Taking Care Of Da Monies

Eh, buon giorno! I am Don Fool. I would appreciate it if you read this article the way it was intended: the Italiano way! Grazi! Before my old body is laid to rest next to my ancestors, God rest their souls, I wish to tell you some of the secrets of the mafia, whilst mocking the rambling Italian stereotype. Let's take a walk...

Have you ever wondered about offshore savings accounts? They might work well for benevolent tax evaders like the mafia, but for peasant Sicilians like you, no offence intended, they're generally nothing special. Now, I usually leave figures to Numbers, my associate, but compare the best offshore rate for a 3-year bond of 5.05%, found in the Bank of Scotland International bond, with the best UK rate of 5.31% with the Heritable Bank. Even I can see, is no good! The same goes for any 1 to 5 year savings account:

However, my associate tells me that interest rates may be on the rise, so putting dirty money into fixed rate savings accounts may not be as attractive as one that tracks the Banca dell'England base rate, for example. Take the savings account from ICICI Bank. It's a work of art! Currently their rate is 5.15% and it's guaranteed to stay at least 0.25% above the base rate until the end of 2007. Plus you can access your money quickly (making it easier to launder).

If you want to lower yourself to legitimate tax evasion, you use ISAs. Personally, I prefer to keep all my taxes hidden from the establishment. But if you have spare monies, up to £7 large each year (that's £7,000 to you), this is a fantastico way to do it.

Our cousins, the Italian American mafia, used to launder money through laundry shops, hence the famous English expression. Modern mafia gangs like mine combine money laundering with their loan-shark businesses. You can do this too! You can lend money to other peasant Sicilians through Zopa. You get paid interest on the loan and other peasants benefit from your very reasonable rates of interest.

But beware! Those rival gangs will stoop to anything to sting you, me and other innocent people out their money. A few years ago, one gang made millions by getting EU butter subsidies -- by selling fake butter. But we thought of it first!

No matter, I have punished them for their insolence. Some of my family's young wiseguys have their own cunning schemes, involving technology. Maybe it's my age, but you seem almost like family to me now, so I'll let you into the secret. You can prevent them from getting your credit card details on the Web. You do this using a cahoot 'webcard', which uses a unique card number for every transaction, so it can't be re-used. This service is available free to their current account and credit card customers.

Now, I must go and prepare for my successor. Perhaps, with your new knowledge, you could be the next Foolfather?

> Take care of da monies: compare loans and credit cards.