Here at Fool HQ we do our best to practise what we preach. But I won’t lie to you being a Fool it isn’t always easy. I’m the first to admit personal finance can be a minefield and the industry often just makes it all the more difficult to get your head around.

I’m sure we all have plenty of criticism on that so please feel free to share, but here are just five of my ultimate financial pet hates:

1. Exclusions, exclusions, exclusions – oh how I hate insurance policies that have so many of the little blighters for wriggling out of claims that the cover is hardly worth the paper it’s written on. (I have a particular bone to pick with this one, but I’ll write about that another day.)

2. Loss leaders – these are products which are pretty fantastic and draw in the crowds but they aren’t very profitable for whoever is selling them. They do, however, serve a very important purpose for the industry (and not for us, the customers). They give companies the perfect opportunity to dig their evil cross-selling claws so deeply into you until you give in and buy a pile of rubbish products just to stop them hounding you.

3. Infinitely detailed terms & conditions and the small print – they don’t exactly make for good bedtime reading. Is plain English really too much to ask for? Even when you read “Here’s our T&Cs in plain English” what you’re often faced with is reams and reams of incomprehensible babble.

4. Form filling – it should be so easy but even correctly completing the application form for the simplest of accounts can sometimes be a challenge worthy of The Krypton Factor.

5. Hidden catches – they’re all over the place just waiting to trip you up. Here are a few of my most despised:

• The savings account where you can make penalty-free withdrawals as often as you like as long as it’s in July! Such flexibility truly knows no bounds. Can this really be sold as an instant access account?
• Balance transfer credit cards which take away your 0% deal if you accidentally make one late payment. No second chances then?
• Higher lending fees on mortgages. The more you need to borrow of the house value, the higher the interest rate you’ll pay anyway, so why do you need to be penalised twice with this ridiculously unfair charge?

And so I could go on and on and on but luckily, for you, I won’t! Edited at 2008-09-29 10:02:50