This is Not Work - time and money saving tips for parents

In memory of William Wharton

It's desperation day today at Marks & Spencer (20% off). And Debenhams (up to 25% off). And Threshers and Wine Rack (40% off). Not forgetting Gap (30% off) Download gap_30_off_voucher.pdf

I don't know about you but I'm tired of this retail nonsense.

One, because a lot of special offers 'are bogus'.

And two, because there are more important things in life than shopping.

This morning I learned that my favourite author, William Wharton, has died aged 82. Having just written a book myself I know how hard it can be not only to get the words in the right order but to make those words appear as though they were written without effort. Wharton, who penned Birdy, Dad and A Midnight Clear, which were turned into big-time movies, as well as several other modern fables such as Franky Furbo and Tidings, was a master of turning the most complex ideas into simple prose and I for one will miss him immensely. He was an incredibly private person and in spite of the proliferation of information online it has been hard to find details of his life. It's a lesson that many of us might want to doff a cap to as time progresses.

If you're interested, there is a fine obituary of William Wharton in the New York Times.

If not, well, it's desperation day today at Marks & Spencer (20% off). And Debenhams (up to 25% off). And Threshers and Wine Rack (40% off). Not forgetting Gap (30% off) Download gap_30_off_voucher.pdf

Richard Browning

USB turntable for less than £60 (perfect for old punks)

As a former fanatical collector of vinyl 7" singles I fully understand the appeal and the addiction of collecting, however irrational and expensive a past-time it may be.

Sadly, my desire for gatefold and other rare sleeves and dodgy picture discs and colour vinyl isn't matched by anyone these days who is prepared to pay money for it. So I console myself with the knowledge that my great, great, great grandchildren and their grandchildren will one day be proud owners of Public Image Ltd by Public Image with original newspaper sleeve, the Undertones' Teenage Kicks with original fold-out poster sleeve and, one strictly for other John Peel (right) fans of a certain age, the Shapes EP (pictured above).

It's not the same for everyone, however, as our new section on collecting shows. Some of these people manage to hoard a fortune.

Me on the other hand will be spending dark the winter evenings this year converting my beloved collection into faceless electronic files on the computer. This is being made possible because finally the prices of USB turntables are tumbling. And while I know you can do it with the right cables from any old hi-fi, mine's out of action and in the loft - about to be joined by a couple of thousand singles.

>> USB turntable for less than £60 - from Maplin (also enables the transfer of music from cassette).

Richard Browning

Waterstones' free delivery

While it was looking like Amazon was going to walk away with the online Christmas prize this year by offering free delivery on items over £5, Waterstones, the bookshop, is fighting back with free delivery on everything (until the end of November)!

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/navigate.do?pPageID=1362

That means you can buy my amusing little book on surviving the crunch for £6.99 all in from both Amazon and Waterstones. 

www.thisismoney.co.uk/book

Stocks should be replenished this week.

Free music for children

Seeing how the internet works from the inside and how some of the biggest names cheat and scam the search engines to win traffic and how much illegal material is changing hands every second it's not hard to sit and here and wonder what miniscule percentage of the Web is above-board legal.

Six million Brits are suspected of illegally downloading material every year.

But yesterday there was finally some good news for those of us keen to find legal music - a new logo for legimate websites. It is being adopted by 7digital, Digitalstores, HMV, Play.com, Tesco, Tunetribe and Woolworths.

For people who can't wait, here's a site where musicians upload tracks in the hope that you'll like it so much you'll buy it. What makes it stand out from the others is that, apart from being legal, all the music is for children.

Free music for children

(I particularly like Boogers)

Related

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Best broadband

Save 40% off the Philips Wake UP Light

Greetings fans of the tenuous. After last night's historic election victory across the pond and we find ourselves waking up to the promise of a new dawn - you can have one too. In your bedroom. In the form of a wake up light. An alarm-clock-cum-bedside-lamp that slowly recreates dawn in your bedroom in winter.

