This week Finance Monthly brings you a list of 5 awesome buys to treat yourself with after your next bonus, pay rise or big client win! Sure, you could invest it, or gamble on some new cryptocurrencies, but we all know that there is nothing better than treating yourself to something special, particularly after you’ve earned it. Here’s our top picks to motivate you towards your next milestone.

The Bike: Husqvarna Vitpilen 401

The Husqvarna Vitpilen 401 is a sleek, refreshingly simple and progressive new urban street motorcycle. Husqvarna’s designers have stripped away all of the unnecessary bells, whistles and gadgets and left behind only what is truly required for a raw and authentic riding experience. Perfect for getting around the city, this sleek streetbike is a sure head turner. The Vitpilen 401 will be available in authorised Husqvarna dealers from March 2018.

Price: £5,599

The Television: Samsung 75” QLED Smart T

This Samsung television is a modern, fashionable and spectacular piece of technology. The smart TV delivers breathtaking picture quality, achieving 100% colour volume. Suddenly watching movies at home will feel akin to a cinematic experience, and sports matches will come alive like never before. With a stunning 360 design, this isn’t just a TV - the QLED is a statement piece that will bring new dimensions to your living space.

Price: £4,719

The Home Tech: iRobot Roomba 980 Vacuum Cleaner

If you’ve had a long, intense week at work - the last thing you’ll want to do is tackle the vacuuming over the weekend, This is where the Roomba comes in, a robotic vacuum cleaner that will revolutionise your home cleaning. At the touch of a button, the impressive Roomba 980 will navigate around your home, keeping track of its location and recharging as needed until the job is complete. The smart iRobot Home App even allows you to control your cleaning schedule while you are on the go, how efficient!

Price: £899.99

The Watch: U-Boat Classico 1001 in Titanium Blue

This limited edition Italo Fontana U-Boat Classico 1001 pays homage to the essence of the brands classic style with bold, military inspired design and a wide dial. Timeless and iconic, the Classico is a clean and uniquely styled model with a running theme of raw, natural materials. A surefire way to elevate your outfit both in and out of work, the Classico is even water resistant to 1001 metres.

Price: £4,250

The Sunglasses: Linda Farrow Aviator Sunglasses

Warmer months are coming and if there is one accessory that completes your summer wardrobe, it’s a pair of designer sunglasses. The compliments will be flooding with these luxurious Linda Farrow aviator sunglasses which are handcrafted purely from 18-22 carat white gold-plated lightweight titanium. Definitely the ultimate sunglasses to invest in for the summer.

Price: £830

Using the website Numbeo to compare the prices of items from all over the world, giffgaff money has found the global destinations (and no-go zones) for anyone looking to save money.

Residents of London, New York, Paris and Amsterdam, look away now. Research into the world’s cheapest and most expensive countries has found that rent in Egypt is incredibly cheap, averaging at ­just £114 a month for a one-bed apartment in the city. Although you might feel a little better to know that a city centre apartment in Hong Kong would set you back £1,562 a month.

Categories used included every day and essential purchases including cars, rent and groceries which giffgaff have used to create maps and graphs to illustrate the vast cost gap in each category.

• Iceland, which consistently has one of the highest costs of living in the world, topped three categories: food and drink, groceries, and clothing and shoes.
• Switzerland also made several top-five appearances, proving most expensive for sports and leisure.
• Tunisia, on the other hand, was consistently one of the world’s cheapest countries and was found to have the cheapest food and drink in the world.

Rent

Living in a city apartment in Hong Kong is simply not possible for most of us, with a monthly rent average of an incredible £1,562 a month. Families hoping to live in the city centre will also face mind-blowing monthly costs, with a three-bed home stretching to £3,715 a month in rent.

Residents of London, New York, Paris and Amsterdam, look away now – rent in Egypt is incredibly cheap, averaging at ­just £114 a month for a one-bed apartment in the city. Families will also save, with a three-bed suburban home costing around £170 a month to rent.

Cars

Driving the picturesque landscape of Eastern European Georgia is a cheap affair, with a Volkswagen Golf priced around £12,072 (compared to £23,638 in the UK) and a Toyota Corolla coming in at just £13,621 (compared to £ 23,724 in the UK).

Singapore, on the other hand, is a pricey place for drivers, with a nippy Volkswagen Golf setting you back an eye-watering £88,474 – a massive £76,406 more than buying the same vehicle in Georgia.

For full results from the research, click here.

(Source: giffgaff)

Property prices across the world are soaring, with figures in Sydney, Australia reaching new heights as the median house price hits an eye-watering $1.18 million. But, how much house could the average individual buy in different cities across the world?

The current climate in the property sector is a bleak one; house prices are climbing to the highest prices ever recorded, with Australian house price growth surging to a seven-year high. When calculating how much Australian’s can afford, the average salary of 80,278 AUD, a typical loan-to-income ratio of 4.5 times the salary and the average price per foot of property show that 509 sq ft is the biggest size of property average Aussie’s can afford in Sydney. But, with the opportunity to move to bigger and better properties in far-flung cities across the world, would you up-and-go for extra square footage?

Shuffle the interactive piece to view highest to lowest sq ft, lowest to high sq ft and all of the cities included sorted A-Z.

