Sure, we’ve been used to that happening on all kinds of electrical and electronic items with computers almost dropping to the fashion item price range (hence the arrival of colour choice recently of course). However, who’d have thought of that very same thing happening to something like eyeglasses?

That’s a product that’s historically been seen as involving highly trained opticians, expensive offices and skilled technicians which overall seemed very much like a recipe for high prices as far as you could see. Except that online retailers like ZunniOptical are changing all that with prices at the bottom end of the range (which don’t look like el cheapo glasses by any means) coming in for pretty much loose change.

Clearly when a product drops into that “loose change” price range from previously having sat well in the “fairly serious money” price range then there’s going to be big changes in how it’s perceived and used. For one thing, the concept of having a single pair of glasses purely because it wouldn’t be worthwhile to have more than one pair doesn’t hold any more. Thus, even at the lowest price there is heaps of choice and the opportunity to match your glasses to your outfit in a way that wouldn’t have been viable before.

I wonder what’ll be the next product that this will happen to?

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That sounds fine and it may well save you some money but the problem with the UK home insurance market is that insurance companies that do content insurance have a list of stuff that counts as being “content” and a different list of stuff that counts as being “buildings”. Unfortunately, these lists aren’t completely identical between the various companies so you can find some things listed as “content” by one company that will appear on the “buildings” list of another company. That discrepancy is why it’s essential to keep both policies with the same company.

Most of the time it won’t matter. After all, clearly the bricks are part of the building and clearly the furniture is part of the content. What about something like an outdoor BBQ that incorporated a seat made from bricks? It might seem a somewhat contrived example but there are lots of similar grey areas that insurance companies create through these different lists.

Don’t forget too that if, even if you’re lucky enough to have any problem that arises completely covered by two different companies, that means that you’re looking at two separate insurance excess payments which these days can mean anything up to £1000 or so.

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So to get corporate insurance you will almost always need to go to a specialist insurance broker which obviously means looking at firms relatively close by your business premises.

However, it’s worse than that in that, for example, to shop insurance Glasgow, if you’re in a relatively specialised market niche you’d need to look for, say, insurance for contractors Glasgow. Well, “worse” in the sense that you may need to be more specific in your requirements of an insurance broker but if that broker is more familiar in dealing with your type of business you’ll generally save a lot of hassle in explaining what you do and won’t miss out on essential insurance that’s specific to your industry group. Not only that but the specialists will know more about the types of policy available to your industry niche too which can save quite substantial amounts of money.

Incidently, don’t be tempted to try to do the cheapo route of just using one of the personal insurance comparison sites as they usually don’t list essential items of business insurance and you could find yourself with an expensive problem should it turn out that you don’t have some legally required insurance or there’s an exemption in the insurance that you bought which means that you’re not covered for doing something that you do quite regularly. These things usually only become apparent after you need to claim on a policy which is obviously a little late in the day.

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Sometimes the biggest surprise is in terms of back taxes. Although you’d think that these can’t be much, it’s surprising just how large a bill you can get from this quarter. For instance, often seemingly small omissions can amount to quite serious amounts of cash owed if they’re over a number of years. This tax debt can even reach such levels that you need to look into the options of paying it off in installments which at least could reduce the payments to more manageable amounts.

On the other side of the coin people can also find that there are quite substantial tax reliefs which they’ve not claimed. You might think that if you’ve an accountant that this just can’t happen to you but, in most cases, the accountant doesn’t get out to actually see what you’re getting up to and you could be pleasantly surprised if they’ve completely overlooked an ongoing tax relief. Just as in the case of underpayments, missing out on relatively small amounts of tax relief can add up to a sizeable chunk of cash when counted over a few years.

Whether it’s over or under payments that affect you, it’s best to do something about them rather than taking the head in the sand approach that many people adopt when thinking about taxes.

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The particular difficult with accountants is that there can frequently be tie-in, no-competition and no conflict of interest terms in their employment contract. So, it’s not quite so easy to move jobs or to find a new accountancy job even in normal times as it is with “normal” jobs and, of course, these are far from normal times so it’s that much more difficult these days.

That said, if you’re searching for, say, “accountant jobs Edinburgh” you will find jobs around with some of those at quite surprisingly high levels. What you will see though, courtesy of the contract restrictions above and, of course, non-disclosure that there’s very little meat to the job descriptions and you’ll usually need to formally contact the employment agency to find out more should you be attracted to one of those on offer. In many ways that’s something of a nuisance but unfortunately it’s something that isn’t easily avoided.

So, if you fancy being a qualified accountant in Edinburgh there are definitely possibilities, just allow for needing to contact the agency rather than relying on information on the website listings.

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The key thing is to keep your savings and investments diversified and moreover to keep to a regular savings and investment programme. If you’re doing that, it shouldn’t really matter whether the price of gold is sitting around the $200 mark or if it’s sitting at the $900 mark since, as with all investments, it’s pretty much impossible to hit the bottom of the market when you’re buying and it’s equally difficult to hit the top when you’re selling. That said, the gold price is currently off the top achieved in May.

But if you’ve decided to buy some gold bullion for a rainy day, how do you go about it? In principle there are all kinds of investment schemes around these days which let you buy a share in a pile of gold and that’s a sensible way to go about it in that the costs are lower than they are if you some gold bars. However, that lower cost comes at a price, namely that you’re trusting that some intermediary actually has that piece of gold for you and that, should they go bankrupt, that you’ll be able to get your little piece of gold. Certainly these firms have all kinds of reassuring things to say about that but at the end of the day, to my mind, there’s nothing to beat having a lump of gold in your hand.

If you’re aiming at looking after the gold yourself it’s relatively easy to buy it these days by way of Bullion by Post who offer the usual range of investment sizes of gold bars. In terms of bars, the smallest that you can get is the one ounce bar which weighs in at around £600 these days (the price varies throughout the day) or you can get the one kilo bars that you see in photos of Fort Knox and the like for around £19000. The larger bars carry less of a premium over the spot price for gold (ie they are cheaper per ounce of gold) but unless your portfolio is really large the larger bars aren’t going to be terribly practical purchases for you.

One thing to bear in mind if you’re collecting these things in your house is the security and insurance aspect. Clearly if you are stockpiling gold in your house you’re building up a major asset and your insurance company would want to see it adequately protected. It’s possible to avoid this hassle by using a safety deposit box in your bank which will save on the insurance and you may be able to get it free too depending on your bank.

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