Everyone I have spoken to who has one says how much better they feel at the start of the day as a result. Online critics are horrified by the price: £100 for a clock, bulb and a plastic cover. But it's coming down.

Argos is selling the The Philips Wake Up Light for £66.59

Amazon, meanwhile, has it for £59.99, a saving of 40%

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Light relief: Credit crunch jokes

How to survive the credit crunch

I've written a book.

Now, I'm well aware that the only thing of any importance is exactly how dead Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross will have to be before everyone is properly satisfied that they're sorry, but I have managed to get 33,000 words more or less in the right order. And that's some achievement. And there's some jokes in it.

How to survive the credit crunch is on sale now.

Find out more .

Money experts: your questions answered

If you have a question about money, the chances are it has been answered by the panel of money experts on This is Money. Since before the dawn of this millennium we have been answering questions from readers every week. That's around 520 weeks; that's a lot of questions and answers.

Check out the latest here:

• Investing experts
• Mortgage and property experts
• Insurance experts
• Consumer experts
• Pensions experts
• Tax and wills experts

>> Ask your own question

Popular searches from the last 12 months

Help   |   Help with debt   |  Save money   |   Make money

Sometimes we tackle the big issues live

Transcript of our live savings chat

Rogue anti-spyware: how to avoid it

The hateful work of cyber-scum hellbent on infecting our PCs with spyware and viruses shows no sign of abating. And often if we notice something amiss on our screens, the first point of call is Google. This is not necessarily a good idea as it this may lead you into the hands of another bunch of rogues who'll try to take your money for clean-up software that at best is a rip-off of an established brand.

If you do feel under attack, you should check out the exhaustive list of rogue anti spyware from Spyware Warrior.

Rogue anti-spyware

and its:

Trustworthy anti-spyware

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The Wire, season 1 for £15 and a brilliant DVD comparison tool

As 2008 progresses I realise I'm gradually becoming part of a minority group that by Christmas, if I don't act, will consist of just one person: me. You see, I haven't seen The Wire.

It is, I'm told, the TV show that has ruined television for ever. It is so good, apparently, that you'll never be able to watch anything again that lives up to it.

Nothing can live up to hype like that but now the first series is available on DVD for £15, it may be worth seeing what all the fuss is about.

Check it out on Find-DVD.co.uk, one of the best price comparison tools we've seen.

http://www.find-dvd.co.uk/D025394.htm

By Richard Browning

Related

How to win the online DVD rental battle

Where to find all the best free software

The World Wide Web is a web all right. A vast empire of information from the incredibly useful to the anarchically pointless. Finding what you want can be a tiresome process. So it comes as a huge relief when finally among all the automated directories you find one that has been painstakingly put together and is useful for everyone.

One such directory is Gizmo's tech support alert. It features a round up of the best free software with reviews and links to all those programs that can make life at your PC that little bit safer and more entertaining.

Check it out here:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/

Related

This is Money jargon buster - all the key financial terms explained

70% (up to) sales at Debenhams, House of Fraser

'The longest word in the English language is the one following the phrase: "And now a word from our sponsor."' Hal Eaton, who? said that, according to my book of quotations.

Well, I'd like to add to the debate another couple of equally ambiguous terms from the advertising industry: 'Up to' and 'from'. See those and it usually means 'come and waste an awful lot of time rummaging through tat we can't sell because no one in their right mind would want it - and if you find the one thing at the 'up-to-from' discount, congratulations, you've won the prize.'

But times are hard and retailers are struggling. It with this in mind that I mention two department stores that have sales with discounts of 'up to' 70%. Worth a look.

http://www.houseoffraser.co.uk/

http://www.debenhams.com/

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Sale and rent back causing serious harm

£1m wine (and banking) clearout now on

Well who'd have thought? Bankers are scum after all - extraneous matter that rises to the surface after a storm. At last for people looking for someone to blame over the credit mess, the clearout has started.

Although there's no predicting the depths to which human stupidity can reach, here's hoping this marks the start of a new era in banking.

