Why an expensive way? Three reasons. The first is that, like the other big high street banks, Lloyds pays practically no interest on current accounts (the average current account pays just 1.2% on your money). This is important because if it isn’t earning interest your money loses its purchasing power fast: if inflation is rising at 3% (i.e. prices are going up at an average rate of 3% a year) you need to make 3% interest on your money to be able to buy the same amount of stuff at the end of the year as at the beginning. If you aren’t making 3% you are effectively losing money. The second is that while I didn’t often get overdrawn it did sometimes happen, and Lloyds, again like the other high street names, charges interest of 17–18% on overdrafts. Other banks pay proper amounts of interest on their current accounts and charge as little as 7–8% on overdrafts. Finally I had a ‘premium’ account at Lloyds, meaning that I paid an extra fee every year for a variety of perks I never used (most current accounts are free of annual fees). Lloyds sent me a nice bunch of flowers to make up for all the confusion – something which made me feel a bit warmer towards them but wasn’t quite enough to compensate for all the other downsides to banking with them. I closed the account.

      The sales: one big scam?

      We all love the sales. We think we are getting fabulous bargains. But we probably aren’t. The retailers think of sales as just a way to get you into their shops so they can flog you more overpriced rubbish than they can at non-sale times: there are so many loopholes in the laws covering the sales that whatever they say in their windows they can get away with not producing much in the way of discounts inside. For example, by law any goods marked with a reduction must have been for sale at the full price displayed for 28 days at some point in the previous six months. However, the stores are also allowed to put up a disclaimer in little letters somewhere in the premises saying that hasn’t actually been the case (that it has only been for sale at that price for one day, for instance) so you can never be sure whether you are paying a properly discounted price or not. Shops are also guilty of occasionally putting things out at stupidly high prices for 28 days so they can slash them to an OK price but call it 80% off a few days later.

      But that’s just the beginning of the tricks they’ll use to draw you in to the shops and get your wallet open. Rails of substandard items are often brought in just before the sales so they can be marked at very cheap prices near the door. Retailers will also put up signs all over their windows saying ‘up to 70% off’ when in fact almost nothing inside is that cheap. The law says 10% of goods on sale should be at the maximum stated discount but who checks? No one. The fact is that sales are a great time for shops to shift their old, substandard, out-of-fashion or obsolete stock. So before you succumb to bargain fever check whether the frock you are feverishly fingering is really a bargain (and a bargain that you need) or simply another con. Never forget that just because something is cheaper than it was doesn’t mean it offers any value to you: some things are expensive at £100 and still expensive at £10. Before you pay the sale price always ask yourself if you would have paid that price for it if you weren’t at a sale and as you do so remind yourself that over two-thirds of women admit to buying things in the sales that they have never worn.