Money summary

Another crucial factor that banks look at when evaluating you for a mortgage or any loan, for that matter, is your credit score. 

Your credit score is a number created by credit reference agencies. These agencies keep track of your interactions with financial institutions like banks and energy suppliers. The idea of a credit score is to evaluate your past borrowing behavior so that lenders have some indication of how likely you will be to repay a loan in the future.

Unaffordable housing is one problem that defines this generation – another is debt. Whether it’s life-time mortgages, astronomical student loans, or spiraling credit-card debt, we’re up to our eyeballs in the stuff.

The debt charity StepChange estimates that, in the UK alone, there are 21 million people struggling to pay their bills on time, and 3.3 million people suffering from severe problem debt.

Unfortunately, with housing costs and debt to pay off, most of us exist in a constant state of needing more money. If we can’t earn more, there’s really only one option left – budgeting. 

Yet, budgeting doesn’t always come naturally to us. It often feels easier to flash our plastic than to rein in our temptations.

Since the 2008 financial crash, interest rates have fallen to record lows, even lower than inflation. That means your savings are growing more slowly than the currency is decreasing in value. In other words, you’re losing money.

For this reason, you’re arguably better off taking your money out of your savings account and putting it into an investment fund instead, as these usually have better returns.

Pensions are the least sexy of all personal finance topics – and that’s saying something.

Saving for a future that may never happen, in accounts that you can’t touch for decades, is the least fun kind of saving. At least saving for a house or a holiday gives you something tangible to look forward to.

The author’s agony-aunt column once received an appeal from a young woman in a curious dilemma.

She wrote that she’d just moved into her boyfriend’s apartment to help save on rent. But then, her boyfriend, who had a mortgage on the apartment, asked her to pay him rent. She wrote that while, on the one hand, it seems fair that they should share the bills, on the other hand, isn’t she just helping him pay off his mortgage on a property in which she has no stake?

Money might not be able to buy you happiness, but constantly feeling as though you don’t have enough of it can have a detrimental effect on your mental health and quality of life.

Unfortunately, financial strain and mental health problems tend to compound one another, creating a vicious cycle. Money affects our mental health when, for example, we are stretched too thin to meet the bills we have to pay, or we feel overwhelmed by our debt obligations.

Do you support the National Rifle Association? What about oil companies like Shell or Exxon? 

You might not be a vocal supporter of gun rights or fossil fuels, but there is the chance that you may be propping up these industries without realizing it.