Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

Jobs: tricky things. Slippery, elusive – at least in these times.

When I first came out of university, there was barely a job to go around. In the arts field, the creative field, there were even less than many of the other areas; and it made it relatively impossible to find the sort of work I wanted to find.

Now, with my post-graduate course drawing to a close, I’m having to look around at jobs that I can apply for when it finishes. And I had better start now I suppose. After all, it’s better to get the applications in as early as possible than to wait for a few weeks.

Doing the extra course was partly because of that. And, partly, it was so I could separate myself a little more from the next batch of hopefuls graduating and flooding the market.

And while it strikes me that the job market is a lot better this summer than it was last year, it’s still, inevitably, going to be hard to get a job.

So this time I’m approaching it with a different mindset. This time I’m happy to do anything, at least at first. Mostly anything, anyway. Even if it means using the old elbow grease and doing basic office cleaning work.

At least until something more my preferred thing comes along. That way, I can be earning something and not just sitting around doing nothing, and I can at least maintain something of a social life.

Who knows – maybe something ideal will spring up just in time for the course to finish?

Everything is bad, bad, bad in the news at the moment. First there was volcanic ash. Now, apparently, there is all sorts on the way which is going to be horrible for your holiday. There is bad weather, and bad traffic, and the bad combinaition that these two combine to create — and

Now, on top of everything, the BBC is reporting that there will be horrible amounts of engineering work taking place on lines used by most of the major UK rail companies.

And even the AA themselves are predicting bad news. Roads will be congested to kingdom come as people visit DIY stores and garden centres, according to the story.

But then — should we not expect busy and congested roads when holiday season comes around? It’s part of the holiday experience. It’s to be expected. And bad weather — weather is weather: it’s not that that makes the holiday. Not really.

Of course it’s not very nice if it rains constantly while you’re abroad, but while you’re travelling?

My biggest worries abroad have always been financial ones. I remember going on tour while I was at university, and I just expected to be able to take my card out there and use it. But the first time I tried, it simply didn’t work. I wouldn’t want to carry too much cash in any case: it’s protecting your money abroad that can be a difficult thing.

This banker made £4 million in bonus money, according to reports. And that sort of money, in any field, is astonishing. It’s just staggering.

But then I think that — well — this is banking. And in banking, bonuses are how they make their money — or the big money, anyway. And if they weren’t paid such bonuses by their companies, they would just be lured elsewhere by other companies willing to pay them such bonuses.

That’s just the way of the world.

But it also got me thinking — what sort of bonuses do we, who are not bankers, have available? There are pension schemes, of course, and health plans, and company cars or phones in a lot of cases.

Some businesses even offer group health insurance. But are these enough? And, regardless, are they genuinely good deals, good offers; or are we just being thrown scraps, as it were, to entice us or keep us quiet.

And what about things like pension schemes? I have a friend who, having worked for twenty years or so in London, and earned a lot of money while he was there, has a laughable pension plan that won’t be much help at all when he retires.

Are you happy with what you’re offered outside of regular pay? Are you happy with your pension? It would be interesting to hear…

I didn’t realise that, on average, our young, new drivers had so little experience, so few lessons. When I came across this piece, I read with some interest. Apparently there has been a study undertaken to show that quite a few young drivers feel unprepared for being unleashed on the road. Many of them have only had up to 30 hours of practice, whilst it is recommended you should have 45 hours of training – in addition to 22 hours of private training.

Suddenly it’s not so surprising that car insurance companies provide such steep quotes for fresh-faced, recently passed drivers.

And yet, many people find it outrageous that companies can charge so much for insurance. It can, in a lot of cases, be huge amounts of money. Rarely, though, do we see it from their perspective. Car insurance companies are increasingly losing money on injury claims, with “bloodthirsty lawyers” always looking to squeeze out extra revenue. Not to mention the amount of claims which will be unjust, falsified, or completely fictitious.