So let's raise a glass to that and take a quick look at somewhere else having a clearout: the Daily Mail wine club. There's £1m of quality discounted wine ripe for ordering before the pre-Christmas rush. Many cases are less than £50. Check it out...

Daily Mail wine club sale now on

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FREE: Learn the secrets of eBay

If you're feeling squeezed by the crunch then a stream of extra cash could be lying in wait in your wardrobe. How so? By selling your stuff on eBay. It's all rather straightforward to start up but if you really want to make a go of it check out the blog of Power Seller Mollybol.

You can sign up to his emails for the "hot news, views, hints and tips about eBay UK and how to make the most out of it." 

http://ebaybulletin.blogspot.com/

Related

5 tips for safe selling on eBay

I'm making money from eBay

Half-price loft insulation

Last month it was announced that we're all going to get help with loft insulation some time or other. If you can't wait, then head over to Wickes now, where you can get two rolls of insulation material for the price of one.

http://www.wickes.co.uk/pcat/bestDeals

As DFal from Barnsley says, you can insulate your whole loft for £33. But be warned, some of these items are not available online so make sure your car is big enough when you pick them up from the store.

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Home insurance finder

Cut your fuel bills

Betting on credit crunch bankruptcies

If I'd have been around in 1912 and put a quid on the RMS Titanic taking a unscheduled detour to the bottom of the Atlantic on its first outing I'd be rich. The ship was unsinkable. Everybody said. The odds would have been fabulously generous. Oh the benefits of hindsight.

Now, if you find something fundamentally wrong with the idea of betting on tragedy then, um, it might be time to wake up and check out the world circa 2008. Everything to do with money is a gamble. From buying the new car that loses half its value the moment you drive out the showroom then breaks down in the M1 contraflow, to short-selling shares, where you bet on a company losing value and the closer it comes to going bust the more you win, it's all a gamble.

So on the day that America is trying to decide whether to take the biggest financial gamble in history after the biggest one-day fall on its stock market in history, it seems highly appropriate that bookies are now taking bets on credit crunch bankruptcies.

This lunchtime check out the latest odds on the next airline to crash out of business. At the time of writing FlyGlobespan is favourite at 6:4, with Spanair a close second at 6:1. Vatican Airlines seems pretty safe at 500:1 but if you fancy a really outrageous punt you can get 1,000:1 on the US President's Air Force One going bust. That couldn't possibly happen. Could it?

>> Next airline to go bust - all the latest odds

>> Other bets: the next route to be dropped by Ryanair?

>> Other bets: Who'll win the next General Election?

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Are your savings safe?

Are you ready for the new TV format?

Just when you thought flat-screen TVs couldn't get any flatter along comes a new format to test the credit limits of psycho-consumers across the globe. The ultra slim telly, which began at a mere 44mm thick (less than 2ins), is gradually winging its way over here from manufacturers in the East. Sony has already trimmed its version to less than 1cm.

Korea is considered to be two or three years ahead of the rest of us when it comes to technology and this piece from the Korea Times explains the whole thing.

Read about the trend for slim

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Mobile TV: finally a reality

Archive: TV on your T-shirt

Check the digital TV packages in your area

Cheap candles

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse than total global economic annihilation, it turns out we're going to spend winter in the dark.

Never afraid of shying away from a bandwaggon of scaremongering, This is Not Work says it's probably time to start stockpiling candles. By Sunday the country will be sold out. By Christmas you'll only be able to see your dinner if you are prepared to pillage one from the old lady down the road.

So, where to go for a cheap candle?

Anyone who has been to allen-key-based theme park Ikea will know all about candles. 'But they're so cheap! So's this egg timer shaped like a pear. I just like so need one! And this... etc'

Ikea has 20 candles for £3.99, burning time: 6hrs each

Ikea also has 6 candles for £1.69 that burn for 9hrs each

But our Swedish chums don't sell their candles online.

