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COMMENT
2004 has certainly been an eventful year. It's been an up year for the stock market, house prices, interest rates and oil prices, while the pensions crisis has continued to dominate the headlines. Here's a Foolish recap of the last twelve months: January: The year kicked off with the twentieth anniversary of the FTSE 100 index, followed swiftly by the first major scandal of 2004: the Shell (LSE: SHEL) reserves fiasco. We also discovered that Standard Life was likely to head to the stock market, and announced a new venture for the Fool – our Value Investor newsletter. February: The savings market heated up with the launch of a regular-savings account from the Halifax that paid 6% interest. Psion (LSE: PON) stunned many investors when it sold its stake in Symbian, and we found out that legendary investor Warren Buffett was a chocaholic. March: We celebrated twelve months of the bull market, juicy dividend increases, and the fact that a tenth of us are rich. April: We snared a few people with our April Fool prank, and saw the first signs of house-price weakness. New bankruptcy laws came into effect this month, too. May: Philip Green announced his renewed interest in Marks & Spencer (LSE: MKS), causing its shares to jump 20%. People also started to get hot under the collar about cashpoint charges and oil prices, with the latter hitting a fourteen-year high of $40. (The oil price peaked for the year at $55 a barrel a few months later.) June: We stopped paying tax (hooray!), but found out the State retirement age could be raised to 72 (boo!). July: Our total debt exceeded £1 trillion for the first time, and the hedge-fund bandwagon gathered speed. August: As the new football season kicked off, we scoured the Premiership for share ideas. We were amused by these five mad house deals, but distinctly unamused by energy price increases. September: Credit-card companies started to get stingier with cashback deals while mortgage lenders tried it on with higher arrangement fees. A new way of owning property, commonhold, became law. October: Regular savers had a great October, with both Halifax and Abbey hiking their interest rates to 7%. From the last day of the month, mortgages began to be regulated by the FSA, raising concerns this could mean higher mortgage rates. The Fool also welcomed its one millionth user. November: New pension legislation was passed that will see big changes from April 2006. Home seller packs were approved, and the end of 0% credit card deals was forecast. December: As the year drew to a close, we found out that the £7,000 ISA limit was likely to last a while longer. We also celebrated two more anniversaries: BT's (LSE: BT.A) twentieth year as a public company and Anthony Bolton's twenty-fifth in charge of the Fidelity Special Situations fund. More on 2004: If you want to keep abreast of the best investing and money-saving ideas in 2005 then sign up for our emails here.