We live in an age of cheap deals, where there are a number of websites that specialise in beating your last quote, and digging up the very best offer. People want their car insurance quotes to be delivered quickly, cheaply – and again the insurance companies will be under pressure to compete, to lower their prices. Again, the car insurance companies will be losing money.

There are plenty of websites that aim to give you plenty of compensation for accidents and injuries, too. Personal injury claims lawyers who offer no win no fee deals, but strive to win something, anything – even if you haven’t been hurt in the first place. You have your own personal injury calculators, too. It really is a different world these days, developed over the last twenty years or so.

A world where the legal profession is blended with our lives and our cars more than ever. But is it really for the best?

Manchester United are in serious debt. Liverpool are, too.

The economic downturn has a far reaching shadow that extends well beyond us to every aspect of society.

We hear about it through the television, through the newspapers, through every aspect of the media. People are struggling in every aspect of society – even football teams are struggling. Struggling to balance their titanic wage books, struggling to keep afloat when, for so long, they have had to pay millions and millions of pounds to player after player.

What can we do? The average Joe, the everyman, working and working for just a scratching of the money that these sports players and celebrities make? What can we do? How do we manage money when even people whose job it is to manage money are struggling to do so?

Financial protection and, with it, now more so than ever, financial planning becomes key, becomes incredibly important. We need to be careful in everything we do, everything we spend money on, because it is so easy to misstep. And in times like these, financial missteps can be tremendously costly.

Today is the day of good deals – looking for them, finding them, and taking them, where you can. There are places that can help out with this, Money Supermarket, and other websites designed with you in mind, to help you out with your finance and your spending. And they can be tremendously beneficial.

And, it goes without saying, that insurance of every kind is as important as ever. From the small things, whether it’s your mp3 player, or if you’re just looking for home insurance reviews – or the bigger, more important things.

You can get life insurance that covers health problems, critical illness, and other things.

And, based on the premise that your home is the biggest investment you’ll ever make, there are some impressive (and not so impressive) mortgage life insurance cover schemes out there, as well.

The problem is that there are so many of these kinds of deals, you need to do your research and make sure that you find the right one for you.

New Years Eve and Day have vanished in a blur, and now here we are in a properly new year, staring 2010 in the face. Everyone is making their new year’s resolutions. Traditionally, of course, this is a time for change, a time for a fresh start, a time for renewal. This is a time to be the person you want to be. But some things, it seems, don’t change. I was browsing a list of property prices in 2010, and couldn’t help but notice that here, in the property market, things seem as horrible as ever.

I’m almost certain that I read something about house prices going up, and might have even blogged about it a while ago, sometime towards the end of last year. Some news story or hint or glimmer of hope that suggested change – of a good variety – was on the horizon. But evidently I remember wrong.

No matter how you look at it, things for our economy are still not looking good, and as a recent graduate, that’s quite a scary thought. I still know people who are looking for a job over a year out of university. There was a time when having a degree alone was enough, but not anymore.

All the word at the pub tonight was about mortgages, too – even mortgage rates are under the shadow of this repression, which, like the enemy in a horror movie seems to never go away.

Here’s hoping things pick up soon. Otherwise, it’s not much of a happy new year so far. It’s not just affecting property buyers and home buyers, it’s affecting everyone countries’ property investors if things continue this way. Or any countries’, for that matter. But I suppose you can say that about a lot of jobs, in these times.

I think it is about time I write a little about my work, and about my office. It’s only fair really, considering I had the cheek to moan about it a few weeks back; about the moving around, about the cleaning up, and the updating. I wrote about how I hoped it would be nicer, when it was all done; I hope things would be able to run a bit more smoothly. And thankfully they do! The mission was a success. Things have been updated, and they work – and they work very well.

On the work front, a lot of this new smoothness can be chalked up to the business broadband. We had initially been worried that, with quite limited business sdsl availability in our area, we wouldn’t be able to go for the ideal internet connection, but in the end it worked out. The new internet is not only a lot faster than our previous one, but it doesn’t seem to disconnect as much either. There were times before where you could be working, and out of nowhere, and apparently for no real reason, you would get cut off. As long as I haven’t just jinxed it, it seems to be the case no longer.

