Life in United Kingdom

Women have been suppressed for thousands of years, when many noble and chivalry man were killed in two World Wide Wars, the aristocracy fell on the ground and smashed into pieces, feminist lifted their head proudly, they began to protest on the street and demand their rights. Their revenge is fierce; man has no way to escape their anger. Sometimes I wondered that limited liability company was invented by hen-pecked entrepreneurs who tried to protect their property by way of national law after the ancient aristocracy fallen apart. I believe that one Chinese billionaire has deep understanding of the nature of the relationship of husband and wife, he transforms fourteen years of his future salary into company shares, and pays himself symbolic one cent of salary annually, he made these arrangements before the wedding day. Almost at the same time Man invented Entrepreneurship, the bankers stealthily sneak up behind their back, and persuaded those entrepreneurs to protect their property...

APR, AER, EAR are abbreviations of annual percentage rate, annual equivalent rate, equivalent annual rate, respectively. APR is used to express the true cost of the money borrowed on credit cards, loans and mortgages, EAR is used to demonstrate the full percentage cost of overdrafts, AER on the other hand is only used in relation to savings and interest based investments. What does EPR means?  APR is most commonly seen, its calculation takes account of the basic interest rate, when it is charged (i.e. annually, monthly, weekly or daily), all initial fees and any other costs you are obliged to pay. As lenders all calculate APR the same way, it enables you to make direct cost comparisons between competing lending products. So if one bank is offering you a mortgage at 4.75% plus an arrangement fee of £450 and a building society is offering you an interest rate of 5.1% with a £100 fee, then the APR figures will show you which of the two mortgages is the cheaper. There are then tw...

Regular Debit Card Payment Pay regular bills automatically, such as magazine subscriptions, using your debit card. The payments are agreed between you and the company or organisation, often by telephone. If you need to cancel a payment, you'll need to speak directly to the organisation that set it up. This is different from Direct Debit (DD) because you can cancel DD at any time, but you need to speak directly to the organisation first to cancel regular debit card payment. Direct Debit  DD is convenient to pay regular bills such as gas or electricity automatically, direct from your account. You can cancel DD payments at any time online, via telephone banking or in a branch, and you have also to remember to cancel them with the organisation that set them up. When you fill a direct debit form, you may notice that there is a "Direct Debit Guarantee", so what is the Direct Debit Guarantee? Simply speaking, Direct Debit Guarantee means two things: one is the amounts ...

My pal said to me that he saw his boss uses credit card to play at the bookies, sometimes he need cash, but don't want to pay cash advance fee to withdraw from a cash machine, he goes to the bookies, and deposits credit to the machine from his credit card, then collects cash from the cashier.  I don't believe this can work out, and wonder if my pal mistakes a debit card for a credit card. I check online, some say 99 percent credit cards in UK charge cash advance fees for gambling, which include HSBC , but I check the Terms and Conditions, it seems don't treat gambling as cash advance: b Except for gambling transactions, we will charge a cash fee for Cash Advances. The amount of the fee is set out at the start of this Agreement. But many forums and blog articles say HSBC bank do charge cash advance fees for gambling, and without a usual interest free period.

Changing the bank used to be tedious and time consuming. Most people never bothered to change after they first started using a high street bank. To change this atmosphere of stagnation and to induce greater competition, the UK government has introduced a scheme were your bank must be able to close and transfer your account to another bank within 7 days. This is a process which normally took around a month to do which was the reason for people to be reluctant in switching. Here are some of the features: 1.       For 13 months, payments accidentally made to your old accounts will be transferred to your new account. The sender will also be contacted with your updated bank details. 2.       Direct Debit’s and standing orders as well as pay will be automatically transferred to the new account. 3.       Any money in the account will be transferred! 4.       New bank will ref...

