How to give yourself a money makeover

Tighter credit conditions, falling house prices and a raised risk of recession mean that this year it is vitally important to get your finances sorted out. Merryn Somerset Webb reveals five way to weather a tougher year.

This doesn't look like it is going to be much of a year. The US may be moving into recession, as may the UK. House prices are falling and are set to keep doing so. Credit conditions are tightening. This is the kind of environment that puts everyone at risk from hairdressers hit by consumers cutting back on spending to one-time City hotshots finding banks don't need as many employees in bear markets as they do in bull markets. Anyone in any doubt need only glance across the Atlantic. There, according to Challenger Gray & Christmas, more than 150,000 jobs were cut in the financial services sector in 2007. That's 24,000 more than went in the aftermath of the dotcom crash in 2001. My point? That this year it is vitally important to get your finances properly sorted out. Here's how.

1. Spend less

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.