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I have recently started to receive unsolicited charity junk mail.

Well, I say unsolicited. I made a (somewhat humble) donation to a globally recognised charity, my single aim being to help a few of those whose lives have been dreadfully affected by a natural disaster. What I was definitely not trying to generate was a volume of mail the production of which would soon cost more than the amount I had paid.

A large group of my students sat an exam last Saturday. This was for the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA^®) Program, which has exams with a reputation for being somewhat challenging, to say the least. The pass rates have been between 34 and 46% for a number of years, providing success only to those who commit themselves for a number of months prior to the exam.

For the most part, it is fairly straightforward for us, as classroom tutors, to tell prior to the exam which of our students are likely to succeed and which ones won't, for the simple reason that with 240 multiple choice questions, there is remarkably little luck involved (a statement that would be highly disputed by many students I know!).

However, at what point has a successful student passed and an unsuccessful one failed? On the day of results, or earlier?

Many articles in the popular press have admonished banks and building societies for passing on base rate cuts in full to savers, reducing savings interest rates to pretty well zero.

In fact when you consider the true value of your savings, low rates in fact can benefit savers quite significantly.

The 2008-09 credit crunch / banking crisis is of significant concern to almost all of us. Is our job secure? Are our savings safe? What will tax rates be next year? Am I now in negative equity on the house? By how much have my pension expectations been crushed?

To those of us in our 20s or 30s and not working in finance, pension expectations may seem rather less pressing an issue than losing our job next week. However if you really think that pensions are something you can sit back and ignore till your 50s, you're wrong.