I hate the Next website and all it's media, frankly

So once, and I now regret it, I bought something from Next. I'm pretty careful about not signing up to email newsletters, as I get enought email thankyouverymuch from people I want to hear from, so generally I manage to opt out of email. Especially the promotional / spam-style mail.

But Next have been emailing me HTML heavy mail and today I thought "that's it". Enough of the weirdly designed, image-heavy mail that's all sell-sell-sell. If I wanted adverts, I could look at the back of the Ham and High.

So I click "unsubscribe here" in the greyed-out blurb at the bottom of the email, and I have to SIGN IN to OPT OUT. Euurrgh. How crap is that.

Except I can't sign in because I try my generic password (attempt 1), but it doesn't recognise it. Then I do password hint (2), and it says I don't have a password, I should sign in with my customer number. Which I don't have. So I can do date of birth (3) but it asks for customer number. By which time I'm hating everything about Next and thinking I might not even go into their SHOPS, let alone buy my husband some out-of-season swimming trunks for our 08 winter holiday. Boy, do I regret that.

So I'm so angry I start to blog it, and when I go back to the greyed out email blurb I find my tiny, 6-point customer number, go again (attepmt 4) and now - thank all the email and digital gods - I am UNSUBSCRIBED FOREVER. Hate Next. And will - clearly - tell all my friends about it.

Also, I have spent 15 minutes of my precious work/family/child/tax return filled life on it, and based on my usual charge-out rate, Next owe me £30 for a right royal waste of my customer-centric time.

What kind of seventies did you live in?

Just saw A Serious Man (which I am still slightly perturbed by) and was very taken with the styling and interiors. Very Mad Men. Very now, in a then sort of way.

And I realised something. ASM is more sixties interiors, but who can tell the difference between the lates sixties and the early seventies anyway.

This thing that I realised is about the colour purple. Not the book/film (doing charades moves). If you know me, you'll know that I love purple, and most of my clothes are many different shades of purple, and quite a lot of my interior acessories / walls.

Basically, there were two kinds of seventies. You either had an orange / brown seventies experience (a la Morcheeba Big Calm), or you had a purple one.

And I've often wondered why my sister loves purple too, and sometimes wondered if she'd copied me (in the way sisters do) but now I realise that we both had the same seventies childhood: the purple one.

If it'd been the orange/brown one, who knows where I'd be.

This could so cheer you up (if you were feeling a little sad)

A bloke in Lincolnshire, who's 91 is waiting for the birth of his 106th grandchild.

Miranda Sawyer really needs some education

I am still seething after reading a ridculous Sawyer column in Sunday's Observer entitled How on earth do fat cats spend it all?

Miranda's basic premise is that she can't understand what a fictional fat cat, Mr Big, earning £800k a year, does with all his money. She works through a few sarcastic estimates and quite ridiculous fantasies of what he might spend his money on (huge mortgage, Eton, posh holidays and £1,000 meals.)

Miranda asks for "Answers on a crocodile-skin postcard studded with hens' teeth, please: we are genuinely intrigued."

Well, Miranda, the answer is this.

While I'm loathe to say the country's going to the dogs and things aren't like the old days, Miranda demonstrates two crucial flaws that I suspect she shares with a huge chunk of young/ish people.

One, she demonstrates complete financial cluelessness when it comes to money management, and two, she has absolutely no idea about financial planning, savings and investment. Thirdly, and less importantly, she has little idea about how the tax system works.

Except, according to Wikipedia, Sawyer is 42, and also has an Oxford Law degree. So, both old enough and smart enough to know better.

If Miranda's overblown examples are anything to go by, her aim each month, once she gets her hands on her Observer-enabled readies, is to spend it as quickly as possible. Judging by her best-guess of what Mr Big might do, she doesn't save. She doesn't invest. She probably doesn't have a (tax free) Cash ISA, and I'd be very surprised if she had a (tax free) investment ISA. Is she using her (tax free) Premium Bonds? Doubt it. Does she have a three month "emergency fund" - I wouldn't think so. Does she have the right protection? Life insurance, health insurance... probably not.

Miranda makes the vaguest of references to health insurance (covered by his job) and "Oh, and his pension. Except that's usually paid separately," - er, what does that mean? Separately from what, exactly?

Miranda might think she's very witty, but when it comes to money - unlike the fictional Mr Big - she's a total child.

Here's what I think Mr Big does.

Miranda naively presumes he won't have a mortgage (although she estimates a worse case one) - he might not, but he might. But he will certainly be putting a huge chunk a year into a pension. If his pension pot hasn't reached the 2010 Lifetime Allowance of £1,750,000, he's probably contributing the maximum annual allowance of £245k. And bear in mind that, although a pension pot of £1.75m sounds huge, if he retires at 60, it will buy him an annuity paying a little over £100k a year - a lot of money, sure, but 12.5% of his current income.

