Category Archives: Money

Repair or replace? An expert guide to fixing or ditching eight household items

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It’s good for the environment and your wallet – so it’s no surprise that repairing is all the rage. From vacuum cleaners to microwaves, here’s what to fix and what to forget

My kettle’s broken. It still boils water, but it doesn’t switch off – just boils on, converting the kitchen to a sauna, wastefully, expensively. Put another way, the Polly component still functions well, but Sukey’s lost it. Time to bin it, splash out on a new one. Or maybe not …

Could it be repaired? Could I repair it? “It depends on the kettle and how it was put together,” says Kyle Wiens, a co-founder of iFixit, which publishes free repair guides for consumer electronics and gadgets, as well as selling kits and parts. He’s speaking to me via Skype from San Luis Obispo, California, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Never take broken for an answer” – and he thinks it sounds as if the switch is the problem.

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Can magic mushrooms really help you understand bitcoin?

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That’s what one German billionaire says. But it’s not why the Aztecs and the hippies were such fans

Name: The shroom boom.

Age: Ancient rock art in Castilla-La Mancha in Spain suggests that Psilocybe hispanica, one of the mushrooms that contains the psychoactive compound psilocybin, was taken in religious ceremonies as long as 6,000 years ago.

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‘She wanted $4,000 or she’d post the video’: how to deal with dating scams

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Romance scams on social media and apps are on the rise – but there are steps you can take if you fall victim

The dating game is full of the unexpected: it can quickly become apparent that photographs might have been in rotation for a few years or that someone listing their height as 5ft 10in could only achieve that height on tiptoes. But while those deceits may be forgivable if you hit it off with your date, at the other end of the spectrum are far worse cons.

In 2020, with more of us stuck at home, often desperate for some company or conversation, the number of romance scams reported to the crime body Action Fraud rose by 15%. Over the past 18 months it has received reports of more than 7,000 cases, with losses totalling £69.7m – an average of almost £10,000 a victim.

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Oligarch’s son told to pay mother £75m after world’s biggest divorce case

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Court rules that Temur Akhmedov had worked with his father to help him avoid £453m settlement

The son of an oligarch caught up in the world’s largest divorce case has been told to pay £75m to his mother after a judge at the high court in London found he was “a dishonest individual who will do anything to assist his father”.

Temur Akhmedov was found to have worked together with his father, the billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov, to hide hundreds of millions of pounds of assets – including several mansions, a superyacht, a helicopter and an extensive art collection – in order to avoid paying a £453m divorce settlement.

“Temur has learned well from his father’s past conduct and has done and said all he could to prevent his mother receiving a penny of the matrimonial assets,” the judge, Gwynneth Knowles, said in a ruling on Wednesday. She ruled that he should pay his mother more than £75m.

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Phone wet and won’t turn on? Here’s what to do with water damage (hint: putting it in rice won’t work)

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While many smartphones are advertised as ‘water resistant’, this doesn’t mean they’re immune from water damage

If you’ve ever gotten your phone wet in the rain, dropped it in water or spilt liquid over it, you’re not alone. One study suggests 25% of smartphone users have damaged their smartphone with water or some other kind of liquid.

Liquid penetrating a smartphone can affect the device in several ways. It could lead to:

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The dogs keeping office workers company through lockdown

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Owners say taking four-legged friends to work helps tackle loneliness and livens up Zoom calls

“Dogs are just like ‘play, eat, sleep’ – they bring me back into the moment. I think we can all learn something from that,” says Carole Henderson, who has been taking her “furry backup” to the office for the last few months.

They are not so good at making the tea and things get a bit rowdy when the delivery man comes round, but Henderson’s labradors Barney and Rusty, and labradoodle Lily, have been her sidekicks for the last decade. As well as being excellent foot-warmers, they have helped her emotionally with getting through solo months in the office.

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Bubble or boom? Why ultra-low interest rates mean house prices may never bust

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New Zealand may have moved to curb rising prices but could cheap money have permanently rewritten the rules?

It’s hard to disagree with the New Zealand government’s recent assessment that the country’s runaway housing market has moved from mere boom to a bubble that endangers the whole economy. Prices rose a staggering 23% over the past year, putting home ownership way beyond most people not already on the fabled ladder – younger, first-time buyers especially. If it walks like a bubble and talks like a bubble, then it must be a bubble, right?