Last time I went to my bank to transfer money overseas, my bank charged me 25 pounds. Then I did it online for same amounts of money, I only need to pay £17. I wonder why it's price is different. I called the bank to ask if the price has changed, the agent told me the price for sending money overseas is always £17 online, and £30 by telephone banking, but he doesn't know how much by doing it in one of the branch offices, it depends on different location. Obviously, it's much more cheaper do it online, the reason, I think, is that the bank doesn't need to pay its employee in the call centre for the transaction, it takes time and prone to mistake. You fill the form by yourself, DIY, and funds will be transferred overseas electronically, probably without even reviewed by the bank if every details are correct, and the money goes to the right beneficiary. Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

I think there are not many people who doesn't know how to withdraw cash from ATM machine, but I am not sure if everybody knows how to use a pay-in machine. This may be due to the fact that deposit machines are not as popular as cash machine. At first, I thought you must have a card to make a deposit. But today when my friend told me the cashier window is closed, and she asked me to go the bank with my debit card. This gives me an idea that she may just make payment by typing a bank account number into the machine, because you don't need a pin, and the card reader does no more than to read the account information stored in the card. But my friend didn't believe me, and insisted to ask to go there. So I went to bank, and asked the reception if you have to use a card to deposit cash into the machine. His answer is NO. And I tried out by typing the account number into the machine, and made the payment. I said to my friend, 'From now on, you have to believe me....

My bank has only one branch office in my city, and it's far away from where I live. So every time I have to take subway to deposit my wages that have been hidden under my pillow for weeks, the journey to the city centre cost me £2.80 for a return tickets. Yesterday, I passed the post office, noticed it have a free service to deposit and withdraw cash from many major banks, haven't tried out yet. Branch Banking Services at the Post Office : "It’s also free to deposit money into most major bank accounts at the counter in any of our branches" 'via Blog this'

Received a Contactless card from my bank, and it's new to me. You only need to hold card in front of the Contactless readers. Your payment will be confirmed, then you're good to go.  This method is a new way to pay for small things like magazines, or coffees.  Most payments take less than a second so there's little chance of your coffee getting cold when there are contactless readers about. Contactless payments can be made for purchases for £15 or less, and from 1 June 2012 onwards, retailers will be increasing this amount to £20. The contactless payments are processed using the same advanced technology as chip and PIN. From time to time you may be asked to enter you PIN or sign. So basically it's pretty safe as the old chip and PIN.

First Direct promotion said get £25 for opening an account. Yet the terms stated opening an account simply meant putting in a penny. The angry bank closed the loophole within hours after 10,000 plus MoneySavers came from the weekly email, opened accounts, grabbed the cash then closed it.

"We had to pay tuppence ha'penny per week for our milk but it always seemed to be ice cold." Shirley Hitchcock wrote in her essay recalled her life in infant school in 1920s. Ha'penny means half penny, and tuppence is a variant of two pence. I have never seen a half penny coin. Nowadays, I see people throwing away one pence or two pence coin. When I send/pick up my daughter to/from school or take her for a walk, sometimes we may be lucky enough to find a coin on the road, and my daughter always feels very excited. Because she could save in her money bank and buy a roller skate for her next birthday. Her mum bought her roller skate for her 4th birthday, although she hasn't save enough money for it.

A £28 annual fee appeared on my bank statement. This is the commercial credit card annual fee, but all I was told is my bank account is on free banking terms, no standard activity charges or account fees are payable. No similar warning with my credit card which comes with the current account. (Ah well, there are small prints on the back of the statement, I never read it.) The Office of Fair Trading ruled that any late payment or unauthorised borrowing charge levied by a credit card provider was likely to be illegal if it totalled more than £12. But last months the bank charged me £3.0 per day for overdraft. I asked for refund, and the banker did so. Some bank charge a fee when the card has low usage, either in terms of the frequency of transactions or their value. But my bank charges annual fee regardless of how many times you use your card. But the fees on credit cards need to come with a similar warning to those on packaged current accounts, i.e. the banker should have told me £28 an...