Our telephones were also updated, which was almost as needed as the internet fix. Mostly this is because our phones were the most out of date things in the office. Probably even more out of date than Jack’s Tottenham shirt, which is yellow and very, very dated. Now our phones can do all sorts of fancy stuff. It is a little bit like these voip phone systems that you can get, and can do a lot more than just serve as a telephone. Fancy stuff.

Tomorrow is the big day. Wembley. The NFL, over here in England. So there is a lot to look forward to, and I’m growing more and more excited by the minute.

I woke up quite early today; I was up before the rest of the house, in fact, which is a real rarity at the moment. So I spent half an hour or so looking at mortgage news. It might sound a little boring, but it’s something that I quite like to do, every so often, just to keep abreast of how things are looking in the climate we find ourselves in. And there are some handy sites out there for just that sort of thing; you can sort of glance over the main headlines without needing to spend too much time reading anything.

There really was some quite positive stuff to read as well, which is always good to see. For example, there is an article here suggesting that mortgage rates are rising – indeed, rising for the first time since August, which is good to see. It might be a “small move”, but baby steps are always going to be needed with something like this.

I know that if I were in the market to sell my house, or in the mood to be selling any property at all, I would be pleased to see news pieces like this. I’d be starting to smile, I think. It is a good sign, because although there have been a few of these incidents, where things start to look good momentarily – often they are just that: momentary. Hopefully here, things can keep moving forward.

Now, it is time to kick back, relax, and watch a bit of the NFL, I think. Currently Tom Brady is on track to break the single game passing touchdown record. Unless they take him off, of course, which they probably will do considering the horrible conditions they’re playing in. I’m not usually the biggest fan of the Patriots, but when you have Brady in your fantasy team, having him throw 5 touchdowns in the 2nd quarter becomes slightly more exciting.

I have been thinking a lot about houses recently, after a recent trip to Cambridge. It’s an area I’d like to live in, if I could. Now, though, I find myself looking at all the mortgage news I can find, even if it’s just to keep on top of it. I feel like if I can just do a little bit of research here and there, and keep up to date with the latest news and trends, I will find myself in a good position when it eventually does become a matter of getting one.

Now, when mortgage time does roll around, I don’t very much like the idea of a bad credit mortgage. And the recession is slightly worrying. But articles like this one inspire a little bit of hope, and make me feel as though there could be a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel, when it comes to mortgage rates.

I must say, though, that mortgage deals aren’t the only thing that has been playing on my mind, though. I still can’t help but feel a little disappointed about the house prices in Cambridge. Especially when you consider how much people can pay for the cash for home offers that are becoming more and more frequent now.

Ah well. I suppose I should just try and forget about it for a while. Perhaps grab a beer and watch some of the NFL, or something.

There is an article here, detailing what is apparently the world’s most expensive hat, and it’s being sold for around £60,000.

If you like that kind of had, it looks rather nice I suppose – but whether it’s £60,000 nice, I don’t know. The hats are not named after the place of origin (it is called the Panama hat), but their point of international sale – although they became fashionable when people picked them up en masse as they sailed along the Panama Canal.

If you’re selling that hat, but even more so if you’re in a position to buy one, I would imagine that you’re probably the sort of person that can wake up one morning, eat your finest breakfast and drink your fresh coffee, before deciding on a whim to invest in Panama real estate, even if you don’t currently live in Panama. It would be an interesting place to go on holiday, at the very least, with your brand new expensive Panama hat.

Certainly you could have a lot of fun, if you were into investments of any kind. If money can’t buy happiness, it can certainly open a lot of doors; and investing, if you invest well, is a door worth having open, I would imagine. You can even continue it as a nice hobby on the side, living in Panama, with things like offshore financial service that a lot of banks are providing now.

Or perhaps you can make do with a cheaper hat, and a cheaper destination for property investment.