To round out the day, I had a few friends round for drinks this evening. Even though I was absolutely shattered, I ploughed on, and it was a lot of fun. Strangely, though, they were very complimentary about my phones. Which is an odd thing to be complimentary about, I think, but there you go.

And hey – at least they were complimentary about something. They are those fancy dect cordless phones, so maybe that had something to do with it.

I’m on BT, I told them. And BT are pretty rubbish. But then I suppose when you live out in the middle of nowhere, most phone and broadband services will be pretty bad. Still, it was more the handsets that they liked; what, with their fancy (though unused) buttons, and a look about them that says: I do more than ring people.

They had never considered buying telephones online before, which is where I got my ones from. There is a phone shop in our local town, and it’s usually well-stocked, and pretty good for whatever you need. But the possibilities with online are limitless. You can browse tonnes of phones, and eventually find that extra special hub or handset.

Sometimes, they even throw in deals. Discounts on business and ADSL lease lines, and that sort of thing. And, of course, the big ones to look out for are internet deals, because there are so many bargains to be had that save you money. Certain UK ISP’s, like Zen, are often good for that.

But when I go into a shop... I don’t know. If there are no deals advertised, I don’t feel confident enough to ask for a discount or to haggle or barter. Which is why, often, online is the way forward – for me, at least.

This morning, as I stepped onto my train, I felt incredibly tired. Groggy, even. I was running on four hours sleep, maybe less, and I wanted nothing more than to go back to bed. Such is the price of watching American football in the UK: it is on late at night, and if you watch it, you feel it on Monday morning.

But this was the NFC championship. This was the spectacular, the peculiar battle between the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints. Last night, enthralled, I knew I could deal with the tiredness to watch this.

Before I got on the train, I picked up a newspaper. The Times. Mostly to try and wake myself up, I think. I leafed through it. And I was struck by one of the stories inside it. Apparently, our schools are planning to spend thousands of pounds a year to unfilter and re-filter You Tube.

Currently, it’s blocked at schools. You can’t go on it – there could be something offensive on there. But teachers want to use it as a tool to help children learn, because it’s wealth of videos can be helpful for that sort of thing. So they plan to unblock it, and spend all this money on ensuring there are no comments visible.

What?

Have they forgotten what it’s like to be a kid? You don’t care if you read something profane in a comment. In fact, if you do, you probably think it’s cool.

And if it’s blocked, you can just watch it or read it when you get home.

It just seems like an absurd waste of time and money. It seems so pointless. Haven’t we got better things to spend our money on than this? Give £10,000 to help Haiti ... this You Tube censoring is just pathetic.

The time between Christmas and January has disappeared incredibly quickly. Now, in February, I will be starting a post-graduate course on the first of February, and whilst I am very excited about it, I’m a little bit worried about debt.

Unfortunately, I’m not rich. The only way I can pay the horrendously expensive fees is to take out a career development loan, which, as loans go, is quite nice: you pay no interest over your course, and you don’t even start paying it back until it’s finished.

But it is different to a student loan, because it feels like a very real debt. The student loan goes away if you haven’t paid it off by a certain time. You don’t need to start paying it until you’re earning a certain amount of money. But this, this is a real loan, with real money that will need to start being paid back pretty quickly.

I’ve tried looking for debt advice. There are websites out there that can usually help with this sort of thing. Or, at the very least, give you information on it. Tell you your choices. There are websites like This is Money, which specialise in giving you the latest up to date news on all things finance, as well.

In fact, a quick Google shows all sorts of money advice websites.

None of them touch on my main worry, though. With my course starting so quickly, what it my loan application falls through? What if I’m left stranded in the middle of a course that I then can’t pay for?

I suppose the only option then would be to look at the other options my bank offers: personal loans, or some of their other loans that you can supposedly apply for in a matter of minutes online. But they worry me even more than the career development one does...

If you follow American football, then today is one of the biggest days of the entire season. It’s Championship Sunday in the NFL. The day when the AFC and NFC champions are crowned, and we discover who will be making the trip to the Super Bowl in Miami.

Every year this day rolls around, it has the same feeling. It feels big, and you can feel it palpably. But this week, perhaps more so than any other championship year in the past, things could be bigger and better than ever.