Elsewhere, you've got the specialist online sellers such as:

Candles on the Web, which has big boxes from 17p a candle in all kinds of colours

Or take pot luck with an unspecified number of pillar candles at Northern Lights. (Clilck on Clearance Shop).

Or bag a sack of 100 tea lights for £1.75 from Wilkinson.

Happy Christmas.

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Cheaper fuel bills

Get all the global financial meltdown highlights by email

When I was about 12 and I asked my dad for $700bn for Scalextric stuff and the whole Subbuteo floodlights kit as well as some of the more obscure teams in their second away strips he said 'no'.

'That's a lot of money to throw into a plastic dugout of pointlessness. You'll only end up squashing the goalkeeper, losing to Hull City reserves and not playing with any of it again. All that money will have been wasted,' he said. Or words to that effect. Harsh. But I survived.

So when this week Hank Paulson asked the $700bn question of the US congress, understandably they're finding it hard to say 'yes'. After all you can get Subbuteo for £22.49 these days - including free super saver delivery. The difference with toys is that you get something for your money. With this bailout no one knows whether it's going to make the slightest bit of difference. That's one expensive own goal if it goes ahead and goes wrong.

Whatever the outcome, it's all rather interesting. To follow the developments as they happen, sign up to our newsflashes and we'll keep you up to date with this sorry mess by email.

>> Get your free email newsflashes

And then play the...

>> Online Subbuteo freekick game

Related

>> US economy bailout may hit the buffers
>> How to get out of debt
>> Where to get hold of some debt

Free Lego magazine subscription

One of life's great mysteries, apart from why campaigning consumer action group Which? doesn't put the actual price of the magazine (£6.25 an issue, £75 a year) on its cover - is the price of Lego.

Six-quid-plus for a magazine sounds an awful lot to me - something a campaigning consumer group ought to investigate - but that's nothing compared with a box of those iconic little plastic bricks, which to build a small house requires almost the same amount of money as a real one. Or so it feels.

But Lego, ignoring Bionciles, can be forgiven. It makes some fantastic toys and computer games - and the theme park's not bad either. And unlike Which?, which has a £3 trial offer, the Lego mag is free for two years.

Get Lego magazine free for two years*

Related

> Free consumer advice and tips
> Free consumer guides
> Free consumer expert answers

Please note, none of the links on This Is Not Work are affiliate links. Like other sites we don't make money when you click on the links. We don't write about stuff to make money. We do have a great pictures library. Here's some for fans of Lego Star Wars.

Directory of email addresses of big company bosses

It's one of the oldest tricks in the book, but because Britain is rubbish at customer service we often have to resort to writing to a company's top boss to sort out our various consumer messes.

If this sounds familiar here's a page worth filing away in your bookmarks:

Directory of email addresses of big company bosses

It includes the likes of:

stuart.rose@marks-and-spencer.com

graham.beale@nationwide.co.uk

andyhornby@hbosplc.com

Related

Discuss customer service | Change your bank | More Not Work technology

Free picture editing software

If, like me, you find yourself struggling to sort your holiday photos with ill-considered proprietary software from your digital camera manufacturer then I cannot recommend enough the latest version of the free Picasa tool from Google.  It is brilliant. But don't take my word for it:

Read someone else's review

Get Picasa

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Asus EEE PC901: a £340 laptop that does the business

The growing popularity of laptop computers is a complete mystery to me. They are vastly more expensive than the desktop equivalent PC and they are downright fiddly to navigate. Yes, say fans, but you can plug in a mouse and an external monitor if that's a problem. So save your money and get a desktop.

However, there is a low-cost alternative that is worth checking out. Our colleagues at the Mail on Sunday have just started video reviews of the latest gadgets and one that caught my eye is of the ASUS EEE PC901, a brilliant little laptop that 'does the business'. It carries out most of your word processing, household and web browsing tasks.  And it runs Windows. The downside is there is no CD drive. But they argue, you don't need that. The plus side, and it's a huge plus, is the price: a mere £340.

