The credit card statement may not be a welcome piece of mail in most homes, but if it is not checked correctly or thoroughly credit card holders could be incurring more costs than they realize.

At first glance the credit card statement can be confusing, but once you know what to look for you can save yourself money and even protect yourself against fraud.

First you’ll want to ensure that you look over the “purchases or new charges” section to review what you purchased over the previous period. Ideally you should keep your charge receipts for all purchases so that when you receive your statement you can check those charge slips against the charges listed on your statement. (more…)

Home loan approvals rose a little in March, after a slight drop in February, almost 20% up on the year. Mortgage lending has eased off as homeowners paid off debt.

Approved loans for house purchases rose to 34,905 in March from 33,360 in February and up from 29,212 in March 2009 according to The British Bankers’ Association.

The BBA said the figures indicated the effect of the reversal of a temporary increase in the property tax threshold at the start of the year. This had impacted the demand for home loans in February. (more…)

The Office for National Statistics have said that consumer inflation rose more than anticipated in March, led by a knock-on effect from gas bills that remained static last month after falling a year ago.

Consumer inflation rose to 3.4% in March from 3% in February, another contributing factor resulting in the increase was higher fuel and air fare prices. (more…)

A “complete failure” is what a committee of MP’s have labelled the management of the government’s strategy for helping people in debt.

51 different projects since 2004 have been uncoordinated with no-one in charge said the Public Accounts Committee.

The UK population’s total personal debt has almost reached £1.5 trillion. According to the committee’s report 11% of adults were struggling with debts. (more…)

UK home owners injected more than £4 billion of equity into their homes in the 4th quarter of 2009 as record low interest rates encouraged home owners to pay down their debt.

Figures release by the Bank of England on Tuesday show home owners added £4.038 billion of housing equity between October and December, the equivalent of 1.6% of post-tax income. (more…)