Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

I got a scare earlier today. It came in the form of a call from the college where I’m doing my post-graduate course. After a minute or so of security questions and hoo-hah, they said that there had been a problem with my payment.

Of course, it follows that I was a little worried. Here I was, in the middle of my course, and something was wrong with payment..

I decided to look up information on loans online, because I have a habit of Googling things when I need quick answers to problems, and more often than not there are other people who have gone through, or are going through, the same sort of situation.

There are a number of IFA’s — or independent financial advisors — on the internet, where you can search and ger reviews on all sorts of sites and solutions. And it’s things like that that can come in handy in a hurry.

Sometimes these can be better than the actual search engines. On Google, results can often be riddled with things you might not want to find. For example, house insurance quotes came in abundance when I searched on there, even when I didn’t specify anything like that as keywords. And private medical insurance, too.

But before I panic too much, I think I should perhaps get in touch with the bank and see exactly what the problem is. It migt just be that they are staggering the course payments, and I didn’t know about it.

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.

My friend called earlier today to tell me about a car crash he had suffered earlier in the week. He wants to claim whiplash insurance compensation before the weekend. Essentially, it sounds as though someone drove into the back of his car at the traffic lights in town. He was slowing to a halt, and the car behind somehow hadn’t realised the lights had turned red, and just trundled into the back of him.

Thankfully it looks like everything is in place for the insurance stuff to be sorted out. The man who crashed into him was more than helpful, which is good to hear. But that reminds me, there is an article here that claims a significant amount of people don’t realise their options when it comes to things like this. I stumbled across it the other day, and I must remember to send it over to my friend – he would hate it if I informed him afterwards that he missed out on an accident claim or something.

I’m not entirely sure when I’ll get to see him next, though, because he was going to come to the NFL game at Wembley this week, but he has just dropped out. When people live all over the country, the problem is that you rarely get to see each other face to face. I’ll have to have a dig around to see if I can find his email address, I suppose, although I can’t remember ever getting it off him.

And now there are only a couple of days to go before the game. I’m beginning to look forward to it quite a lot. There was an article in The Times about Tom Brady, and it just reinforced that he and top target Randy Moss will be two players who it will be pretty fantastic to have seen play, after they have retired. Yes, I’m looking forward to it quite a lot!

I went to town again today – not Cambridge, it was to a more local, smaller one – and my brother gave me a lift, because he wanted to get some practice in before his next driving lesson. It’s great to see how far he’s come after only four lessons – today, he looked very good indeed. And he was filling me in with the latest car news, too, which he has become a sudden encyclopaedia on.

In the space of three lessons, he’s gone from stalling on every drive, and struggling with hill starts, to being very, very confident behind the wheel. Now I can’t remember the last time he stalled at all. We managed to get a brilliant car insurance quote for him – it was one of these deals where you only insure them for a short period of time, and you can get it done a lot cheaper. So as long as he passes his test within a period of a few months, it should be a fantastic deal.

And he looks to be on pace to do just that. He does all the little things well, and is always careful to maintain a nice, easy and legal speed – which, when there are so often stories of teenage car accidents in the news, is quite nice to see – and he’s thoroughly enjoying it all. In fact, he’s enjoying it so much that it’s lovely for me: I don’t have to drive anywhere myself – he’s only too keen to do it for me.