The only problem is that bubbles might not be what they used to be. House prices are being steadily inflated in many other developed economies such as the US and UK. In Australia, prices rose 2.8% in March, the fastest monthly growth for 33 years. But governments are in no hurry to copy Jacinda Ardern’s canary in the coalmine moment, as the renowned Société Générale economist and market sceptic Albert Edwards has dubbed it, and instruct central banks to make dampening prices part of monetary policy.

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Spain to launch trial of four-day working week

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Government agrees to proposal from leftwing party Más País allowing companies to test reduced hours

Spain could become one of the first countries in the world to trial the four-day working week after the government agreed to launch a modest pilot project for companies interested in the idea.

Earlier this year, the small leftwing Spanish party Más País announced that the government had accepted its proposal to test out the idea. Talks have since been held, with the next meeting expected to take place in the coming weeks.

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‘I don’t make enough’: the financial cost of having Covid in the US

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Major health insurers volunteered to cover testing and treatment, while the government introduced new programs – but those assurances haven’t played out

Covid-19 allowed for an experiment in US healthcare: what if doctor’s visits and hospitalizations didn’t cost people money?

In response to the pandemic, major health insurers volunteered to cover coronavirus testing and treatment for their paying customers and the government introduced programs to make care more affordable. But a year after coronavirus was first identified in the US, those assurances haven’t played out as planned.

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‘I thought buying things would make me feel better. It didn’t’: The rise of emotional spending

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Many of us are living for the buzz of the doorbell – spending billions we can’t afford on stuff we don’t need. Here is how to recognise the problem and regain control

In the past fortnight, I have bought the following items online: a hideous cat tree that takes up most of my living room, a lavender pillow spray, two scarves, a pair of gloves, two candles, a sheet mask, a pair of fleece-lined jogging bottoms (so comfy!), a card-holder and an under-eye brightening cream. None of these purchases were essential. Many I haven’t even taken out of the packaging, leaving them in a pile by the front door.

Ten months into the pandemic, I know the rhythms of the courier networks better than I know my menstrual cycle. Royal Mail in the morning; DPD and Hermes in the afternoon. Amazon comes any time, including late at night. DPD couriers insist on taking a photo of you with the package, mortifyingly. I wonder where these photos go: me in a food-stained tracksuit, dirty-haired, holding an armful of packages I can’t remember ordering with an abashed smile. I pray they never see the light of day.

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Are share-trading apps a safe way to play the markets?

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After investors caused havoc on the markets last week in a battle over the shares of a video-game chain, we explore the promise and pitfalls of the apps they used

A year ago shares in struggling US video game store GameStop were worth just $3.25 a pop, yet at the end of last month they had reached $482. This stupendous surge was created by thousands of armchair traders, organising themselves on internet forums such as Reddit, who were attempting to outwit hedge funds who had placed massive bets on the chain’s decline in a process known as short-selling.

This has resulted in billion-dollar losses for some hedge funds, and big profits for traders who cashed out before the stock fell back to less than $100. Many of these speculators were using a new generation of share-trading apps, such as eToro, Robinhood and Trading 212. Have these services tipped the scales of financial power in favour of the little guy? Here we answer some key questions …

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Will Ikea’s recycling scheme really make it greener?

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The furniture chain is trying to tackle the throwaway culture problem, but it has drawn criticism

If spending more time at home has made you consider a furniture update, do not sling out that Billy bookcase just yet. Instead of taking it to the tip, you may be able to raise some cash through Ikea’s new buyback service. The scheme, which it announced last autumn, allows customers to take their furniture back to the store to be refunded and receive a voucher worth up to half of the item’s original value. It will then be resold to a new home, giving it “a second chance at life”.

The furniture retailer says the service will reduce waste and increase sustainability, and is part of its efforts to go greener. Last week it told the FT it was also looking at offering a wider range of spare parts to help people repair its products.

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‘Lost generation of unemployed’: Covid hits careers of over-50s

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People over 50 who lose their jobs more likely to suffer long-term joblessness than other age groups

Lisa Griffiths, a 61-year-old special needs nanny, has spent her career easily moving from one contract to the next. So when her last, five-year contract ended recently, she was shocked to find new employment opportunities far more limited than she had expected.

