The price of Brent Crude oil reached over $100 today for the first time since the peak prices reached in the summer of 2008. There are concerns about what is happening in Egypt and the risk that it might affect oil tankers travelling through the Suez Canal.

The likelyhood of problems with the Suez canal seem unlikely but there has been a steady rise in the price of oil over recent months and that is a serious concern. The steady price rise of oil has been blamed on rising demand as economies around the world begin to recover from the economic downturn and that should concern everyone.

If we have these price rises while consumers are subdued and ecomies are stuttering along just imagine what could happen to the price of oil if, and when, world demand starts to seriously pick itself up. The price of oil could double and that would bring problems to everyone as prices and inflation rapidly rise.

There is not much we as individuals can do to avoid these increased costs we may face in the future and the best thing we can do is to reduce our current spending and debts so our financial situation is as strong as we can make it so we can cope with whatever hppens in the world.

Money Magic: Seven Simple Steps to True Financial Freedom (Quick Reads)

This looks like a bit of fun to relieve the stress of worrying about money.

Money Magic: Seven Simple Steps to True Financial Freedom (Quick Reads)

It is good to see that at long last the bonus culture that exists in our financial industry are being looked at though you just can’t help feeling that a fudging of the issue will be the eventual result.

Humans have always lived by a sort of bonus culture. We take risks and we get rewards. It has been that way since the first caveman hunted a dangerous animal for food. The rewards we can get are what drives us on to achieve and without it we would probably still be living in caves.

The difficulty with the finance industry is that nothing is real and rewards have been given for what turned out to be disastrous actions. You can see the logic that someone makes millions of profits for a bank and gets a reward of perhaps one tenth of one per cent for doing so but what are you to do when you find your reward system is flawed and the over time you find that their actions lost you money. Like any gambler, you are only in profit when you walk away from the table and cash in your chips.

The anger among the general public is clear and it has been rumbling around for years. The fat cats may argue that bonuses are justified and essential to keep the top people working for the banks but it also has managed to encourage company employees to gamble (Let’s call a spade a spade… ) and lose because their personal risk reward ratio favoured gambling rather than cautious investing.

Perhaps we are unfairly blaming only the banks. The whole of society has been looking for and expecting big rewards and we have given up on looking to the long term. Ever since the 1980′s we have been moving towards the situation we find ourselves in today. Short term gains have become the aim and computerisation of markets has enabled trading to be done in the blink of an eye.

Perhaps it is time we took a breath and thought about where we should be heading. Bonuses have a place and success should be rewarded but we should think very carefully before we agree bonuses and ensure they are for genuine and long term achievement and not for the gamblers who have success one day and then failure the next.

While we are at it maybe we should look at executive pay. How do you value a company executive? Should they be worth 10 times the salary of the sales staff or customer support? 100 times or maybe 1000 times? Those at the front line of any company may well work harder, feel more stressed and put at least as much effort into their work as the CEO but their efforts may go unrewarded.

Perhaps the biggest question of all is whether companies pay enough attention to their shareholders. It should be the shareholders, the owners of the company, who decide on any bonus payments. Company management do portray an image of listening to shareholders but the general pattern seems to be that they feel they can do whatever they like regardless of what shareholders think. The problem may lie with the pension funds who control the bulk of most shares in companies and seem all too happy to go along with the management view and avoid rocking the boat. Perhaps if they had kept their eyes on what the banks were doing they might have spotted that things were not as rosy as we were told.

Money Magic: Seven Simple Steps to True Financial Freedom (Quick Reads)