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						            <channel><title>Moneymagpie &gt; Blogs &gt; The Family Blog </title>
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									 <description><![CDATA[ Parenting is one, if not the most important thing, many of us will do in life. But while there are oodles of books on how to get them to eat and sleep, there is yawning gap when it comes to practical help in dealing with the financial aspects of parenthood, and producing financially aware children. &quot;I hope that by sharing my experiences I can help other parents avoid some of the pitfalls when it comes to money and children.&quot;  Lindsey Rogerson  is a financial journalist who writes for a number of newspapers and personal finance magazines as well as womens' magazines. She was personal finance editor of The Scotsman for two years and wrote the Financial Heathcheck column in Scotland on Sunday for three years. She has won awards for writing on both investment and insurance. ]]></description>		<language>en-uk</language>
										<pubDate>Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:53:31 PST</pubDate>
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										</image><item><title>Mortgage chicken</title><description><![CDATA[ This week Id like to go public with a game I have been forced to play with my mortgage company for the best part of a year. In our house it has become known as &quot;mortgage chicken&quot;.  In January 2008, conscious that we were one of the 1.4 million UK households due to come off a low fixed-rate mortgage deal, (in August 2008) , I started looking around for a new deal, before we were forced on to our lenders SVR, which is 2% higher than Bank of England base rate.  By April it looked like I'd mis-calculated, as despite the a base rate cut of 0.25%, all the talk was of interest rates needing to rise to stamp out inflation. But still I could not shake the feeling that all was not rosy in the housing market, nor the wider economy, and that rates would have to fall not rise, despite what the papers reported.  Come mid-July and we got notification that our monthly repayment when we switched over to the SVR was going up by just short of £400 a month. A lot. And to say my husband was not happy]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 30 Nov 2008 9:56:57 PST</pubDate><guid>http://www.moneymagpie.com/blogpost/the-family-blog/mortgage-chicken</guid></item><item><title>Don't let Santa tip your finances over the edge</title><description><![CDATA[ Chances are that if it hasn't started already then parents the length and breadth of the UK will be bracing themselves for some hard lobbying from their offspring about what the latter expect Santa to pop down the chimney with, this year.  More than ever, this Festive period,&#160;retailers will be upping their efforts to get us to spend in their stores, promoting &quot;Christmas Giving&quot; big time, thus further racketing up the pressure on parents.  Evidence&#160;is mounting however,&#160;that this year many people simply cannot afford a festive splurge - indeed one in four families are still paying off last Christmas. And with separate research&#160;revealing that money problems are a source of daily worry for an equal number of Brits, parents really will have to&#160;strike&#160;a balance between their childrens' expectations and financial reality.  For what it's worth my top tip for avoiding an overspend this Christmas is to cut the problem off at source - namely pester power.]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:46:03 PST</pubDate><guid>http://www.moneymagpie.com/blogpost/the-family-blog/dont-let-santa-tip-your-finances-over-the-edge</guid></item><item><title>Gas Rip-offs</title><description><![CDATA[  I was planning to write about how I fight back against pester power in the run up to Christmas this week, but then my gas bill dropped through the letter box and quite frankly I am so cross that I have to get this off my chest first.  I have worked hard at keeping the family's energy consumption in check. Every light bulb is an energy efficient one, I obsessively turn off all appliances when they are not in use, and the central heating thermostat is set at 18 degrees. So I am understandably more than a little annoyed at  EDF  Energy's latest attempt to hike my gas bill by just short of 50%, its second such attempt this year.  The bill I received is what EDF call an &quot;Interim Gas Payment Review&quot; and it claims to be based on three criteria: my previous usage; the current balance of my account; and the price EDF charges per unit at the time of my bill.  So lets take a look at these shall we. EDF has had to refund overpayments by me several times this year already. This should surely]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2008 4:06:29 PST</pubDate><guid>http://www.moneymagpie.com/blogpost/the-family-blog/gas-rip-offs</guid></item><item><title>Half Price Half Term</title><description><![CDATA[ This week I am on a mission not to spend a fortune over half-term.   I am in the mist of the October Week as I write. School holidays can cause a great deal of stress for parents, and quite a lot of it can be of the financial kind. Daycare or sports camps around here run to several hundred pounds a week.  Getting time off work can be tricky, and not everyone has grandparents nearby who can help out. But it has to be possible to get through a week's school holiday without breaking the bank. Well that is my aim, at least.  I have been working reduced hours this week and my husband has taken two days off, so between us we can just about juggle the week. If you have close friends nearby it might be worth trying to co-ordinate days off so that you have their children for a couple of days and they have yours.  But getting time off is only part of the cost-cutting battle. Not spending a fortune on entertainment is every bit as important.  A key part of my plan is to be so organised that we don't end up]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Oct 2008 3:04:20 PDT</pubDate><guid>http://www.moneymagpie.com/blogpost/the-family-blog/half-price-half-term</guid></item><item><title>Free Food for Breakfast!</title><description><![CDATA[ My five-year-old announced at breakfast this morning that his school dinners were going to be free from now on. &quot;Ur no&quot; I corrected, &quot;Only some children get free school meals and you are not one of them.&quot; Said I, as I filled in the lunch option form for next week and wrote a cheque to pay for it all.  Come the radio headlines at 8 o'clock though, turned out he was right.  The Scottish Government (we live in Edinburgh) has decided to provide  free school meals for all children  in primary 1,2 and 3. That is an instant saving of £7 a week or around £280 across the school year. What a great way to start the day.  The cash is welcome. Since he was born, his father and I (love him as we do) have been amazed at the cost of keeping him. We both work full time and at one point were paying out about £9,000 a year for nursery. Neither of our employers - national newspapers - at that time offered  childcare vouchers . It took several articles (I was then the personal finance Editor of]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Oct 2008 6:27:08 PDT</pubDate><guid>http://www.moneymagpie.com/blogpost/the-family-blog/free-food-for-breakfast</guid></item></channel></rss>