Then, while she was considering her options, the pandemic hit and work dried up altogether.

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GameStop shares plunge as traders dump stock

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Reddit-inspired surge in stocks such as struggling video games store and AMC dive as hedge funds close positions

Shares in GameStop plunged by 65% in early trading on Wall Street as the trading mania sparked by small investors, that sent its stock surging and cost hedge funds billions of dollars, lost momentum.

The struggling Texas-based video game store chain has been the focal point of a battle by small traders, using forums such as Reddit, to punish Wall Street hedge funds that have bet on certain stocks falling in value. GameStop shares hit a high of $482 last Thursday but slumped to $80 shortly after the market opened. They recovered to $117 by mid-session, but closed down 60% at $90.

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How GameStop traders fired the first shots in millennials’ war on Wall Street

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The dramatic struggle over video game chain’s shares suggests markets must now contend with a breed of angry, young, networked investors

When Ben, 28, a software engineer from Leeds, bought two shares in US games retailer GameStop for £460, it was for one reason, he says: “When they make the film about this in years to come, I’ll know I was there at the frontline with a bunch of idiots on the internet, trying to bring down Wall Street.”

For Emma Rivers from East Sussex, who invested £1,400 in the same company – having known little about it a few weeks ago – it has all been about sending a message that capitalism has had its day.

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GameStop shares surge again as Robinhood restores trading

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App helping to fuel share-buying frenzy allows ‘limited buys’ after a $1bn cash injection to safeguard trades

Shares in companies including videogame retailer GameStop soared again on Friday, as an army of small investors taking aim at Wall Street regained access to amateur share trading platform Robinhood.

The app, weaponised by activist small investors to trap hedge funds in a “short squeeze” that has cost them $20bn on paper by some estimates, had suspended buying of stocks such as GameStop, cinema chain AMC and BlackBerry on Thursday.

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Mastercard to raise fees by at least 400% for EU firms selling to UK customers

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Change from October could lead to higher prices for those paying with UK-issued cards

Mastercard is to increase the fees EU firms face to take payments from online shoppers from the UK by at least 400%, in a move that could mean higher prices for consumers.

When a credit or debit card is used, a percentage of the purchase price is paid by the retailer to the bank that issued it as an interchange fee, which is set by a payments firm.

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Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

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Sales increase 43% globally in 2020 as plunging battery costs mean the cars will soon be the cheapest vehicles to buy

Electric vehicles are close to the “tipping point” of rapid mass adoption thanks to the plummeting cost of batteries, experts say.

Global sales rose 43% in 2020, but even faster growth is anticipated when continuing falls in battery prices bring the price of electric cars dipping below that of equivalent petrol and diesel models, even without subsidies. The latest analyses forecast that to happen some time between 2023 and 2025.

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The Wodge: can London’s tallest new skyscraper survive the Covid era?

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Nicknamed The Wodge because of its girth, the capital’s tallest ever office has just muscled onto the skyline. But in the age of coronavirus, who wants to jostle for 60 lifts with 12,000 others?

With the City of London deserted once more, its streets only populated by the occasional Deliveroo driver or tumbleweed-seeking photographer, it seems a strange time to be completing the largest office building the capital has ever seen, not least because the very future of the workplace is now in question.

But, rising far above the Cheesegrater and the Walkie-Talkie, dwarfing the now fun-sized Gherkin and boasting the floor area of almost all three combined, 22 Bishopsgate stands as the mother of all office towers. It is the City’s menacing final boss, a glacial hulk that fills its plot to the very edges and rises directly up until it hits the flight path of passing jets. The building muscles into every panorama of London, its broad girth dominating the centre of the skyline and congealing the Square Mile’s distinctive individual silhouettes into one great, grey lump.

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Top UK bosses are paid 115 times more than average worker, analysis finds

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Vast gap in earnings described as ‘unfair’ and ‘repugnant’ by trade union leaders

Bosses of top British companies will have made more money by teatime on Wednesday than the average UK worker will earn in the entire year, according to an independent analysis of the vast gap in pay between chief executives and everyone else.

The chief executives of FTSE 100 companies are paid a median average of £3.6m a year, which works out at 115 times the £31,461 collected by full-time UK workers on average, according to research by the High Pay Centre thinktank.

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