Posted by Emily

Every year thousands of people around my age take a week, or maybe two, out of their normal, everyday routine to venture into a different world. This world is the world of work and as we step into new shoes and take on challenges and new experiences, many get lost in the whirlwind of it all and money seems to get lost down the drain.

This week I have discovered the true cost of work experience and how all those little extras have added up without my realising. From the new clothes to the cost of travel, it may not seem much, but is it worth it? Does work experience help you in the future at all?

Like most people, the first thing I did when I learned I was doing work experience was to rush straight to the shops to stock up on new clothes. Work experience is exciting but the cost of these clothes can lighten your purse before you know it. It’ so easy to walk out of a store with shirts, trousers and everything you could possibly need; even if you have already got it stuffed in the back of your wardrobe at home. This quickly adds up and you are left with a mountain of clothes you never really needed in the first place.

The next big hurdle to jump over is the cost of travel. My weekly ticket from a Kent terminal to London it costs £55. When you add this on top of everything else, work experience becomes very expensive.

Once you arrive at the office you find yourself having to pay for even more things. When lunchtime comes around, you have to pay for food which is not all that cheap. I've started to wonder how much this is all costing me.

On the other hand, there is a reason I'm doing this. As well as learning about the profession I'm interested in, work experience can give you a good reference for future employers. Of course, one other thing that work experience can achieve is learning what it’s really like to work in a company, with other people and this adventure teaches is a life experience that I would not be able to get otherwise.

Overall, the cost of spending a week in a job seems to be worthwhile as the benefits can have a large impact on your future career and the things you get to see and do during this time may be a once in a lifetime chance. In the short term it may seem like a lot of money to spend but when you think about the advantages it does not seem so much.  

* Emily is doing work experience at MSN this week. She's 16 years old and is waiting for her GCSE results. In September she plans to attend Dartford Grammar School for Boys in Kent where they have a mixed sixth form. She'll be studying the International Baccalaureate and after that hopes to go to university to study journalism. Emily has worked on a magazine in which 7 schools in my area work together to create a topical magazine for 11-16 year olds.

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Posted by James

An Englishman's home is his castle – the saying is close to 500 years old, but still rings true for millions.

And when you find yourself in troubled times, the normal practice for castle-dwellers is to pull up the drawbridge and sit out the problems until things get better.

True to form, the nation's homeowners are doing just that. With news out today showing a ninth consecutive month of house price falls, Britons are responding to market trouble by simply not moving.

Figures from the Bank of England (also out today) show that in May just 42,000 people took out loans to move house. That might seem a lot, but it is less than half the normal average, 28% fewer mortgages than the month before, 64% fewer than the same month last year and the lowest number since the Bank of England started counting mortgages this way in 1993.

Normally you can expect to see around 100,000 loans approved for people moving home each month with this number going up to 120,000 in the good times. But things haven't been good for a while.

The last time there were 100,000 people taking out loans to move home was in September 2007, since then the number has been steadily falling: 88,000 in October; 81,000 in November; 72,000 in December and so on until we hit 42,000 in May – the latest month we have figures for.

Roughly translated that means three times more people were moving home (or buying buy-to-let properties) a year ago. Now this is both good and bad news for house prices.

Firstly, it means (in all likelihood) most of the people moving house now have to move. Whether it's because they have a new job somewhere else in the country, have had children and need more room or more unpleasant reasons such as job loss, insolvency or divorce it means they are in a weak position to negotiate.

At the same time, all the people who might like to move - but don't need to – are staying put rather than sell in a falling market.

While forced sellers are always present, if there are fewer people moving overall then they will make up an increased percentage of the national averages.

And that tells us something interesting about house prices: the month-on-month falls in house prices reported are being based very few transactions largely conducted by people who are desperate to sell.

The rest of the homeowners, safe in their castles, are waiting out the current problems in the mortgage market until they can trade up or out with a healthy profit again.

While this is terrible news for estate agents, it means the overall property market may well be stronger than many people claim.

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Posted by Katherine

Even people who wouldn’t hesitate to buy expensive products can shirk at the thought of investment: a few threads of saffron or a memory card for a digital camera has immediate use, whereas investing seems complicated and risky.

But whether you choose to invest in your computer or commodities, the fact remains that certain investments are a way to beat long-term inflation and save on the overall cost of living. Think of it this way: if the rising cost of oil is affecting your finance, investing in oil could offset these price increases.

In the same way, if £1 becomes less valuable because of inflation, investing in gold ties your current money to the gold standard – a much more stable and valuable unit.

Still hesitant? Look at it this way: by weight, many of the things you own are either more valuable than gold or a significant percentage of it.

To illustrate the point, we put together a gallery to show what you may invest in for day-to-day living and compare it to the price by weight of gold.

To work out the conversions, I asked Jane Douglas, science whiz and editor of the tech and gadgets channel, for help:

"For the liquids, where we had already had a volume and a price, working out cost per cubic centimetre was straightforward: the first figure divided by the second.

"For the solids, we needed a density and a mass (easy for gold, water, paper, and polycarbonate plastic for CDs) to calculate a volume, to again divide by price.

"In the case of the memory card, the volume of was found by multiplying the dimensions of the card together."

Click on Jane Douglas and Maneeza Iqbal’s grid below for details. If you have any improvements, write in and let us know.

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Posted by James

It's the time of the month again for us to respond to your feedback. So here we go:

The state of the property market and the economy were on people's minds again this month.

"I'm sorry‚ but the articles on MSN Money are about nothing but bleakness and pessimism. All this about:  'Oh‚ we're all going to lose our money,' and 'our lives are getting worse,' does nothing but promote tension and unnecessary anxiety and worry," one user wrote.

"You may be anti-government‚ but you have done nothing but manifest that instead of inform people.  So please‚ enough with the rubbish advice about how we can save a few pennies‚ and how we are all heading for a disaster and the dark ages," they continued.

Another added: "I guess if you keep talking about disaster then it will eventually happen. The media always publish negative news that's their job! But I will keep going with my buy-to-lets and my 10% returns even today and I will let others gamble their money on shares which may I remind you is the highest risk investment you can make just ask the Northern Rock share holders."

At MSN Money we always try to reflect a balanced view – and have run articles questioning whether things are as bad as the headlines suggest.

However, when respected data shows many indicators are running at 15-year lows we have a duty to report it and look into the implications. Rest assured we will be at least as enthusiastic if things pick up.

Of course, some people love it when things start to go a bit wrong.

"How come no one is putting the blame where it should be? With the estate agents," wrote one user.

"They ‚ through greed put house prices up ‚ it's not like crops that increase because of rising fuel or wages. Estate agents make the market‚ so if it has now crashed around them good - let's hope all these leeches go under and the government get off their asses and bring in laws to regulate the so called business."

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Posted by James

House prices are falling, rents are rising and mortgages are impossible for first-time buyers.

Except none of this is true or, at least, it's not true for everyone.

Because no one is buying the whole market, no one is renting the whole market and there are still some people who can afford to buy.

Speaking to an estate agent this weekend he told me that while viewings used to stand at 80 a week, they are now down to 40.

That's a huge drop off, but still means prospective buyers are looking at 40 properties a week. Moreover, he explained there are incredibly few new instructions going onto the market (he had only had one in the last week, a three-bed town house). This means that competition for each property is still strong.

And while house prices are falling on average, some properties are still going for above their asking prices.

That's why people need to be very careful when looking at headlines about the property market in the press. Because the only thing that matters is if you can sell your property or afford to buy a new/first one.

The specific case of one house, in one street, being sold or bought by one buyer taking out a single mortgage from one lender can bear no relation to the general trends.

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