Watch the video:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/moslive/article-1038667/Turn-Lives-video-reviews.html

Another site worth checking is:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/index.aspx

Beer for less than £1 a pint

There are two ways to drink beer at less than £1 a pint. One: travel. To Somalia, home of the world's cheapest pint, or to West Bromwich, which claims the title for Britain. And two: make it yourself.

For me the incident in my mum's airing cupboard 20 years ago put paid to any hopes of running an experimental micro-brewery from my bedroom - so Mogadishu it is. But there is evidence that the popularity of home brewing is rising, not to mention that some of the results these days are actually drinkable.

The downside of course is the danger that you'll become an overweight malt bore whose friends leave you alone with your cloudy sediment-filled keg in favour of the sanctity of the pub. But it's a small price to pay. And once you've made the initial investment in a keg and other bits and pieces, the price comes down. So where to start?

1. Watch the How to make beer video - it looks so easy

2.  Read the Brew it yourself forum for tips and advice 

3. Get hold of a starter kit for around £20 

4. Get on with it.

That's apparently all there is to it. But like everything you need to persevere and not be put off if your house explodes first time round. And if this is all still too expensive, you could try making prison wine (not for the faint-hearted or easily offended).

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Pint Price checker

The part-filled pint that sums up the state of Britain

Coming soon to your local pub - the £4 pint

Delicious way to find useful information

Finding your way around This is Money is hard enough (we're working on that) but the entire world wide web is mind-bogglingly big. As big as a googol, let's say. The search engine Google has become the most-popular way to find your way around it all. But there are alternatives.

One site that tried to help is called Delicious. When you find a website you like, instead of bookmarking it to your computer you bookmark it on the site. Then you can see who else has bookmarked it and then see the other sites that person has saved. That way, so the theory goes, you can find a whole bunch of stuff you may never have found that you may also be interested in.

http://delicious.com/

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If you log in to This is Money and then search for a company, you can add it straight in to your virtual portfolio.

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How to make your children good at maths and money

The country is under intense economic pressure from the credit crunch. And the worst, it seems, is yet to come. How did we get here? Oh yes, because of greedy bankers; morons lining their own pockets with ludicrous investment schemes they didn't understand. In other words they didn't do the sums, because they didn't understand the maths.

It needn't have been that way. An interesting piece from the Psychologies magazine website explains attribution theory and how to encourage children to be good at maths simply by telling them they are good at maths. If only our bankers had read 'We are what we say we are', by Maureen Rice maybe we wouldn't have ended up in this mess. There's also an interactive test: Should I change my job? Another one for our banking friends to check out, I feel.

Related
The credit crunch on year on - 'bankruptcy stalks every sector of commerce'
Vote: Could one of our big banks go bust?
Find a mortgage - if you can

How to find online TV programmes

We can't normally write about websites that help us find online TV shows because there's always a danger of promoting illegal activity. But here at last is a legal 'what's on' worthy of mention - from Blinkx.

If you believe the hype, Blinkx is a potential rival to Google's dominance of search.

Its new tool offers a directory of the latest shows you can view online from the BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5 and ITV.

Watch the telly now.

Related

Shops suffer as spending moves online

The office: play the game, save money

Now that going out and spending money in shops like they're going out of fashion has in fact gone out of fashion may I present an utterly time-wasting but money-saving preoccupation for this lunchtime.

There's something wonderfully calming about throwing scrunched up bits of paper into the waste-paper basket and this game allows you to just that over and over. Click to catch, double click and release to throw. Be warned that there's sound (and it's addictive). But it does mean you won't get out to the shops today to spend money.

http://games.sticky.tv/cyrkam_airtos/

More on waste...

>> We're wasting millions on insurance
>> Baby vouchers going to waste
>> Average family wastes £610 of food a year
>> Archive: Water meters waste your money

Is Britain really turning into a Dystopian horror movie?

Dystopia is where you end up when Utopia turns bad. Is that really where we are heading? According to yesterday's news, yes it is. Our economy is 'turning into a horror movie', says one group of people who know what they are talking about.