He'll certainly be doing both Cash and Investment ISAs - an annual allowance of £7,200 this year, unless he's over 50 in which case is £10,200 (which it is for everyone from the next tax year in April).

In all likelihood, he'll have investments - probably overseen by an investment / wealth manager - a portfolio of bonds and equities (although in this market, a goodly chunk of it might be in cash), with a handful of alternative investments thrown in for good measure. His manager will review the asset allocation of his funds on a regular basis, in light of his risk profile, age, and financial plans.

He may also have some cash savings accounts or fixed rate cash bonds, he'll almost certainly have his £30k maximum investment in Premium Bonds (although the winnings aren't necessarily better than the interest, but at least they're tax free), and he may have a whole range of other complex investment products designed for sophisticated investors.

He may have set up trusts for his children or family. He may have a property portfolio. He may be funding his children's education, or buying them property to start them off (or he may not: some wealthy people like to leave their kids to fend for themselves). He may even have an expensive divorce from an ex-wife. He probably pays of his credit card each month. He'll almost certainly give something to charity.

In short: he'll have a financial plan, which is about acheiving financial security, as well as doing something good with your money, and he'll be working towards it. Sure, he may have luxury holidays and more than one expensive car (and one is bound to be a 4X4). He may pay for the best education he can get for his kids. He might go to flash restaurants. Or buy really expensive hand-crafted Italian wool suits.

But that's not all he does.

Miranda, I know some people who live in the £2 million pound houses in North London of which you speak. And I'll tell you something: they're not like you. They might always have fresh flowers in their hall (or they may not), but most of them are frugal with their funds, thoughtful about their philanthropy and sensible about their future financial security.

How do you think you get a £2m house? YOU DON'T SPEND EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT.

So Miranda, here are 11 basic financial lessons:

(1) your objective each month is spend less than you earn
(2) even better, you should save SOMETHING every month, and it works a lot better if you automate it, set up a regular payment. When it's gone, it's gone. But when you need it, it'll be there. Start small (1% or 2%) and build it up each year. It's about habit
(3) apart from mortgage debt, pay off your debts before you start saving (it's cheaper)
(4) don't buy on credit, save first
(5) have 3 months emergency money in an easy acess savings account
(6) start paying off your mortgage as soon as you can, especially while rates are low. Most mortgages let you overpay by 10% or 20%, or instead of paying monthly, split your payment and pay every two weeks, which effectively pays 13 months a year
(7) start a pension as young as possible
(8) use your tax-free ISA allowances, the government is basically giving you free money
(9) know how much is in your current account
(10) however much money you have, shop around for the best deal
(11) get protection; life insurance (if you have dependants), health insurance (if you believe in it), health cash plan, house insurance

Miranda, I am very sorry that you never got a basic financial education, which you appear to have demonstrated in the pages of the national press, but you can wake up tomorrow and get your (financial) house in order.

And how great would it be if you wrote about that in the Observer, and inspired others to sort their own financial affairs, instead of bemoaning the unfair sucesses of fat cats.

We have a ticking pensions timebomb in the UK which we're effectively ignoring. Total UK personal debt in November 2009 was £1,459bn. Billion. Up by nearly 1% in a year where people were supposed to be paying down their credit. Average household debt in the UK is £57,888 (including mortgages).The average owed by every UK adult is ~ £30,226 (including mortgages). This is 133% of average earnings.

Miranda, this is not a joke. My answer (on a 50p postcard is) - forget intrigued. Get (financially) educated.

Asianish salmon noodle soup

poched salmon in noodle soup
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk

Here's a pic of last night's recipe, the wagamama-style salmon noodle soup.

Asian salmon noodle soup for supper:

Dead easy. Miso soup (as stock), pan of hot water, 2 salmon fillets, 2 egg noodle servings, slices of ginger, carrot, spring onions, kaffir lime leaf, dash of lemon juice, chopped coriander. Takes 10 minutes. Tastes almost as good as the wagamama one, except I haven't been out for ages.

All the news about gritting....

So we're snow covered here at Sashinka towers, and have been all week. The news is filled with low temperatures and low rock salt quantities, and apparently local authorities are having to "prioritise" roads.

Seems that Camden is doing that already. As far as I can tell, every single side-road is like an ice rink, totally not gritted, and the same is true of pavements. I know because one side of my street is Camden, and the other is Brent (I imagine an invisible dotted line going down the middle) and the Brent side has gritted pavements.

I still have around 50kg of rock salt in our hall (and much impressed my neighbours with my survivalist instincts), but, frankly, that's not very much. And while I won't slip on my path or the pavement outside my house, thanks to Sashinka Enterprises Gritting Services, I'll probably break my neck outside my neighborus house.

One benefit of the snow....

The roads are totally empty: check that out at Edgware Rd/Marylebone Rd. And it's the same everywhere in North London. Turns out I'm not the only one wishing it was all over (or at least, at home eating carbs).