The first match it the Indianapolis Colts against the New York Jets, in a clash of opposing play styles and philosophies. It will be wonderful to see the chess game being played by Peyton Manning and Rex Ryan, the Jets defensive guru. But, secondly, we have the Saints at home against the Vikings.

And that’s where the real magic should be. It is the two best offenses in the league, two of the best quarterbacks in the league, and some phenomenal playmakers like Reggie Bush, who played sensationally last week. If you haven’t seen his run from that game, make sure you check it out here.

Earlier on today, I was fiddling around with my phone. I have one of these smart phone gadgets, with all the fancy-but-generally-pointless applications on them. I have just got a new app, a metal detecting app, and was wondering whether it works or not. And whilst you can waft it around keys or scissors or some other metal object and it seems to do something, it is just as likely to do nothing.

It is mostly a green bar that fills up when there is something it recognises as metal, or doesn’t fill up otherwise.

And it got me thinking – with the app store for iPhones and Android devices so thriving, is there anything that there’s not an app for?

Apparently the answer is no. There is even an app for translating your baby’s crying and screaming. Allegedly, this app, if you hold it up to your distressed baby, will tell you if it’s hungry, or just plain pissed off.

It sounds an awful lot like my metal detector. And as such, probably doesn’t work. At least very well. But, for all my criticism, there does appear to be a certain amount of research to back up the apps claims. Research suggests, for example, that the pitch and frequency of a baby’s cries can indicate as much as health problems.

Regardless of whether it works or not, we’ve certainly come a long way in a short amount of time – it doesn’t seem that long ago that I was fiddling around on a phone that was just a ... well, phone.

Well, today I’ve spent the best part of two hours reading up on the news on house prices and the housing market, because one of my friends is looking to sell theirs, and they’re quite surprised at how little they have been quoted.

I think when they initially bought the house (a long time ago now), it was for something like £200,000. And although it had gone up considerably a few years back when they flirted with the idea of selling, now it’s fallen down a bit. Apparently house prices finished 2009 around 4% higher than they started it, but there are plenty of examples that this isn’t necessarily the case.

You can find dozens of examples of property prices falling here, for example, all collected neatly in the same place, as well as a number of slightly depressing predictions about when we can expect any kind of economic recovery.

But if you check out repossession news, and finance market websites, you can get something of a picture to why such a recovery could be a long way off. Apparently up to 1 million UK households have used credit cards to pay for their house mortgages.

It’s no wonder there are so many repossession problems for people when we are at such a stage that we have to borrow so much money just to have a house to live in. Despite a rise in help, if you are in a situation where you are looking at remortgaging or repossession; despite investment companies offering ways to avoid repossession and stop repossessions, it can still be stressful and problematic. And it’s always worrying.

My friend is looking to move from Leeds down south, which will be good for me, because it means I can see them more. But it’s looking slightly more expensive for them than they were expecting. They’ve been looking out for mortgage deals already, of course, but it doesn’t mean that they’ve found any particularly striking ones.

Let’s hope that these predictions of a full economic recovery in 6 months time are correct.

I came across this, today, and was reading it with some interest. For example, I didn’t realise that, on average, our young, new drivers had so little experience, so few lessons. It seems that there has been a study undertaken to show that quite a few young drivers feel unprepared for being unleashed on the road. Many of them have only had up to 30 hours of practice, whilst it is recommended you should have 45 hours of training – in addition to 22 hours of private training.

No wonder car insurance companies provide such steep quotes for fresh-faced, recently passed drivers.

Many people find it outrageous that companies can charge so much for insurance. And it can, in a lot of cases, be huge amounts of money. But rarely do we see it from their perspective. Car insurance companies are increasingly losing money on injury claims, with “bloodthirsty lawyers” always looking to squeeze out extra revenue. Not to mention the amount of claims which will be unjust, falsified, or completely fictitious.

And then there’s the fact that we live in an age of cheap deals, and websites that specialise in beating your last quote, and digging up the very best offer. People want their car insurance quotes to be delivered quickly, cheaply – and again the insurance companies will be under pressure to compete, to lower their prices. Again, the car insurance companies will be losing money.