Fans of 'horror movies' will no doubt be delighted at such news. And adding fuel to the flames of such doom is a new TV drama from the writer of the Full Monty based on real interviews with oil industry chiefs, who admit the planet is burning up.

For those who enjoy such horror and want to profit from it. Try this:

How to profit from the rising oil price

For those who'd rather put your feet up and forget about it, this lunchtime check out this brilliant list of:

Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time

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Best online DVD providers

Make a will

Win green kitchen appliances worth £1,100

Energy efficient kitchen appliances can cut £45 a year off your annual electricity bill. This is a handy saving. The catch is the thousand pounds it costs to buy the stuff in the first place. But you don't have to. Not if you're the winner of our latest fabulous competition.

Check it out now...

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/consumer/savingideas/article.html?in_article_id=445083&in_page_id=512

How to get Wii Fit for half price

Oh dear. It seems rip-off Britain is alive and well. At least it is when it comes to the must-have game of the year, the computerised home gym system for the Nintendo Wii console, Wii Fit.

The trouble is, there isn't nearly enough supply to meet the demand, a situation that brings out the worst of the scammers and the touts. Buy it now on Amazon.co.uk and you'll pay around £150 for a new one, that's more than double you might expect to pay from a reputable High Street store.

So what can you do? Well, wait. Go for a walk, go for a run, get fit the old fashioned free way.

If you can't do that because having stuff is more important that commonsense, why not buy it from Amazon France? The average French person is too busy eating to worry about jumping up and down in front of the telly and as a result Wii Fit has been in stock long after it sold out here. You'll pay 88 euros, which is about £70 with delivery another £5ish. Stock was due this week on 25 June, although now it is advertising a slightly more vague, delivery within one or two weeks.  Find it here.

I've bought plenty of stuff from the french Amazon site and never had a problem. The Wii games work here just the same and if you're worried about the language read this guide:

How to order from Amazon France

Related

This is Money's guide to shopping online

Ask an expert: Can I get my money back for shoddy gym?

Never forget a password again

I need to remember around 30 passwords to do my job. Add to that more than a decade of internet surfing and the number of passwords is just silly. It's impossible to remember that many yet we're told you cannot write them down. You don't have to.

This is Money's technical genius Matt recommends a little piece of software called Password Agent that securely stores all your passwords and, even better, automatically fills in the login details of all the sites you save. Check it out here:

http://www.moonsoftware.com/pwagent.asp

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The best of YouTube - by This is Money readers

One of the frustrations of writing about the best of the internet is that some of the really clever things are either downright illegal, which is fine - we don't want to write about that - or worse, in this legal grey area where our lawyers advise caution.

It's all to do with copyright and the basic principal that if someone creates something it's theirs, not yours and you can't just take it. The problem is that where Google and YouTube test copyright laws to the limit by basically publishing other people's material, they're deemed acceptable and lauded for it but sites that take content from YouTube and create all sorts of other clever musical services on the back of it can be deemed to be taking things too far. So they tend not to get written about.

However, I needn't worry because a service (of sorts) that brings the best of YouTube to the masses in a legal and entertaining format is emerging under our very noses on This is Money.

On our message boards, contributor MARY_LOU has created a kind of YouTube tennis game, where you post links to your favourite music clips. There are nearly 200 entries and I've yet to see one that's not worthy of inclusion. It's brilliant.

Take part, or just have a look, now

• Post your favourite video or song

Best place to rent DVDs?

News that Apple is to launch an online movie rental service merely confirms that the end of the High Street video store is inevitable. As is the end of DVD rental services. Probably eventually even DVDs.

Interestingly - and here's a bit of modern social history - a company called Enron was testing video streaming with video rental company Blockbuster in 2000 but a combination of dotcom hubris, oh, and large-scale fraud put paid to that. Fastforward eight years and everyone is talking about streamed movies. Indeed, Amazon is launching something similar.

