Cash, Cars and Babes

We have all seen the price of property plummet over the past year, but just how affordable does that make them - particularly to first time buyers? Halifax have reported that the price drops have made property significantly more affordable for the first time buyer, after tracking the affordability over 406 local authorities.

The house price to earnings ratio was found to have improved signifiacntly over the past 18 months, with the most affordable homes being found in Scotland, Yorkshire and the Humber.

This data predicts that, alongside the falling mortgage rates, people may be tempted to buy their first home and get away from the rental market...if they have enough deposit that is...

Some employment benefits are tax free:

• Parking at or near your workplace
• A mobile
• Childcare
• Meals at work
  
• Drinks and snacks at work
• Staff Parties

However, some benefits are taxable, including the company car, as well as:

• Private medical insurance
• A loan provided by your employer, which is interest free
• Living accomodation provided by your employer
  

Normally, if you earn over £8500 a yearm you will have to pay tax on any benefits you receive. So, what's the cash equivalent of the company car?

This is based on the list price of the car including any accessoriesm its carbon dioxide emissions and the type of fuel it uses. This tax year, the taxable benefit is 15% of the list price for cars with CO2 emissions of 135g/km or less. This charge increases by 1% for each additional full 5g/km up to a max charge of 35% for emissions of 235g/km or more. If the car uses diesel, there's a 3% supplement on top. For example, a petrol car is worth £21000 with emissions of 185g/km. The benefits % will increase to 25%, making the taxable benefit £5250. This means that if you are a basic rate taxpayer, your company car would cost you £1050, or £87.50 a month, this year. A higher rate taxpayer would have to pay £175 a month at 40% tax.

And, don't forget, if the employer pays for fuel for private use, this is also taxable. try this if you want to calculate your tax for your company car.

It's hard enough to get a loan at the moment but it's not just us the borrower who is being affected by it all.  Some of the lenders themselves have been unable to cope with the tightening market and some of the smaller players have been forced out of business.

One of those who I was sad to see go was Loans.co.uk, a company I was considering taking out a secured loan with late last year.  I only discovered they'd gone under when I accidentally clicked on their website in my favourites list.

It's now forwarding onto First Union with a message that Loans.co.uk are no longer accepting new applications.

I hope everyone involved with them managed to get new jobs, especially what with it being this time of year - can't be nice.

Are you fed up with paying for your music?  I know you can download it for free nowadays, but if you don't fancy risking breaking the law what options have you got?  There's iTunes (and all those sort of pricey download sites) or you can wander into HMV and buy an actual CD.

I might be well behind the times, but I've just discovered Jango.com.  It's a free internet radio station that seems to have loads of songs and actually learns what type of thing you like as you use it.  If you don't already know about it, go check it out, it's awesome.

No more paying for music for me!  

The number of available mortagges seems to be dwindling, especially tracker mortgages and the like. The majority of mortgages on the lending market are now fixed-rate ones, with reserach finding that they account for 69% of the total market - up from 51% of the market in December 2007.

The average two year fixed-rate mortgage has fallen by 0.71%, despite the two-year swap rate falling by 2.61%.

Fixed rate mortgages can be good though - they can give you a piece of mind each month, knowing exactly how much outgoings you have and could help towards debt management and budgetting. But, at the moment, people on tracker mortgages could be benefiting moreso, with the slash in interest rates saving them a lot of cash.

Everyone in the financial industry is tightening their purse strings at the moment as the credit crunch gets into full swing. So, the obvious advice would be to take care of your credit rating if you need, or will need in the future, personal or secured loans, for example.

According to the Independent, the big credit reference agencies, such as Experian and Equifax, are thoroughly recommending that people:

• Keep up-to-date with repayments on loans, mortgages and credit cards

• Keep on top of your mobile phone bills and utilities

• Being on the electoral roll and being a resident at your address for a decent amount of time also help.

It seems that lenders haven’t dried up completely – they are just extremely picky as to who they lend their money to. If you are seen as responsible, not missing repayments and falling into arrears, then you have much better a chance of being accepted for a loan.

Thousands of homes which are eligible for the Warm Front scheme, which contributes to the cost of carrying out energy saving methods on homes, have had to withdraw from the scheme. Why? because they can't afford the additional costs. 11,020 homes which qualify for the grants, have had to retract their application, as they can't afford it - thats 10% of the 110,000 households which are eligible.

The Warm Front scheme was introduced in 2001, to try and help with funding for vulnerable people such as the elderly and low-income families. The scheme contributes to the cost of installing energy saving measures - paying the first £2,700 (or £4000 for those with oil heating), leaving householders with the rest of the bill. Despite the increase in cost of the labour and materials, these contributions haven't changed - if the funds were increased, more people may be able to fork out for the rest of the bill. If not? Thousands of people will be left in the cold.

A lot of us are owing money to debtors at the moment, but are you, yourself, owed anything? Have you been lending your cash out to friends and family, in a quest to help them become debt free?

According to research by Paypal, there are a lot of people in this situation. In fact, out of the 48million adults there are in Britain, nearly half have loaned money to their friends and family, and, what's worse - 24% of these are still waiting to be paid back, amounting to a total of £4.71billion. That's a lot of cash! It apparently comes down to our inability to be blunt, when it comes to asking for the money back - instead taking the bashful route, and waiting for the money to be repaid.

Apparently it’s more common than I would have thought for students to produce fraudulent student grant claims in an attempt to get more money. It seems that the Student Loans Company are now clamping down on this, as they believe that thousands of pounds are being lost through fraudulent claims, each year.

They are to carry out spot checks in 11 areas of England to try and figure out just how big the problem is.

At the moment, students with an annual family income of under £25,000 can claim grants of up to £2,825 a year. The upper limit for family income has also been cut, from £60,000pa to £50,020pa, due to a shortfall in student funding.