There are plenty of websites that aim to give you plenty of compensation for accidents and injuries, too. Personal injury claims lawyers who offer no win no fee deals, but strive to win something, anything – even if you haven’t been hurt in the first place. You have your own personal injury calculators, too. It really is a different world these days, developed over the last twenty years or so.

A world where the legal profession is blended with our lives and our cars more than ever. But is it really for the best?

Manchester United are in serious debt. Liverpool are, too.

Why do I mention this? Well, it’s just an example of how the economic downturn affects everybody and everything.

Quite simply, it is hard to manage your money in times like this, in this economic downturn that casts a shadow over our life, through the television, through the newspapers, through every aspect of the media. People are struggling in every aspect of society – even football teams are struggling. Struggling to balance their titanic wage books, struggling to keep afloat when, for so long, they have had to pay millions and millions of pounds to player after player.

So what about the average Joe, the everyman, working and working for just a scratching of the money that these sports players and celebrities make? How do we manage money when even people whose job it is to manage money are struggling to do so?

Now, more than ever, financial protection and, with it, financial planning become key, become incredibly important. We need to be careful in everything we do, everything we spend money on, because it is so easy to misstep. And in times like these, financial missteps can be tremendously costly.

More than ever, today is the day of good deals – looking for them, finding them, and taking them, where you can. There are places that can help out with this, Money Supermarket, and other websites designed with you in mind, to help you out with your finance and your spending. And they can be tremendously beneficial.

And, it goes without saying, that insurance of every kind is as important as ever. From the small things, whether it’s your mp3 player, or if you’re looking for home insurance reviews – or the bigger, more important things.

You can get life insurance that covers health problems, and critical illness.

And, based on the premise that your home is the biggest investment you’ll ever make, there are some impressive (and not so impressive) mortgage life insurance cover schemes out there, too.

The problem is that there are so many of these kinds of deals, you need to do your research and make sure that you find the right one for you.

Well, here we are in a new year, and everyone is making their new year’s resolutions. Traditionally, of course, this is a time for change, a time for a fresh start, a time for renewal. This is a time to be the person you want to be. But some things, it seems, don’t change. I was browsing a list of property prices in 2010, and couldn’t help but notice that here, in the property market, things seem as horrible as ever.

What I find so strange is that I’m sure I read that house prices would be going up, sometime towards the end of last year. Some news story or hint or glimmer of hope that suggested change – of a good variety – was on the horizon. But evidently not.

No matter how you look at it, things for our economy are still not looking good, and as a recent graduate, that’s quite a scary thought. I still know people who are looking for a job over a year out of university. There was a time when having a degree alone was enough, but not anymore.

All the word at the pub tonight was about mortgages, too – even mortgage rates are under the shadow of this repression, which, like the enemy in a horror movie seems to never go away.

So much for a happy new year! Here’s hoping things pick up soon. It’s not just affecting property buyers and home buyers, it’s affecting everyone who works in the industry. I wouldn’t want to be one of our countries property investors if things continue this way. Or any countries, for that matter. But I suppose you can say that about a lot of jobs, in these times.

According to the Independent, there has been a study undertaken that shows that the people who download music illegally, and admit to doing so, are also the ones who spend the most on music. It follows, then, that banning them from the internet, and cracking down on them, and doing everything it’s possible to do in order to stop them downloading music will actually have a negative effect on the music business – quite the opposite to what these people would like to achieve.

I must admit, although it’s not something I would just think about out of the blue, I’m not overly surprised that this is the case. But I also don’t think it will change their approach: their hammer blow will reign down on illegal downloaders, whatever the consequences.

I just thought it was an interesting story to start the weekend with. And hopefully it should be a pretty fantastic one – it’s certainly set up to be. Why? One reason: NFL playoffs. Even though the games get shown pretty late over here, they’re no less of an event: we’ve got in the beer, and the crisps, and all manner of junk food to sit down and just enjoy the occasion.

Both games tonight should be interesting ones... and both are rematches of games from last week: the Bengals against the Jets, and the Cowboys against the Eagles. Somehow, I don’t think the result for either game will be like what we saw last time the sides met, either.