It is only a matter of time before all films we watch are streamed to our computers/TVs but until the technology catches up with the masses and vice versa, the best way to watch films is use one of the DVD rental services. 

'Using online DVD rental firms makes a lot of sense. It's cheaper – for frequent film watchers vastly so - than going to the local video library, postage is free, there are no late fees and most firms offer a free trial. The flaw in the system is that you are not guaranteed to get a particular film on a particular day.'

Learn more...

How to win the online DVD rental battle

Make the most of Google and save precious time

Whether you like it or not, circa 2008 Google is in charge of the Web. If you don't like it, it could be over accusations that it illegally takes and stores other people's content, that it invades privacy or that's it's just too darn big.

If you do like it, it's probably because it is gloriously simple, it does what you expect it to and it has an array of incredible applications and clever gizmos.

So are you getting the most out of the Google phenomenon? Probably not. Read this, and the comments, for tips.

>> Master the Google - search like a God and save time

Related

Google news and analysis from This is Money 

The Unbelievable Gift Company, and how to avoid such scams

Earlier this year the BBC TV programme Watchdog attempted to expose the ease with which scammers can set up fake websites. Anyone can do it and anyone can fall for it. The Watchdog people created a site called  Unbelievable Gift Company and sure enough within days unsuspecting customers began arriving from across the globe. But Watchdog is now off air. We're open all year, praising the good and raising awareness of the worst of the online and High Street scams and rip-offs. Here are some of the tools at your disposal:

Join our fantastic community...

Discuss deals, scams and rip-offs
- BT charges
- Setanta sport
- Nigerian 'girlfriends'
- Bank statements
- Cashback on mobiles

Read financial sleuth Tony Hetherington

>> The ultimate rip-offs column - fresh scams every week

General

>> Bargains & rip-offs news and advice

Expert advice

>> Ask our consumer experts

- £922 to change a holiday booking

A fun way to win a share of £100,000

This is Not Work is all about drip-feeding useful and time-saving information to those of us without much time so it is with extreme reluctance that we mention this new competition from our sister title, Metro.

But it's great. If you like puzzles and are looking for a new way to waste your lunchtime you have to check out the Metro Alert Challenge.

And if you're serious about it you could walk away with a ginourmous virtual head and a cash prize.

Find out more.

Alternatively

Premium Bonds - were you a winner?

Cooking - by numbers - without going shopping

As the real cost of living is today shown to be £1,000 more than a year ago and with food prices promising to get even further out of control, this could well be the most useful website in cyberspace.

http://www.cookingbynumbers.com/

You click on the items you have in your fridge and cupboard and it gives you a list of really easy recipes you can make. Brilliant.

Related

How to invest in rising food prices

Useful property website

OK, this is not the world's greatest property website but yourpropertyfinder.co.uk has a feature that makes it worth including in your bookmarks to include as part of your home-moving armoury.

As the housing market switches to a buyers' market the site not only lets you view properties for sale (which you're perfectly entitled to expect from a property website) but if you click on the Compare previous sales at this address link it brings up the Land Registry data for that street so you can see what the current and previous owners paid for the house, or another similar one nearby.

>> Give it go now

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Search for a mortgage

What's happening to housing market near you?

What to do with all those 1ps

Every now and again - on slow news days, when the country is either on holiday or hungover or it's Monday morning - the national press turns in desperation to that stalwart survey about the total amount of money down the back of our collective settees. Turns out, there's hundreds of thousands of billions of trillions pounds down there - made up of 1ps and 2ps. It begs the question: do we only keep these small-value coins for the benefit of the press? 

But why do we keep them? Australia and New Zealand dumped them a decade ago. New Zealand has gone further and dropped the 5 cents (5p) coin. In fact, youngsters in New Zealand don't use cash at all - until they come to the UK and have to clean out jam jars so they can fill them with the coins before pouring the contents down the back of the sofa.

The best solution is to give the money to charity. The next best is to make sure you always have four 1ps in your pocket.

That way you can always get change in silver, which is more likely to be accepted by the vending machine. If your maths is up to it.

