This week it was revealed that Santander is charging all store card customers a £10 fee if they do not use their cards for six months. Customers who signed up with House of Fraser, Debenhams, Laura Ashley, Topshop and Dorothy Perkins may all be hit if they only used their card for the introductory offer. The bank says it is bringing store card customers into line with its credit card and Zero card customers, who are charged a £10 dormancy fee if they do not use their account for six months.

My advice…? take advantage of any discount offered when you take it the  pay the balance in full at the end of the month and cut the card up or cancel it.

The Amex platinum cashback card also has a dormancy fee of £20 per year if no purchases are made within 12 months. Meanwhile, Tesco has started setting its own exchange rate for credit-card customers, which means transactions made abroad cost more. Most credit-card providers use the Visa and MasterCard exchange rates, which are close to the wholesale market rates and published on their websites. But Tesco can charge more than this, as well as a 2.75 per cent foreign-exchange fee. So this week £1 bought €1.195 with Visa but €1.164 with Tesco. it does not publish its daily rates online. NatWest and RBS also calculate their own exchange rates and none publish their rates online.

To get the best exchange rates when abroad, use the Halifax Clarity card or Santander Zero, as neither make a charge for foreign exchange. Saga, Post Office and Nationwide also have no foreign usage charge, but the latter charges 1 per cent elsewhere.

I could only assume it was money saved to do her Xmas shopping, it seems many people are now spending cash rather than using credit. Sure enough, if you have saved wisely all year then now would not be the best time to apply for a credit card as you only know you’d overspend on it, even if you were tempted to do so. This year is about the first where we will be spending our hard saved cash rather than using the plastic but that is due to the stupidity of our bank in reducing our credit limit on a card that we have used for years and paid off every single month in full. That’s how they reward you these days…

For example, when you’re buying insurance for your house mortgage you will end up with “life insurance”. Naturally, after all the point is that the policy should pay off the balance if you die so you need “life” insurance, don’t you? well really you don’t. Think about it. What you actually need is  “term insurance”. This is generally the same as life insurance except that it only pays out if you die during the term of the insurance (usually the same term as your mortgage). Sounds like a minor triviality but it can make a big difference in your insurance premiums.

As always you should obtain as many online life insurance quotes as you can get. In amongst all those quotes you may even come across a thing called “reducing life insurance” which is designed to work together with a repayment mortgage. Since with this type of mortgage your balance is gradually paid off over the term, you don’t need the full value of the insurance after the first month. This should be even cheaper than normal term insurance but since it’s not so common that’s not always the case.

There’s big money to be saved in getting the right type of life insurance here so do shop around.

That means that obviously you need to be in employment to get one and usually for at least three months. You’ll also need a bank account as payment is directly into your bank account and lastly a cheque book. Finally, as they’re effectively an advance on your salary you need to pay them back when your salary next arrives in your account.

A payday advance loan tends to look as though it is incredibly expensive when you look at the rate of interest but then that’s calculated on an annual basis and these loans are for less than a month so, yes, the interest rate looks high but the amount actually charged isn’t as bad as you might think.

If you cannot make an offer/payment immediately send a letter set out in this way…

Name of Creditor

Address

Postcode

Date

Dear Sir/Madam

Re: Account No…

I regret that I am unable to maintain my current monthly payments because…….your explanation (and be honest)

I am writing to all my creditors requesting details of the balance outstanding on my accounts and would be grateful if you would let me know how much I owe you. Once I have obtained this information I will contact you again with a pro rata offer for repaying the above debt.;or

I have applied for…….benefit and will contact you again as soon as I start to receive it; or

I have been sick/unemployed since……….and am due to start/return to work on (date) and will contact you again once I have started/returned to work.

Meanwhile I request that you hold action on my account for two months and suspend interest and other charges to prevent my indebtedness from increasing.

Yours faithfully

You will find that taking the first step towards acknowledging your situation will be the hardest step but once you have done this you should feel less of a burden on your shoulders, probably sleep better too. Once you send off that letter/s make sure you follow through and do stay in contact with your creditor/s – you must stand by your word if your situation is to improve.

However, what if it’s a sum that lies in the middle ground and you want to send it internationally? For most people the answer isn’t nearly so cut and dried there. For instance, if you were sending EUR 200 from the UK to France or vice versa you’d be looking at around £25/EUR 20 in bank charges for the cheque or transfer and that’s before you factor in the tourist rate of exchange that you’d be getting.

If it’s a company you’re sending it to then you could use a credit/debit card of course, but that’s not really an option for an individual, is it? Well, actually these days it is as the person you’re sending it to could have a paypal account in which case, if they upgrade it to a premium account, then they could take the money off you at a cost of around 4%.

