I am quite fond of the Invisible Hand addon for Firefox. It’s one of the few addons I’ve kept installed through browser upgrades and machine migrations.

Install it and it lurks in the background until you view a web page listing a specific item for sale. When that happens, it pops a little one-line banner up at the top of the page letting you know whether you’re getting the best price available on the item or not. It uses pricing information from a selection of retail sites, but as far as I can tell, it doesn’t do currency conversions, and it definitely doesn’t factor in any potential shipping charges, so you’ll need to ferret out that information for yourself.

If there’s a better price than the one quoted on the current web page, it will let you know what the best price available is and where to find it. If you’ve already found the best deal, it’ll let you know which retailers come close.

At the time of writing, the addon description says it uses data from 580 retailers across the US, UK and Germany. For those of us in Ireland, it’s always worth checking the local retail sites too as shipping can sometimes be extortionate to our fair isle, negating the usefulness of any product pricing bargains.

In the few years I’ve been using it, the addon has saved me a few bob here and there, and occassionally provided useful pointers to unfamiliar sites with good deals. Give it a go.

I was in my local Bank of Ireland during the week when I spotted a fantastic looking offer: a savings account offering 9% interest! Wow! Sounds great! So I made enquires at the customer service desk.

Turned out, the 9% interest is earned over a two year term, not per annum. I would earn 3% interest in year one, at the end of which I would have an option to withdraw some/all of my money, and what was left on deposit would roll over to a 6% rate in year two. OK – so was it still a good deal?

Currently, the best lump sum deposit rate available is ~3.1% AER, and the best 1 year fixed term deposit rate is 3.7% AER.

AER stands for Annual Equivalent Rate and is a way of quoting interest rates for accounts of different terms, or that pay interest at different intervals (monthly, quarterly, annually etc.), to make them directly comparable.

So back to BoI’s 3% + 6%. Assuming I could commit to leaving my full lump sum on deposit with BoI for 2 years, what would the AER be?

Well, at the end of year one, I’d have 103% of my original investment; and at the end of year two I’d have 106% of the account value at the end of year one. So my total at the end of two years would be 109.2% of the invested sum – making the interest slightly more than the 9% on the poster.

If I take the square root of that total, I get just shy of 104.5%, so an AER of ~4.5% annually.

√(1.03×1.06)=1.04489

That’s still better than the current rates available, so I’m back to thinking it sounds like a good deal.

What it comes down to next is whether I believe I can afford to leave my money on deposit for 2 years untouched. If not, then I’ll be missing out on 0.7% elsewhere in year one.

But if I go with the (relatively) instant gratification of 3.7% now, what kind of rate will I be looking for in one year’s time to match what I would’ve made on the BoI deal?

1.092/1.037=1.053

That means I’ll want to find an account offering 5.3% in one year’s time to earn the same interest as if I’d taken up BoI’s current offer. That’s an increase of 1.6% on the best 1 year fixed term deposit currently available – quite a jump. But then, the ECB has started raising interest rates… Hmmm…

So, there we go, on Grand National day, I’m left with a gamble – but at least I’ll be guaranteed some return whichever way I bet on this one. Maybe I’ll toss a coin…

Hi! Welcome to my new blog.

As a tech writer and tech addict, I’m planning to use this as a place to publish reviews of gadgets and apps, and to generally comment on techy things, and, most likely, tech-writing-y things.