Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

Today, some of my friends were talking about a trip to America they’re planning, and it brought back memories of a recent trip to Chicago: the food, the sights, the sports.

That’s one of the things that’s so tempting about it — that it will be right in the middle of American football season, and not only would we get to watch an NFL game – and probably a very good game at that; we would get to choose the area we go to, after all – but we would get to see a college game as well.

I’ve not seen a college game before, not in the flesh, and the atmosphere and the spirit of them is fantastic from what I can see.

The trouble is, it is difficult to afford it. Especially after paying out so much for my sub-editing course over recent weeks. So I’ve been looking at independent financial advisers to help me put together a plan to combat my penniless state.

It will have to be a big move to afford it, either way. I’ve got my trusty current account and that’s it – I’ve never had to get a loan before, discounting my student one back in the day. And I don’t like the idea of increasing my debt.

I’ve been looking at a number of banking websites and browsing as much financial news as I can, to keep my eye on trends and deals that might help out, but ultimately I think it’ll have to be a loan and the debt that entails – or no trip.

Decisions, decisions…

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.