was shocked at how many people faced credit refusal in this way. “Missed payments on mobile phone accounts are much more serious than most people realise. We find that many people are surprised to discover that their mobile phone account appears on their credit file at all. Many of our customers find they have an unblemished credit file, except for their mobile phone account, which lowers their credit score and reduces the choice of credit products available to them.”

Stamp explains, “Credit providers take a dim view of missed payments on applicant’s credit files, as this can sometimes give an early warning of over-indebtedness. Most people have a missed payment on their credit files - we are all human - but a string of missed payments - which this study has shown is typical on mobile phone accounts - could easily lead to an application for credit being refused”.

Mobile phone companies take a more hard-line approach to missed payments on competitor telecom accounts than other credit providers such as card companies. Consumers need to take responsibility for their Consumer Credit Information.

Scottish Widows Bank is to enhance its Own Overseas service, which caters for UK residents who wish to buy a property in Spain. The service offers flexible Spanish mortgages as well as help with the buying process. The bank aims to make the service accessible to both current and new Spanish holiday homeowners. It has there for announced a remortgage package which may offer an alternative for those who already have Spanish mortgages.

The Own Overseas remortgage package will see the notary and registry fees paid by the bank, while customers can add the fulfilment and valuation fees to the mortgage, leaving just the stamp duty costs to pay. The products now has a tiered free structure and a tiered rate for customers taking Euro or Sterling mortgages. Customers will also be able to choose from interest only or repayment mortgages.

Gordon Bowden, Business Development Director at Scottish Widows Bank, commented: ‘Despite the significant size of the market, remortgaging isn’t common in Spain - largely due to a lack of attractive remortgaging packages from lenders. According to Datamonitor in their 2004 Buying Property Abroad report there were approximately 540,000 Britons who owned a holiday home in Spain. Within this group, there is likely to be a significant number of people who could benefit from a more competitive deal.’

He added: ‘The Scottish Widows Bank Own Overseas remortgage package offers a cost-effective solution to existing owners and investors looking to remortgage on their Spanish properties.  By covering the notary and registry fees and allowing customers to add the valuation and fulfilment fees to the loan, our remortgage package aims to make the transfer to a new lender as easy as possible. ‘

Research from credit reference agency Callcredit suggests that Brits are planning to spend more this Christmas than last year, but they are keeping a tighter handle on their finances. One in ten people are expecting to spend over £1,000 over the Christmas period. This is twice as many as last year. In contrast, only four in ten think they will spend less than £500, compared to six in ten last year.

However, only one person in ten is planning to use credit to fund the Christmas festivities and most of those will only put a quarter of their Christmas costs on plastic. Instead, most people are going to use savings or their normal income to fund Christmas spending.

Callcredit director Mel Mitchley said: ‘This is a big increase on last year when the equivalent figure was three in ten and means people are spending less on credit than last year. What’s more, people are predicting they’ll pay off their Christmas debt sooner than in 2005. This year 81 per cent of people think their festive credit spending will be history by March, compared to 67 per cent in 2005.’

Ms Mitchley added: ‘Generally the picture is looking pretty positive - people are spending more but budgeting better.  Instead of using credit to get them through the festive season they’re using the hard-earned cash they have in their pocket. One slight concern is that the number of people who have no idea how they’ll fund Christmas has doubled from two to four per cent.’

Christmas is generally seen as a time of plenty, for spending time with your family and loved ones and forgetting about the day to day aspects of life. However, while all of this is certainly true, you should also try to pay a little attention to your finances. While you should probably not allow yourself to become the Christmas scrooge of the famous story, you should try to spend within your means over the holiday season.

Statistics show that the average person will put over a thousand pounds onto credit cards over Christmas. While the vast majority of people will have paid all of this off by March, many will not. Below are a couple of tips that can make sure that your Christmas cheer doesn’t leave you paying for the rest of the year.

The first thing you should always do is set a budget. While this does not only apply to Christmas, it can work very well when you are planning your Christmas shopping. You can quite easily make a list of the people you need to get presents for and you can set out how much to spend. If you stick to this budget then you will at least be in control of how much you spend on gifts.

The other thing that you need to keep in control over Christmas is the money you spend socialising. One way to keep tabs on this is to write down the big socialising events that you are going to be on over Christmas and decide how much you are going to spend on each of them. While this may seem like taking a little of the fun out of Christmas, it can be worth it, especially if you decide that you cannot afford to increase your debt over Christmas.

If you are a UK tax payer, then you may be aware that there is a new method of donating to charity that can mean that your chosen charity receives a lot more money than you actually donate. This is a very clever and generous way that the government has come up with for encouraging people to donate more to charity. It seems as if the government has realised the amount of good that private charities do for the country and that by and large, if charities did not undertake these tasks, then someone else would have to step in to do them.

The way payroll giving works is that you fill in a form with your employer and they will automatically deduct the amount you wish to donate from your pay check each month. This is done without you having to do anything, much like a standing order. However, the big difference with payroll giving is that the donation will automatically take into account the level of tax you pay and reclaim the tax for you. This means, if you are a basic rate tax payer, and you decide to donate £10 to a charity, you will be repaid the £2.20 tax so that the donation actually only costs you £7.80.

