2 . Getting to know your money personality can help you rein in your spending habits and take back control of your personal finances. Here, finance saving money expert Pete Ridley at CarFinanceSaver reveals the UKs core money personalities, along with actions to adopt that reduce the negative consequences of each personality type.

The Spontaneous Spender

A spontaneous spender refers to a person that exhibits a “spend now, think later” attitude. They can find it tricky to differentiate between “need to haves” and “nice to haves”, and often feel “spender’s guilt”.

“Before you make a purchase, take time to decide whether the item is a ‘need to have’ or a ‘nice to have’. This will aid in avoiding splurges (挥霍) that provide short term satisfaction and post-spenders’ guilt.” says Ridley.

The Determined Saver

An underlying sense of worry and fear can be at the root of a persistent saver, and their determination to save disguises an overwhelming fear of money.

“Saving is great,” says Ridley, “but it’s important to regard money as a friend and not an enemy. Always be sure to make non-essential purchases. These items don’t have to be a major expense, but just enough that you acknowledge that money can be there to be enjoyed and not just put away.”

The Money=Status

This personality type can live beyond their means by making purchases that they don’t need, striving to keep up with others and saying yes to friendship plans that they cannot afford, to keep up the appearance of financial wellbeing.

“It’s here that you can adopt the 50/20/30 rule: 50 percent essential living expenses, 30 percent disposable income and 20 percent saving and paying debts,” suggests Ridley.

This will maintain financial wellbeing while helping to acknowledge that money doesn’t necessarily equal status or even impress those around you.

China’s movie box office earnings reached nearly 6.76 billion yuan (about $998.5 million) during the 2023 Spring Festival holiday, making for the second-highest total figures for the holiday to date     1     sending a signal of the strong recovery of China’s film industry this spring.

The top earners     2    (be) the twist-filled hit Full River Red and the sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth II, which harvested about 2.61 billion yuan and over 2.16 billion yuan, respectively. This signaled that Chinese movies embedded (嵌入) with traditional values and culture were     3    (increase) appealing to domestic audiences, with the trendy rise of     4     (culture) confidence.

    5    (cover) diverse genres (体裁), this year’s holiday films were professionally made and fully met the particular demands of the audience. In terms of movie-goers’     6    (satisfy), domestic films screened during the week-long holiday scored 87.1 points,     7     year-on-year increase of 1.8 points, according to a survey conducted by China Film Archive.

“Film consumption     8    (anticipate) to continue to grow after the holiday, as people who were busy travelling during the Spring Festival holiday get an opportunity     9    (watch) films now,” said Rao Shuguang, president of the China Film Critics Association. He also predicted that people’s passion     10     cinema-going might last for several weeks.

4 . On Friday, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed and was taken over by federal regulators, marking one of the largest bank failures since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. California’s banking regulators shut down SVB and effectively gives control of the bank to the FDIC, which created a new entity(实体) to oversee it. With a 40-year history, SVB served many companies, and it played an important role in the technology industry, successfully competing with bigger-name banks.

SVB’s business boomed as tech companies did well during the Covid-19. However, the technology industry recently faced difficulties, and many clients withdrew money. To fulfill these withdrawals, SVB sold part of its bond holdings(持有债券) at a $1.8 billion loss. The Federal Reserve’s(美联储) sharp rise in interest rate also affected bonds and stocks. Then SVB decided it wanted to reduce its bond portfolio(债券投资组合) to avoid further losses.

But that announcement spooked the bank’s clients, who got worried and then proceeded to withdraw even more money from the bank—a textbook definition of a bank run. The bank’s stock price(股价) fell by 60% on Thursday, and as its share price continued to sink overnight. Trading was halted, and the FDIC took over SVB.

While concerns emerged about the banking sector, shares of major banks like J. P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America dropped by around 5%. Investors worried that other banks, particularly smaller ones, might experience similar withdrawals. However, by Friday, fears regarding the broader banking sector had eased. Experts argued that SVB’s situation was unusual and should not impact other regional banks.

The FDIC-created entity, Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara, will oversee SVB. Insured deposits(存款), typically up to $250,000, will be accessible by Monday. Uninsured deposits face uncertainty, with the FDIC offering an “advance dividend(提前股息)” and “certificates” accounting for the uninsured funds. The regulator has not clarified what this means for uninsured depositors. Investors will continue monitoring any potential impact on other banks.

6 . From chocolate toothpaste in the Philippines to salt and vinegar potato chips in the UK, products popular in one place often receive a cool reception elsewhere. It of course poses a challenge to food companies seeking to export their brands.

The snack-food company Frito-Lay addresses the issue by discovering the best-loved flavours in each of their markets. So while cheese, spicy chilli and barbecue are popular flavours in the USA, Turkey goes for yogurt. The French prefer olive and Japan likes sushi flavours. But all of them are sold under the globally familiar Doritos brand. Frito-Lay’s understanding of local tastes around the world-and the successful adaptation of their product-has made Doritos one of the world’s most popular snack foods.

Everyone everywhere loves ice cream, it seems. The Anglo-Dutch food giant Unilever sells it in over 40 countries. The company used to sell their ice cream under a lot of different brands, which created the sense that the companies were local. In 1998, the company launched the ‘Heartbrand’ logo (标志) to increase international brand awareness, but kept the familiar local names for the ice cream products. This helped avoid the problem of some names not sounding good in other languages. So in Bulgaria and Greece, you buy Algida, but in China, Malaysia, Singapore and the UK, it’s Wall’s.

There are some products that will always remain at home, such as the durian (榴莲), known as the ‘the king of fruits’ in its homeland of Southeast Asia. The fruit’s most notable feature is its strong smell, described by some as that of rotten onions and by others as old gym socks, though it is said to taste delicious by its fans. Though some durians are grown outside of Southeast Asia, the only place the fruit enjoys any wide popularity at all is in Southeast Asia and even there, some people can’t stand it! So don’t expect to see durians in your local supermarket any time soon.

7 . Imagine a world without money. With no way to buy stuff, you might need to produce everything you need unless you could figure out how to exchange some of the things you made for other items.

Economists like me believe that using money makes it much easier for everyone to specialize, focusing their work on a specific activity. As economists have known since David Ricardo’s work in the 19th century, there are gains for everyone from exchanging goods and services-even when you end up paying someone who is less skilled than you.

People have traded goods and services with one kind of money or another, whether it was trinkets, shells, seeds or cash for tens of thousands of years. People have always obtained things without money too, usually through barter. It involves exchanging something, such as a cookie, for something else-like a pencil.

Bartering sounds convenient, but it’s hard to pull off. Let’s say you’re a carpenter who makes chairs and you want an apple. You would probably find it impossible to buy one. Just imagine what a trouble it would be to drag the chairs you’ve made to the shopping mall in the hopes of cutting great deals through barter with the sellers.

Paper money is far easier to carry. You might be able to sell a chair for $50. You could take that $50 bill to a supermarket, buy two pounds of apples for $5 and keep the $45 in change.

Nowadays, of course, many people pay for things without cash or coins. Instead, they use credit cards or make online purchases. Others simply wave a smartwatch at a designated device. Others use bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. But all of these are just different forms of money that don’t require paper.

No matter what form it takes, money ultimately helps make the trading of goods and services go more smoothly for everyone involved.