money - In Pure Spirit

Junior ISAurs and the future

June 23, 2018 by Andrew Leave a Comment

Which is scarier? Living in a Jurassic world filled with hungry dinosaurs or getting your head into the world of finance? That should be a no-brainer. You shouldn’t fear sorting out your money in the way anyone would worry about a hungry T-rex.

While I contribute to a private pension (can we be confident in their being a public one in twenty or thirty years?) I’m still only just getting sorted out with better savings and investment plans than a mere bank account. If I had had more confidence at a younger age then I would have earned more on interest.

That’s why I like this game from Scottish Friendly. First off, this helps humanise a finance brand (yeah; by making it about dinosaurs – there’s irony) and makes the company more approachable. Secondly, the focus on Junior ISAs. This is a product that parents take out on behalf of their kids, contribute to and then the child takes control when they’re old enough. In other words, it seems to be like a pretty dramatic demonstration of how useful saving money can be to a young person just when they should start thinking about saving their own money.

[Play Dinosaur Keepers]

The game doesn’t need a download and works on my phone. All you need to do is tap on a cooling egg to bring the heat lamp over it and warm it up. The longer you can keep all the eggs warm the better level of ‘Dinosaur Keeper’ you are.

I think it’s a pretty clear message too. To protect what you have now you have to think about the future too.

In Pure Spirit

Which dinosaur keeper level did you manage to achieve? Let us know in the comments below.

The danger of our oil economy

May 8, 2012 by Andrew Leave a Comment

This is an interesting video – after all, it’s not pro “tree” or green and even takes a bash at “treehuggers”. However it presents a factual look at how oil is so interwoven in our economy that we’ve created a system the planet cannot support.

The result? We need a third industrial revolution if we want to continue to live comfortably in the developed world and bring the rest of the globe up to standard.

Confused.com partners Pink Pound for gay friendly car insurance

November 14, 2011 by Andrew 5 Comments

Couples get discounts from some car insurance companies. This comes from insurance providers trying to win multi-car deals but also from the belief that you may well drive more safely in your wife’s car than, say, a company car or perhaps even your own.

The Pink Pound scheme offers:

Car insurance for same sex marriages
Car insurance for civil partnerships
Tailored car insurance to an individual
Multicar discounts

The MD of the new brand, Mike Joseph, said;

“Pink Pound insurance was created to give the LGBT community the product, pricing and personal service that is lacking from most standard offerings.”

“At Pink pound we have negotiated some fantastic premiums with our specialist panel of insurers and see Confused.com as the ideal partner to ensure that this brand reaches the maximum number of potential customers as possible. Whilst further enhancing Confused.com’s commitment to provide a specialist quote for every client, from every back ground with any specific needs.”

Confused.com’s site lets drivers compare car insurance prices but Pink Pound’s deals can be accessed directly from their website.

In Pure Spirit

Is this just marketing strategies or a real effort to bring equality into finance services? Are Confused.com brave for helping to bring greater awareness to Pink Pound?

Story via Brinkwire.

DoGood – swap out annoying web ads with green messages

May 23, 2010 by Andrew Leave a Comment

It’s increasingly common for people to try and block adverts on websites. To do this they’ll install some software that simply makes known ads appear as blank spaces when they visit websites.

I guess people do this for a number of reasons. Some might just hate seeing ads when they browse. Others don’t like the distraction. There’s even a security argument as ads are often little holes in a trusted website pointing to the highest bidder.

There’s a problem though. Large websites use ads to make money. They take money when people see an ad – not when they click or buy something (as In Pure Spirit does). If you run an ad blocker and you visit their site, read their content, etc, then are you a thief?

Some sites would say so!

Here’s a possible solution – or a possible can of worms – which is called DoGood. What DoGood does is swap out adverts with green messages/adverts for green companies. They give 50% of the money those adverts earn them to charity. Let’s hope they use the other 50% to promote the service, make it better and otherwise adopt a don’t-be-evil strategy.

DoGood also says their solution doesn’t block the original adverts. People can switch back and forth. This means big sites don’t get robbed of their ‘impression’ based payment (but small sites like this one which hopes for the very occassional affiliate payment may still suffer). However; it’s better than so many other ad-blockers.

DoGood also, as you’d hope, run a blog and have recently increased the browsers they support to include Google’s Chrome. This is a sign that they’re serious.

In Pure Spirit

What do you think? Is this a good idea or is it a terrible one? Should DoGood be keeping 50% – perhaps this figure will come down as/when/if the company grows?

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