From Money Watch:

• Don’t Let Your Brain Switch Off To Expert Advice – According to a recent study, our brains set aside rationality when we listen to supposedly expert advice.

  Makes sense doesn’t it? After all, expert advice is supposed to take away the difficulties we have in understanding a subject.

From around the web:

• Google search exposes UK credit card data – The credit card details of thousands of British online shoppers were made available online recently, giving anyone using the Google search engine access to the sensitive information.
• Energy firm will pay ‘interest’ – Scottish Power will pay "interest" to any customers whose direct debits put them more than £100 in credit.
  The payments, of £1 for every £33 someone is in credit, could benefit the firms’s 3.2 million customers who pay by direct debit from June this year.
• Google to venture into start-ups – Google is searching for "the next big thing" in technology as it announces its latest effort, Google Ventures.

  Its new venture capitalist arm pledged to help find and develop "exceptional start-ups", offering early stage investments to a range of new firms.

• France is threatening G20 walkout – France will walk away from this week’s G20 summit if its demands for stricter financial regulation are not met, the finance minister has told the BBC.
• Public ‘backs economic reforms’ – A BBC World Service survey of 29,000 people has found broad support for reform of the international economic system ahead of the G20 summit.

  More than 70% of people in 29 countries think major changes are needed in the way the global economy is run.

Money Round Up: 31st March 2009 was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

From Money Watch:

• What The Nationwide Takeover Means To Dunfirmline BS Customers – Following yesterday’s news that the Dunfirmline Building Society is going bust, we’ve since found out that Nationwide is to takeover the more “stable” areas of the business, whilst yet again us tax payers will bear the risk of the dodgy toxic mortgages Dunfirmline polluted its otherwise decent business with.How will this affect Dunfirmline customers?

From around the web:

• Tesco bank accounts: Why I am worried – Tesco financial products might be cheap, but they’re not always cheerful, says Jill Insley.
• UK property prices dropping like Gordon Brown’s approval rating – Anybody deluded enough to hope for a property market recovery sometime this year will be sorely disappointed by the latest figures from the Land Registry which show that actual selling prices of homes in the UK fell by 2% in February.
• Why house prices have further to fall – There is one simple reason why house prices need to drop: for decades, they have risen many times faster than wages.
• MPs’ expenses: the 10 most outrageous claims ever – As the row over the transparency of expenses continues, Money Central lists the 10 most outrageous expense claims ever made by MPs.
• 10 Winners in the Recession – A handful of industries, companies, and products are doing well in the recession.
• Tesco plans 30 new bank branches – Tesco plans to open 30 bank branches in its stores by the end of 2009 as it expands its personal finance brand. There has been a trial in Glasgow since 2006. New branches will open next month in Blackpool, Coventry and Bristol. Tesco currently offers insurance, credit cards, loans and savings accounts and plans to start offering current accounts within two years.
• Nationwide takes over Dunfermline – The Nationwide is to buy the Dunfermline Building Society’s branches, good loans and deposits, it has been confirmed.The mutual was put up for sale after incurring losses of £26m.The Nationwide will also take on Dunfermline’s 530 staff, according to the BBC’s business editor Robert Peston.

Money Round Up: 30th March 2009 was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

Just a quick post to remind readers that you can keep up with Money Watch on Twitter.

If you’re not sure what Twitter is, read more about it here, or sign up here.

If you’re kind enough to follow me on Twitter, you’ll be notified of all of the latest posts on Money Watch, as well as links to other useful sites and articles of interest. You can also ask me questions and generally say great things about the blog, if you wish.

For those who like the more traditional medium of email, we also have a weekly newsletter you can sign up to which will again keep you updated on the week’s posts here. And for the RSS inclined amongst you, we have one of those too.

Money Watch On Twitter was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

I may even have made an offer for the domain a while ago, although I wouldn’t have offered more than a couple of hundred quid for the name back then, so by the looks of things it was well out of my league.

Of course, there is more to the value of a domain name than just the name itself – there is also the history of the domain, whether there is natural type-in traffic and whether there are already links pointing to pages on the site which will help with both traffic and search engine rankings, and that’s possibly why the name has gone for so much.

Of course, I’m in no way bitter that they’ll probably start stealing all of my branded traffic (searches for “Money Watch“).

OT: MoneyWatch.com Sold For $125,000 was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

I had a go and got a rather lucky 8/10, at least a couple were guestimates though. I failed on question 3, about the time to pay back a credit card debt, and question 8, where I the current inheritance tax rate completely escaped me.

Why not test your knowledge and let us know what score you get in the comments below. Bet you can’t beat my score ;>)

Quiz Time: Test Your Personal Finance Knowledge was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

The business is unable to trade in administration due to low stock levels and operating losses and accordingly the stores have been closed. The administrators are working hard to assess the position for customers who have made payments and not received goods. We will endeavour to contact these customers over the next few weeks… If you are a customer then please call the helpline on 08714729000. If you are a supplier then please call the helpline on 08714729001. Alternatively you can send an email to orderqueries@empiredirect.co.uk… Please note that emails will be responded to as soon as possible, however this may not be on the same day that we receive your query.

Despite being around for 25 years, Empire Direct is now a largely internet-based company, although it did have 14 shops in the UK. 158 of its 350 staff have been made redundant.

Empire Direct In Administration was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

Here’s a useful new piggy bank, designed especially for those struggling with the credit crunch.

Credit Crunch Piggy Bank was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

Reports from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) currently running in Las Vegas suggest that highstreet retailers M&S and Next will be selling cheap netbooks from makers Asus and Elonex from next month.

Netbooks are a cheap form of mobile computing, allowing users to primarily connect to the web, as well as running some software, whilst on the move, but without the storage space or large screen of a normal laptop – so somewhere between an iPhone/Blackberry and a standard laptop. 

Their popularity has been growing in the past year, probably as consumers look for cheaper alternatives for computing on the move, and having netbooks from £99 available in the likes of M&S and Next will bring them to yet another audience. But it seems like a bit of a brand stretch for both of them to be moving into these types of electronics, but I guess like many retailers they’ll be looking for any markets they are confident they can make a profit in, yet the margins must be quite low on these items.

Via Techradar

ASUS Netbooks on Amazon.co.uk

Acer Netbooks at Amazon.co.uk

photo credit: Photo Javi

Cheap Netbooks From M&S & Next? was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

Linux users have been a little left out when it comes to personal finance software, but things are starting to change, and TechRadar has an extremely in-depth look at 6 of the best packages available.

The review looks at the following software:

1. GnuCash
2. Moneydance 2008
3. KMyMoney
4. Buddi
5. Grisbi
6. JGnash

Both GnuCash and Moneydance 2008 come out of top with an impressive 9/10. Go and read the reviews.

Personal Finance Software For Linux was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

Woolworths have released a list of store closing dates for their 800 shops nationwide. Looking down the list makes you realise the scale of business and brings home the amount of people that will be affected by its closure.

27,000 staff will lose their jobs unless a buyer steps in during the next few days – all Woolworths stores will be closed by 6th Jan 2009.

UPDATE 2nd Jan 2009: The administrators have decided to keep the remaining stores open for one extra day, which is included in the list of closing dates below.

UPDATE 6th Jan 2009: All Woolworths stores are now closed.

List of store closing dates

Woolworths Store Closing Dates was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.