My experience is no. The weakened Euro has helped increase the number of visitors to Greece and its islands, where I am right now. Hotels and restaurants therefore are not short of customers and although I have seen a number of closed establishments, such businesses can fail even in boom times. Prices for meals and drinks remain reasonable – no sign of businesses using inflation to combat financial problems. There have also been no effects of any strikes, although if you were to be relying on public transport you may run out of luck (I have had no problem using the buses here, however).

The holiday resorts, bars, shops and tourist attractions have been as busy as ever and it doesn’t appear that the larger economic problems of the country are having an impact on the day-to-day experiences of a tourist enjoying the hospitality of a popular holiday destination.

Unfortunately, a lot of the figures won’t be confirmed until towards the end of this year, so I have had to make some estimates based on what was described in the Emergency Budget report. For those who want to know, details of the figures I’ve used are below. For those who don’t – you can go straight to the “April 2011″ row of the Salary Calculator for April 2011 values.

Another change announced in the Budget was an increase in standard VAT rate from 17.5% to 20% effective from 4th January 2011. The VAT Calculator has also been updated so you can see what a difference this will make to purchases.

The calculations for the April 2011 values in The Salary Calculator are based on the following assumptions. Under 65 personal allowance increased to £7,475, over 65 allowances not changed. Threshold of 40% tax lowered to £35,400 from £37,400. National Insurance rates increase from 11% to 12% for basic and 1% to 2% for additional, as set out by the previous government’s budget. National Insurance basic rate threshold increased to £7,475, additional rate lowered to £42,875. All other values unchanged.

Most of these values are just estimates – they will be adjusted in line with inflation and confirmed towards the end of 2010, when The Salary Calculator will be updated.

They have promised that a new budget will be announced within 50 days, which will include changes to PAYE taking effect from April 2011. These changes will include increasing the income tax personal allowance to reduce taxes for low and middle earners (although not immediately the full increase to £10,000 the Lib Dems wanted), but the employee National Insurance threshold changes the Conservatives put in their manifesto will not be included. However Labour’s planned increase in employer National Insurance will not go ahead, pleasing Conservative supporters.

Full details will not be available until the promised emergency budget, but I promise to make available as soon as possible any relevant changes to The Salary Calculator!

Why is this? In short because the value of a currency is related to how confident investors are in a country’s economy. Historically, hung parliaments in Britain are unable to act as swiftly as majority governments, because consensus must be found by the members of coalition parties – who often disagree on certain principles. These delays in acting may hinder our recovery from the recession – so investors would rather not be holding on to the pound. Of course, if it does lead to a slow recovery (or even the “double dip” recession some analysts have been predicting), then this could continue to hit us in the wallet for months to come – with the effects of the recession continuing rather than abating.

Another area that was to be decided by this election was income tax and National Insurance. As I wrote previously, all the parties had set out in their manifestos their intended changes to the PAYE system. I put these all in the Election Comparison Calculator – which shows you want impact these differences would have on you. With no party yet in charge, it’s not clear what will happen about this – whose policies will be enacted? The Conservatives, who have the largest number of seats, said they would hold an emergency budget to implement some of their changes before next year. We’ll have to wait and see to find out what really happens.

In the Election Comparison Calculator I’ve tried to help show what would happen to your take home pay should we have a change of government. All the details of the calculations performed are underneath the results, explaining what the key differences between the parties are. Of course, your take home pay is not the only thing at stake – all the major parties have put details in their manifestos of how they will make other changes affecting not only your money but other aspects of your life as well.

Over at the BBC they have created a useful election tool called Where they stand. This allows you choose a topic and three parties to compare, and a summary of each party’s manifesto is displayed. You can see at a glance what the major differences are between the parties on the issues you believe are important – be it the Economy, Civil Liberties, Health or Education (amongst others).

Your vote can make a difference, this year more than ever before, so I encourage you to read up about the parties standing in your constituency and vote for who you think would best represent you. See you at the polling station!

The Election Comparison Calculator aims to help you see the differences between the major parties’ policies on personal income. Using the information available, the calculator estimates how their policies would affect your take home pay. As described on the Election Comparison Calculator page itself, not all the details are available at the moment, and probably won’t be until the next government holds its first budget. However, the details they have provided allow the calculator to estimate what those changes would mean to you.

All the details used to create the calculator are available underneath the results. As explained in that description, the calculator considers PAYE changes – each party also has other economic policies which may affect you in other ways, such as stamp duty or inheritance tax. Some assumptions have had to be made – if you can help provide more detailed information then please contact us. So why not try the Election Comparison Calculator and see what you learn?

This is a very encouraging sign, especially since the UK was one of the last major economies to still be in recession, others having returned to growth some months earlier. However – before we break open the champagne we should note that these are only preliminary figures – often GDP figures are corrected up or down at a later date, as explained here. Also, 0.1% is only a low growth rate and most analysts are predicting slow growth for the rest of 2010.

Still, after the recent turmoil a few quarters of good, solid, sustainable growth should stabilise the economy and see the job market (and mortgages and loans) pick up as confidence increases. A stronger national economy should also help the Pound make back some of its recent weakness against other currencies – although, again, this is likely to be a slow process.

This book covers in quite some depth topics such as finding solutions to global warming, using statistical analysis to find terrorists (particularly relevant at the moment) and why the solutions to big problems are often simple. I personally found that a few of these chapters strayed further from the economics-based descriptions that defined the first book – concentrating more on the details of possible solutions to global warming than the economic forces working on those solutions, for example.

Having said that, the chapter about the economics of prostitution is very much like the previous book’s chapter on drug dealing – because the relevant studies the authors were reporting on were done by the same researcher. It offers some of the detailed analysis that I felt made the first book accessible – explaining why the data gathered (and the methods used to gather the data) can tell you things you wouldn’t otherwise find out.

A very entertaining read which unfortunately is over too quickly – but the epilogue is my favourite part of the whole book, where they explain briefly the impact of explaining to monkeys the concept of money!

Click on the link to the right to buy the book from Amazon, and you’ll be doing your bit to support this site!

It might be time to look for a new job – the Christmas break gives one time to consider career plans, and you might think that in January you’ll start looking for new employment, or talk to your employer about a promotion. Use The Salary Calculator when comparing salaries so you know how much extra it would make to you each month if you got that pay rise.

If you need some extra money each month, to save up for a holiday or a new car say, then use the Required Salary Calculator to work out what salary you need to look for to get that extra take-home. There’s hope that early in 2010 we’ll hear that the UK has finally left recession and things will start to pick up – including the job market.

If you’re not interested in a new job, you can consider sorting out your finances. Use the Mortgage Repayment Calculator to get an idea of the effects of remortgaging in 2010, or the Debt Consolidation Calculator to see what you could save by taking control of all of your loans. Why not try to get debt free in 2010?

Here’s to a great new year for everyone, I hope that The Salary Calculator will help you with your money in 2010!

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, to give it its full title, explores not just how the financial side of everyday life is determined, but also how economics applies to other parts of life. There are details of interesting studies into how the name of a child affects his or her employability later in life, how statistical analysis can spot cheating sumo wrestlers, and why most drug dealers still live with their mother.

Where The Undercover Economist explains how economic theory and practice affect us on a day-to-day level, Freakonomics goes into the detail of how a wider application of economics can tell us more about the world, and even explains some of the methodology used to spot trends and draw conclusions. The analysis work is covered in some detail but never gets boring – the writing style is clear and entertaining, leaving you to think about the implications of the studies covered.

Click on the link to the right to buy the book from Amazon, and you’ll be doing your bit to support this site!