However, if it’s a family member a more practical way is to pop into the post office and pick up a travel money card and just post it to them. There’s no security risk as you can wait ’til it arrives before enabling the card. It costs around 4% to exchange the money from sterling to euros or dollars and it’ll be £5 or so two years later to renew it.

JustGiving takes 5 per cent of your donation plus the fee charged by your debit or credit card and VAT. If you’re running a marathon that means the first 2.3km of your effort goes towards its fees and costs. And if you tick the Gift Aid box, so tax relief can be claimed on your donation, they take a share of that too. On a £10 donation, the charity would receive £12.82 with Gift Aid.

After JustGiving’s deductions they receive £11.92. On top of their commission, charities pay £15 a month to belong to the site, making their cost £180 a year. By comparison, Virginmoneygiving.com charges 2 per cent of your donation and passes the full Gift Aid benefit to the charity, though it also deducts the card fee of 16p. So for a donation of £10 the charity receives £12.46. Charities pay a one-off £100 setup fee.

Bmycharity.com dropped its commission charges last October. It only deducts the card charge of 16p. So the charity will receive £12.66 for every £10 donated with Gift Aid. Charities pay a set-up fee of £150. Charitygiving.co.uk, run by the Dove Trust, takes nothing from your donation unless you include Gift Aid, when it deducts 40p. It passes on £12.42 for a £10 donation to charity. And it’s free for charities.

Big changes are now afoot in the credit card industry and these changes are aimed at making the industries practices more transparent and the consumer more informed. This is also a good time – just after Xmas – for making a credit card comparison and seeing where you can start paying a lot less money. The best way to do this right now is to opt for the balance transfer route – but bear in mind you don’t want to simply ‘start over again’ – you want to be paying less than before and to achieve this you need to take a look at and compare the 0% balance transfer credit cards that are on offer right now.

The best deal so far – and has been for quite a while now – is the Virgin Credit Card and to date this deal has outlasted all the other 0% balance transfer offers, which means it is not a ‘first in first served’ kind of deal in that it has been on offer now for 16 months. Often consumers will be so desperate to wipe the slate clean and take their balance elsewhere they will overlook the high interest rate they are being charged – it will simply take longer to pay off and be more expensive in the long run. The Virgin deal looks set to last for a while yet and I’d say plenty of new years consumers have already signed up with them and taken advantage of the 0% interest deal. And remember – aim to pay off the balance, pay MORE than the minimum each month.

But the exorbitant rates of interest – which are often around 825 per cent, but can be as high as 1,500 per cent – mean that families repay around three times the amount they originally borrowed. Many will still be paying for their debts next December. Housing association Circle Anglia and think-tank The Financial Inclusion Centre estimate that more than 200,000 families a year are lured into using loan sharks who knock on their door.

This is an increase of almost a quarter on the previous year.

Fears are growing that the rise in loan sharks occurred because so many families are being shut out of mainstream banks and building societies by tougher credit scoring. Loan sharks do not have a consumer credit licence and are not authorised to lend money. As a result, the consumer has no protection from being mis-sold.

The Trading Standards’ illegal money lending teams have helped more than 10,000 victims of illegal lenders in the past year and have written off more than £30million debt.

These days with the recession, the priority for many couples will be sorting out debts and other joint liabilities, such as household bills. Many people do not realise that with joint loans, overdrafts or credit cards, both parties are liable for the full amount. This is known as “joint and several liability”. It means that if, for example, you have a £10,000 loan with your ex-partner, you will not owe £5,000 each — you will both owe the full amount.

Joint and several liability can also apply to rent or mortgage arrears, as well as council tax, utility and other household bills. It is, therefore, important to ensure that your name is removed from all bills before moving out of the property. An old partner’s finances may also have an impact on your credit rating. If a couple share any form of joint bank account or credit, such as a loan, this “financial connection” will appear on both party’s credit ratings.

If your partner or ex-partner has a bad credit rating and you have a financial connection with them, this will have an adverse effect on your rating as well. This is why it is very important to keep your finances totally separate for at least six years from when your partner had debt problems — since it takes that long for their record to become clean again. Once you have severed all financial connections from your partner, you can write to a credit-reference agency — Experian, Call Credit or Equifax — to “dissociate” yourself from your ex. The agency will share this disassociation with the others, so only one needs to be contacted.

Also remember that your ex-partner will have access to any savings and current accounts in joint names. So it is vital to ensure these assets are divided fairly at the outset of a separation.