25 Sep The Weekend Starts Here.....
Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay
Gosh, it’s not been a good week has it? Another round of restrictions and rules to get our heads round.
As far as the office is concerned, as we have done from the outset, we are leaving it up to the staff to decide whether they are comfortable coming into the office or not. Mike, who can travel to work by bike, has valiantly decided to continue coming in for at least three days a week so we will still be able to pick up post. All staff are happy to come into the office if a face to face meeting is required. My situation is the only odd one given my location in France. I am not currently planning to travel to the UK and don’t see that changing this side of Christmas but I’m always available via Zoom. Should we enter another full lockdown we can revert to having post redirected to Rob’s address, so hopefully we have all bases covered.
The first piece this week is another ‘bad news’ item – National Savings & Investments are drastically reducing the rates of interest paid on their suite of products. Full details here [National Savings & Investments 2 min read]. If you currently hold any products and want to discuss whether or not you should continue to do so (or indeed whether you should be considering Premium Bonds as an alternative), do get in touch.
One of the downsides of holding a well-diversified portfolio is that you are always going to be disappointed with at least one element of it. Nevertheless “A prudent investment approach means making certain decisions that you expect and hope to disappoint,” as Joe Wiggins explains [3 min read]
We are all more or less inclined to offer an opinion on a subject. We all know someone who has an opinion on everything and never seems worried about sharing it with anyone who will listen. Others will be more reticent, sharing only when it feels ‘safe’ to do so, especially if the subject matter is ‘morally loaded’. Which leads to The Spiral of Silence [Farnam Street 5 min read]
I don’t know anyone who ever looks forward to a visit to IKEA. For me, it’s the enforced route you have to take to get from A to Z. It’s manipulative but even though I know it is, I always end up buying more than was on my list so it clearly works. Here are 29 other Psychological Tricks To Make You Buy More [Visual Capitalist Infographic]
It seems that those who can afford to do so, and who believe they are never going back to working five days a week in the office, are seeking more space in more rural locations [The Guardian 2 min read]
This next piece was written at the end of August but although there’s been a sharp uptick in cases since then I still think it’s a relevant, and interesting, read A survival guide for the Covid age [Tim Harford 4 min read]
And it twins nicely with this one [Barry Ritholtz 2 min read] (That final paragraph….*sigh*)
And finally. The Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2020 winners (the Aurorae category photos are just stunning). Or maybe The Finalists for the 2020 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are more up your street 😊
Whatever you’re up to this weekend, I hope it’s a good one.
Carolyn