The Stamped Passbook That Made Britain Save
These were high street buildings that were not banks, though they felt like one – wooden counters, hushed atmosphere, the…
Money Saving
The Year Saving Money Stopped Being a Wish and Became a Mechanism
Before 1975, if you wanted to protect your savings against inflation, you had one strategy available to you: hope. Not…
The Banknote That Was Designed for Someone Else’s Eyes
Pull a five-pound note out of your wallet right now. The thing you notice first – before the serial number,…
The Telephone Is the Most Expensive Thing a Deaf Person Owns
There is one piece of money-saving advice that appears in every personal finance column, every MSE forum thread, every well-meaning…
The Goldsmith’s Embarrassing Problem That Explains Why Your Savings Account Is
In 1691, a goldsmith found himself in court over a debt he could not pay. The judge's solution to his…
The Cheapest Street to Buy On Is Rarely the Cheapest Street to Live On
A thought experiment worth doing. Two people living in houses at identical prices in two different parts of town on…
The Parallel Economy That Ran on Little Sticky Squares
For a number of years in Britain, late 1950s to early 1980s, a significant chunk of the population had a…
The Economy That Never Left (You Just Stopped Using It)
Here’s something they don’t tell you at the Bank of England’s quarterly press conferences: the bit of the economy that…