This post is maybe a little off track for what is the norm on here but I have been thinking over the Xmas period.

I am not religious. I have my reasons, which I will not bore you with but this makes it a tricky time to explain the celebrating of Xmas. I call it Xmas as I have learn that I celebrate a commercial festival not a religious one. This year even, apart from my 2 beautiful nieces, no presents were bought.. We donated all ‘purchasing power’ to charity (My family are all lucky enough to have everything we need so why not, instead of buying the usual bollocks, give everything to people who aren’t as lucky as we are?)

There was an advert on the radio over Xmas that said, ‘Christmas begins with Christ… See you in Church’. So, me being me, looked into this. What I found was that nobody knows the actual birthdate of Jesus, but the whole festival was invented by the emperor Constantine. His reasons for this were to mirror the Pagan festival for the birth of Mithras, which runs over our Christmas week, and to hence aid the conversion of the Pagans to Christianity. Unfortunately, for me, that nullifies Christmas in its entirety.

So I began thinking.. For people in my situation, would celebrating New Years Eve with a similar gift giving scenario as Xmas Eve not be a clearer plan. We could give gifts on the premise that they are tools for personal advancement for the next year and celebrate our ‘better selves’ as we so often do with resolutions?

Just a thought

I have heard of Cartel before now, but got reminded about them at the property and finance course I went on. What these guys do is look into your credit agreements and determine whether or not the contracts are enforceable.

I also heard adverts on the radio, generally geared around the ‘struggling with your debt scenario’, but I thought I would try them out anyway.. In a best case scenario they could wipe out my mortgage!!

I contacted them and got a call back from a really nice guy, who bizarrely went on a very similar course to the one I did. I gave him the details of my mortgage etc yesterday and by lunchtime today I got an answer.

The rough pre-requisites for the agreements are, if I remember rightly -

• Mortgages taken out before 2006
• Other credit agreements taken out before 2007

Sadly, my mortgage was a no-goer but my credit card was. This leaves me in a juxtaposition, as I am trying to increase my lines of credit and, for the relatively small gain, I may sour the relationship with my chief creditor! So, I am going to talk that over with the guy on Friday. But, I have potentially sourced 2 more customers for him if I do indeed pull out.

Check out Cartel‘s website and have a look at what is involved (bear in mind this is UK only). A quick way to register is to  text ‘clear’ to 60777 and wait for a call back.