'Call that personal finance? It's about buying a bloody DVD player….' blog discussion

Former_MSE_Helen

This is the discussion to link on the back of Martin's blog. Please read the blog first, as this discussion follows it.

Read Martin's "Call that personal finance? It's about buying a bloody DVD player…." Blog.

Please click 'post reply' to discuss below.

Richard019

If we're talking about changes as a result of the internet I've just noticed at the bottom of that blog that the email is now received by 5.6M people. I know some will be 'dead' email addresses but that must be getting pretty close to 10% of the population receiving it directly. Allow for couples were only one person receives and children who are too young for it and it must be reaching 15%+.

Are there any other forms of media where financial information is given to that large a share of the population? Is it even competing with things like the TV news (individual programmes) in terms of it's ability to reach people?

Ken68

When' Which' first started, the response was to complicate the product or service, to make it difficult to research and compare.
MSE and the comparison sites have changed all that, and I do love the almost immediate answer you can get on this site.

Billy-no-Money

It's been great to see consumer borrowing and debt become mainstream topics. Back in the 'bad old days', when personal finance was seen as something the affluent did, there was nothing out there on debt because it was just irrelevant to the target upper-middle-class readership.

I grew up in a working-class home, where personal finance was about scraping through to the next pay day. Thinking of the long term just wasn't possible, be that investment or debt. It wasn't even possible to borrow money anyway.

When the explosion in credit first began - back in the early eighties - the finance industry used every trick it could to entice us to borrow - and in ignorance many of us slid down that path. There was NOTHING out there to balance out the bombardment of glossy advertising and clever maths.

Keep up the good work!

oakhouse13

"{Note this blog was first published in the Telegraph on Sat26 Feb, as the ‘Expert View’ in their ‘Focus money saving revolution’ – the brief was my thoughts on how the Internet has changed personal finance coverage & some links to my tips}."

Did you mean 5th March? The Telegraph has guides listed today on its website "free" with the newspaper. It's badged as a promotion though, so the guides are companies paying the Telegraph to appear.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/promotions/8345336/Free-money-saving-and-money-making-guides-with-The-Telegraph.html

What is the price for a link and does it cost more to buy links with anchor text - money dot co dot uk has a link to its url and also a link on the anchor text "saving accounts"?

Looking at the html headers downloaded when you click on Telegraph links, what is actually happening? What is "Hi I am Muttley" url skimlinks dot muttley dot com which is a header downloaded clicking the link from the Telegraph to this site?

oakhouse13

I have just clicked on the Telegraph link to this site again and now it downloads a header that says Hi I am Bagpus url bagpus dot skimlinks dot com which is a page with an image of Bagpus the cat.

If I clicked again I think it would change again to a different html header but I'm not going click again in case the Telegraph may be charging this site per click.