Top 10 biggest property locations

These are the cities where Aussie’s can buy the biggest properties:

1. Cairo, Egypt. 4,883 sq ft
2. Kingston, Jamaica. 2,882 sq ft
3. Marrakech, Morocco. 2,610 sq ft
4. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 2,213 sq ft
5. Mexico City, Mexico. 2,186 sq ft
6. Trinidad, Trinidad. 1,734 sq ft
7. Budapest, Hungary. 1,261 sq ft
8. Lisbon, Portugal. 1,178 sq ft
9. Adelaide, Australia. 1,093 sq ft
10. Athens, Greece. 1,053 sq ft

Interestingly, Adelaide takes the 9th spot as the city where Aussie’s can afford the biggest properties with their salary. Other Australian cities featured on the ‘How much can you buy?’ list includes Perth, who take the 14th spot with 838 sq ft, Brisbane at 15th with 727 sq ft and Melbourne, just a few places behind at 18th with 608 sq ft.

Top 10 smallest (most expensive) property locations

These are the cities where the smallest properties are that the average Aussie salary, of 80,278 AUD, can afford to purchase:

1. Monaco, Monaco. 67 sq ft
2. London, UK. 117 sq ft
3. Hong Kong, Hong Kong. 154 sq ft
4. Paris, France. 234 sq ft
5. New York, US. 235 sq ft
6. Tokyo, Japan. 248 sq ft
7. Moscow, Russia. 252 sq ft
8. Mumbai, India. 261 sq ft
9. Vienna, Austria. 277 sq ft
10. Singapore, Singapore. 294 sq ft

Monaco is the most expensive city in the world for Australian’s to buy a home, with most only being able to afford a measly 67 sq ft of property. It may come as a surprise that London, UK takes the second spot as the most expensive city on the list to buy a property with the average Australian only being able to afford 117 sq ft of property in the English capital. Other heavily populated cities make up the rest of the top 5 list and include Hong Kong, Paris and New York.

Just how big are we talking?

To put square footage into perspective, a standard double bed is 28.1 sq ft. This means that in Monaco you can afford a property the equivalent size of 2.3 double beds on the average Australian salary, crazy right? If we apply the same logic to London, that’s just over four double-beds-worth of property on the same salary.

At the other end of the scale, to purchase a 4,883 sq ft property in Cairo, Egypt would be equivalent of 173.8 double beds.

(Source: Assured Removalists)

LCD wide screen TV at 50% off? Don’t mind if I do. Except I’ll have to make my way through a throng of a thousand punters, get punched in my left eye half a dozen times, and likely trample a few elderly buyers on the way. Black Friday is year on year becoming more about the thrill than the financial savings. Masses of people line up for the best stores to open, and scramble in once the doors open, only to leave the weak behind.

According to official data collected this year by Quantcast, in the US alone in 2014, 23% of 133,700,000 Black Friday shoppers camped outside a store the night before, and in 2015, all in all the nation spent around $67,560,000,000 in store and $2,932,000,000 online, with an average accumulated spend of $403.35 per person. These stats go to prove why Black Friday is crucial for the economy, as around 30% of annual retail sales occur between this celebrated shopping spree and Christmas itself. This in turn means more staff are hired in the busy period; according to NRF statistics, between an estimated 640,000 and 690,000 workers in 2016.

As many take part in Black Friday’s magic race for deals, most are either behind the cashier’s desk, managing teams, counting the numbers, or on the other side of the retail coin, making the most of prices. To shed light of the kind of situations, violence and anarchy you can expect from Black Friday this year, taking place on the 24^th November, Finance Monthly has put together 10 popular videos displaying the worst moments that have taken place on Black Friday over the past decade. Some of these may completely put you off the idea of taking part in this public event, while some will prepare you for what’s to come, if you’re still daring to make the most of it.

10. Black Friday Threats

Screaming profanities and ‘squaring up’ to one another, these two shoppers are consumed by the Black Friday fury as Asda’s security staff and various members of the public keep the two from ripping each other to shreds. The passion for justice is palpable as they stare at each other with shopper’s rage. “I’ll be outside mate!”

9. Black Friday Shopper Horde

Here we see hundreds of shopping mall dwellers longing for the shop’s shutters to rise, so they can engage in the Black Friday rush they’ve been waiting for all morning. As the shutters reach but an inch off the ground, fingers curl round the bottom, some people squirm under the rail, and heads start popping through the bottom. Before you can say Black Friday, the horde of shoppers are through the gap below the shutters and racing for a find. The shutters aren’t even half way up yet, but the rules are there to be broken, right?

8. Black Friday Staff Barricade

Just over eight members of staff form a barricade dam of stopping power as they proceed to open shop on this fine Black Friday morning in 2016. As the shutters are half a meter up the doors, look who comes crawling in, their first customer of the day, along with a whole other mass of shoppers ready to dig their claws in the best bargains. As the staff themselves are pushed out of the way, and fail in their mission to barricade until open, members of the public are infiltrating their way through the employees’ legs and getting on with their hunt. The staff are clearly scared and try to shut it back down, having to stomp it to the ground. One guy quite reasonably just lifts his hands in the air and says nah forget it, not today.

Hit the Next button to see our top 7 Black Friday scraps!

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