Do The Arithmetic!

I don’t think that Charles Dickens would rank among financial planners but he is responsible for putting together the simplest of financial advice - “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.” He was right: even the smallest debt can blight your life.

Ask 10 people to list their necessities of life and while there will be agreement on sufficient food to keep body and soul together, the money required to provide each person with their nominated necessities will vary dramatically.

The capacity for borrowing should relate solely to capacity to repay, but there are many institutions, usually holding commercial security, which will happily continue to lend money without repayment simply to have their money working for them by charging interest.

Shakespeare got into the act by having Polonius dish out financial advice to his departing son Laertes - “Neither a borrower nor a lender be".

Our financial world would collapse if everyone applied this advice.