Another thing that the government has decided to do is match your donations up to certain limits for a set number of months. This would mean that you £7.80 referred to above would now actually get your chosen charity a donation of £20. There are also some employers who have also decided to match your donations so that your donation would become £30. This of course depends on the policy of your employer.

Another benefit of the system is that if you terminate your employment or leave your job, the donation will cease.

Moneyextra has urged UK consumers to start planning now if they intend to put Christmas shopping on their credit cards. Its wish list for Christmas includes 0 per cent balance transfers, which have now become extremely rare, especially if you don’t want to pay a fee. Look out for low long term interest rates if you have a low balance, or a capped balance transfer rate if you have a high balance.

However, these cards are not for spending, Instead card holders should look around for credit cards that offer 0 per cent on purchases. Examples are Marks and Spencer’s & More credit card, which offers 0 per cent on new purchases for a 12 months, as well as loyalty points worth 0.5 per cent of your spend, which can be spent on shopping at M&S. And the  Sainsbury’s Bank Platinum Visa card offers 0 per cent on new purchases for 10 months.

Cardholders who are unlikely to pay off their balance in full should look for a low interest credit card. According to Moneyextra, best buys include the Halifax Flat Rate card, which charges 5.9 per cent and Barclaycard Simplicity, which charges a flat rate of 6.8 per cent for purchases and balance transfers. Meanwhile, those who settle in full can look for cards that offer cash back, such as the American Express Platinum card, which gives 3 per cent  cash back for the first three months. Morgan Stanley Platinum Plus promises 3 per cent cash back to1 February 2007 on purchases up to £2,000.

‘Your credit card is not just for Christmas, but with an average spend jumping 22 per cent to around £378 on presents, it usually gets little rest in the run up to 25th December.  If you have not checked out the best deals yet, you only have a few weeks to do it.’ says Robin Amlôt, Senior Editor of Moneyextra.

Moneysupermarket has published user reviews on UK personal loans based on data collected from 11,000 users. The research, believed to be the largest personal loan review ever conducted in the UK, compares acceptance rates across loan providers, the number of customers who get the lowest headline rates and customers’ assessments of the service offered. Moneysupermarket believes the feedback is an accurate market assessment because of the volume of responses and the fact that only those who had applied for loans through the site were polled.

Stuart Glendinning, managing director at moneysupermarket.com, said: ‘Since the OFT applied the condition that 66 per cent of successful loan applicants must benefit from the headline rate on price for risk products – which predominate in the loans market – there has been an on-going suspicion, from many within the loans industry, that this condition has not been adhered to by some providers. Our users seem to indicate the industry is abiding by the regulations albeit there is no doubt that acceptance rates have diminished over the last two years, so it is 66 per cent of a smaller pool of users that are benefiting from headline rates.’

However, acceptance rates vary widely among providers. Glendinning added: ‘The feedback shows some providers having markedly different acceptance rates, though it should be noted providers with more competitive rates will attract applicants with better credit profiles. Currently Moneyback Bank is shown as having the highest acceptance rate overall on personal loans at 59 per cent, according to moneysupermarket.com users. Of those accepted for the Moneyback Bank’s loan, 65 per cent were offered an interest rate at sub six per cent, and a further 30 per cent were offered an interest rate of between six and 7.9 per cent.’

For a number of years now, the main UK high street banks have been offering free overdrafts of up to about two thousand pounds to students. If you have recently graduated from University or even if you are still a student at the moment, you will be more than familiar with the practice and you may even have a student overdraft as you read, or be in the process of paying one off.

While these overdrafts are extremely popular with students, they have also been the subject of a lot of criticism and debate both from parents and also from debt groups. While students continue to snap up these overdrafts at rates of close to one hundred per cent, many others say that there is no need for students, who are already among the most indebted members of society to take on another form of debt. The fact that it is interest free and very convenient both to borrow and repay does not make up for the fact that it is another debt that will fall to be repaid eventually. Another criticism of the overdrafts is that they are simply being used as bait to hook students onto a life of perpetual debt. And while the overdrafts are interest free while the student remains at university, most of them will start charging interest as soon as you graduate.

On the other hand, banks defend the practice as a popular and effective way of providing cheap, in this case free credit to some people who need it now more than they will in the future, but who are likely to be able to pay it back in the future.

What sounds like a good rate of interest to you? To most people in the UK today with even a small grasp of the way interest rates work and what the current economic condition is, would probably say that an interest rate of about 5% or 6% is good for a mortgage. For a personal loan, an interest rate of probably around 6% - 8% wouldn’t be too bad. For credit cards, anything below 15% is probably acceptable to most people. Now consider a rate of 50%. That is what is called an extortionate interest rate.

However, that is exactly what many people are paying, and often they are paying far more than this, for the types of short term pay day loans that they sign up for. For example, if you cash your pay check a week early, and are charged 2% as a charge, the annual percentage rate, or APR of that loan is actually 104%. And this is just so that you can get access to your pay check a few days early.

The sad fact of the matter is that the people who are most likely to use pay day loans and these methods of short term finance are actually also the people who are least able to afford such extortionate interest rates. If you do require credit, then you should always look to borrow of a well known and respected lender and always ask to see the APR before you make up your mind.