Ho ho ho it’s that time again! Time to dig out the funnies or the weirds in the world of personal finance for this week. Hopefully your Monday hasn’t kicked off too badly but if you’re in need of a smile or at least a smirk, then you could do worse than chuckle at some of this week’s craziness.

LONDON – Payday loans are simply a ‘misunderstood‘ product. A survey by the Consumer Finance Association says 93% of customers think payday lenders treat them with dignity and respect, yet only 5% of policy makers think that’s the case. It’s telling that the survey only focused on one out of over 200 payday lending companies, and all of those surveyed were customers of it.

VANCOUVER – The Avengers cartoon superheroes will soon be teaching kids about budgeting, banking and other money skills. Visa and Marvel Entertainment have teamed to launch an Avengers comic book to teach kids financial literacy. The comic, which includes Spider-Man, Hulk and others, comes with a teacher’s guide and worksheet and is available to the public free at practicalmoneyskills.ca.

IRELAND - As if life couldn’t get any worse, Irish prisoners are having their pocket money cut to ‘encourage good behaviour and save money’. Personally, I’m not sure that idea will work quite as intended…

ENGLAND – Not so much funny as blood-boilingly infuriating. The Post Office (savings account provider) loses £10,400 of customer’s money for 33 days. Blames customer for the institutional and procedural error. Result? A measly £100 compensation, the cost of a box of chocolates for the harassment the customer gave their own bank when The Post Office blamed them initially, and the lost interest.

The moral of the last 2? No matter how bad your day is going…. someone else is having a worse one!

Happy Monday everyone!

p.s. if you were wondering – the picture is unrelated to anything in this post!