A Time of Magic

It used to be that watches were merely for telling the time but things have changed since those days.

Probably the best known for doing this is Swatch but there are many other brands at higher price points such as Festina watches which do much the same thing. Clearly if the watches were just for telling the time there’d be a much smaller range available but in practice you’ll find most watch brands produce a very wide range these days.

Even with the standard sports type watch you’ll find variations in the colour of the face, the strap, the material used to make the watch and that’s before you even consider those aimed at deep divers, those for shallow dives and so on.

To a large degree this change is down to changing attitudes of consumers who increasingly look for something unique thus the bog standard sports watch in stainless steel isn’t good enough and instead you get all the variations mentioned above. 

The insurance industry essentially operates on much the same basis as the betting industry when you think about it.

For example, car insurance works by calculating the odds that you’ll have an accident and how much it will cost to fix your car and whatever you’ve hit with it. That’s why even a car that cost peanuts to fix would still cost a reasonable amount to insure: after all, you could write-off a Rolls-Royce in an accident.

Somewhat more morbidly, the life insurance industry takes a view on when you’re going to die and sets the premiums accordingly as does the pension industry. Fortunately for them, these two are usually owned by the same companies in that as the life expectancy goes up the cost of life insurance goes down but the cost of pensions goes up which eases the impact for these companies.

With the banks tightening up on their lending criteria it’s almost like the bad old days when you had to trudge round a whole range of banks to get your house funded.

However, things have moved on from then and mortgage lenders now offer their mortgages through brokers who can suggest what finance company to look towards given your personal financial circumstances. Some financial outfits have started to offer their products directly via the Internet too and it’s worth considering these too as they don’t have the overheads of the brokers and can sometimes offer better packages.