Foreign Perspectives

One of the ironies of the explosion of the various money making schemes available on the Internet in recent years is that it’s come at a time when it’s become virtually impossible to get the ideal type of bank account for these activities namely an American one.

However, recently there’s been a slow but growing number of alternative banks starting to fill in the gaps that the 9/11 security crackdown forced normal American banks to create. Thus far these have been quite limited in capability but that’s starting to change.

For example, Gem writes about one upcoming innovation from Payoneer which is basically creating a virtual bank account linked to the prepaid debit card that they issue on behalf of a number of organisations. It’s currently in the “coming soon” category but will permit you to quote a real bank account number to the likes of paypal thereby making it possible to convert your virtual money into the real kind by way of their debit card.

I suspect that there’ll be more such innovations coming over the next year as already paypal themselves are rolling out a similar, albeit more limited, scheme in some countries.

Popularity: 9% [?]

One of the interesting effects of the perceived downhill slide of the schooling system in America is that there has been a massive upsurgence in interest in home schooling which hasn’t, yet, been reflected in the UK.

That’s meant that there has been a growth in the support network available to anyone contemplating home schooling and the range of sites offering handholding and practical assistance is surprisingly large as a glance at the learning at home site will quickly show. Pick any one of the resources that are listed and you’ll find a surprising depth to them. Home schooling isn’t the unplanned activity that perhaps you might expect and complete curricula are available with weekly schedules of activities for you to follow.

I suspect that if more people knew that such programmes were available then it would be a much more widely taken up activity generally. I for one wouldn’t really have contemplated it on the basis that I would have felt sure that I’d just have dithered about and ended the year with nothing done yet with a weekly programme such as some of these sites provide, you have the necessary markers to ensure that you keep more or less on track.

What seems less common in America is the continuation of that home schooling into home university. That’s where we have the advantage in the form of the Open University which had perhaps the ultimate triumph of home schooling in its prospectus for 2007: a young girl who’d just completed her degree at 17, a time when most people would have another year to go before even starting a degree. Now that really says something about home schooling!

Popularity: 9% [?]

This used to be relatively simple in that it was always the Nationwide for foreign holidays, almost always MBNA for a big limit and generally CapitalOne for a stable low-ish rate.

However, all that’s changed. Although, for the most part the changes are for the better, it means that when you compare credit cards on the various comparison sites there’s a lot more in the way of questions that they need to ask you upfront. For example, these days the Nationwide isn’t the best card to go for if you’re looking for a card to use overseas as the Post Office credit card doesn’t load on as much in the way of cash advance fees as the Nationwide do these days thus when you compare credit cards for use abroad the Nationwide has lost the top spot which it has held for around ten years.

Other things to consider are those cards that don’t charge to withdraw cash. Obviously, you’d not want to be doing that on a regular basis with interest rates being what they are but it’s handy to have a card that will allow you to do that. Sadly, none so far have both dropped the foreign transaction charge and the withdrawal charge but with the competition heating up in overseas use charges perhaps one of them will break ranks and do just that. After all, not so long ago the Nationwide just charged 50p for a cash withdrawal.

Popularity: 4% [?]