So buy something for £1.98 and hand over a £2 coin plus 3p and you'll be handed a 5p coin back. Buy something for £3.82 and pay 4 pound coins plus 2p and you'll get a 20p coin back. It's hardcore money saving but it's better than throwing it away.

Now check this out...

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Feed factory - but not for kids

One of the greatest internet-based innovations after email and the world wide web is the RSS feed. It's a concept that  is pretty much impenetrable to the average person - it has nothing to do with eating (pictured) - but it will have its day. Unfortunately, the way it's going it is likely to be just one day - maybe a wet March in 2013. Even the BBC with its taxpayers' budget and multi-layered middle management can't find any RSS feeds on its myriad websites for children - the very people who would help bring such technology into the national consciousness and beyond.

The BBC does however have one of the better guides to RSS. And its number one feed is quite a useful overview of the BBC site. It is worth checking out one lunchtime.

Related

RSS: organise the internet on one page

>> and This is Money feeds

Learn about computers

Anyone who has ever had to deal with a computer helpline will have a vivid picture of the job interview that the person on the other end of the phone will have been through.

'So. what do you know about computers?'

'Nothing. Absolutely, totally, unashamedly ****** all.'

'Great. When can you start?'

Now to be fair, I'm told that roughly about 99.99999% of computer-related problems are caused by the user. And I kid you not that in the early days on This is Money someone did get in touch with us because the site wasn't working. It turned out it was because they didn't have a computer. So I have some sympathy with the support people.

By why on earth can you never get a straight answer? That is I'm told not because they are monkeys but because there isn't one. Everything depends, you see, on things and stuff.

If all this sounds familiar here's a site worth a visit.

http://www.pc.com/learn

Obviously it doesn't answer all the questions, that would be asking way too much, and it is paid for by chip makers Intel so it's there to flog expensive computers, but all that aside it's one of the best easy-to-follow stabs at computers for normal people that we've found.

Wii Fit - don't buy it (now)

Any money-saving articles worth their weight will explain that cancelling gym membership is one of the easiest ways to cut a big expense from the monthly budget. After all, why pay £500 a year for the option to use a running machine when you have access to the outside? In fact, in this office no-one who is signed up to a gym is getting their money's worth. It is therefore a waste of money.

But now, depending on who you believe, there is a £70 alternative to the gym - a computer game called Wii Fit.

Nintendo, its creator, is shifting 90 every minute and judging by the online commentaries it is fast becoming the dinner party conversation piece to replace the house in France.

It's life changing, says Daniel, fantastic, says everyone at Play.com with more of the same from Amazon.

Reassuringly, some people are able to see through the hype.

Unsurprising, perhaps, personal trainers aren't that impressed. But then Wii Fit threatens their livelihood. More rational is Michelle, who asks: How long does the fun last?  And that's the rub. Like the real gym and the house in France, you pay your money, talk about it for a while, use it a couple of times and forget about it. It's just a computer game.

So here's our advice. If you have a Wii console already and you want one of these games, don't buy it now! The touts are charging more than £120, you can afford to wait. In our experience, one site that may have stock when others are sold out (probably because the site hardly ever seems to work properly) is the oft-forgotten Dixons.co.uk. You can sign up now for an alert to tell you when it's in stock. Littlewoods.co.uk on the other hand guarantees delivery within 26 weeks - that's half a year.

If you don't have a console and you want this game you won't get much change from £300. And if you're the kind of person who signs up to a gym and doesn't use it, don't waste your money on this.

If you need more help read:

>> 50 ways to save money

Best anti-virus software?

As attempts by all the world's thieves, spammers, scammers and spinners to destroy everything that was great about the internet grow by the minute it is absolutely vital that we all have up-to-date antivirus and anti-spyware software installed. And that is expensive. But it needn't be.

If you don't have any protection yet there is no excuse. There is plenty of perfectly acceptable free software out there and the best, according to our trusted geek, is this one from AVG