Finance
How to take stock of your finances this bank holiday
Bank holiday season is upon us, which can only mean two things: the rain is back, and we’ve finally got some time to ourselves.
It also means we’re likely stuck indoors, so before you accidentally spend it doomscrolling or getting sucked into a 52-episode binge-watch, it’s worth putting aside some time for the financial maintenance jobs that will stand you in good stead for the rest of the year.
Here are five things you can do to take stock of your finances this bank holiday season.
This is an hour that can save you hundreds of pounds. There are two things to check: are you paying for anything you don’t get enough value from? And are there any payments you haven’t revisited in a while?
If you unearth forgotten subscriptions or memberships, there’s serious cash to be gained from cancelling.
However, before you do, check you’ve completed any minimum terms and get in touch with the company to let them know you’re cancelling.
Read more: How higher house prices are impacting young people’s finances
If you realise you haven’t revisited things like media packages, mobile phone payments or utilities, now is the time to do some shopping around. The return of decent fixed rate gas and electricity deals means this could be a particularly fruitful thing to check.
Far too many people plough through life without a plan, so it’s no wonder they run out of money before the end of the month. If you’ve never done one before, drawing up a budget isn’t a particularly exciting job, but an hour with a budget planner can reap real rewards.
You’ll need your bank statements or app to see how much you spend in an ordinary month, plus statements for expensive times of the year like Christmas, so you can plan for those too.
Armed with these details, you need to plug your income and spending into a budget planner. Hargreaves Lansdown has a household budget planner, but there are loads of them online – including one on the MoneySavingExpert website.
Read more: Home renovation mistakes and how to avoid them
If you’re struggling with how to allocate the cash, simple rules of thumb can help – like spending 50-60% of your money on the things you need, 20% on saving and investing for the future or dealing with debts, and 20-30% on the nice-to-haves. How useful this rule is, depends on how much you need to spend on the basics, but it can help to start here.
Once you’ve added up what you currently spend, you can consider where you need to make cuts, so you end up with some cash over at the end of the month.
Finance
Low-income Chinese girl aces gaokao, inspires live-streamers offering help
A girl from a disadvantaged rural family in central China topped this year’s gaokao, attracting numerous live-streamers eager to finance her education, which she declined.
The home of 18-year-old secondary school graduate Han Yaping in a Henan province village was recently bustling with live-streamers.
This attention came after Han achieved an impressive score of 699 out of 750 in the gaokao, China’s national college entrance exam.
She has received offers from China’s two leading universities, Tsinghua University and Peking University.
Han’s accomplishment is particularly remarkable given her family’s impoverished circumstances.
Her mother suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory arthritis affecting the spine, preventing her from working. Her father, who earns a living through farming and odd jobs, serves as the family’s sole provider. Han also has a younger sister.
Finance
UK financial regulator publishes landmark AI review
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a landmark review on Monday that proposes recommendations to regulate the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the financial decisions made by consumers.
The review, titled the Mills Review, anticipates that both consumers and firms will start delegating “more financial decision-making to AI systems,” including for agreements, initiating transactions, and executing decisions “within agreed parameters.” One of the key findings of the review outlined that while AI can help bridge advice gaps and “support growth,” there remain risks “associated with fraud, cyber security, and consumer harm.” Conducting the review, Sheldon Mills highlighted that “AI can also amplify risks: bias, discrimination, exclusion, opaque decision-making (particularly when multiple AI models interact), misleading or hallucinatory advice and erosion of consumer trust.”
The review stated that presently, one in five adults in the UK are “already open to AI making decisions for them,” particularly when decisions feel “complex or high stakes.” It found that roughly 26 percent of the population “trust general-purpose tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for financial advice” with little awareness that such platforms provide no “formal routes to recourse” or protections.
Overall, the Mills Review identified four areas that it anticipates will be impacted by AI in the financial sector: “the transformation of firms,” “new consumer journeys,” “a reshaped competition landscape,” and “amplified financial crime and cyber risk.” The FCA projected the shift in how consumers and firms consult AI to take place by 2030.
The Mills Review put forth seven “priority” recommendations to be considered by the FCA Board. It recommended that any transitions to autonomous AI models be monitored and that regulatory frameworks and perimeters be adapted and secured. The review called for the strengthening of “system-wide coordination and oversight,” the scaling up of the FCA’s AI Lab to enable it to support AI models and innovation for agentic finance, and an “AI-enabled agentic supervisory model” to be built and adopted. Finally, it recommended that a trusted “public-interest AI-enabled financial capability service” be developed.
The FCA announced, in the press release, that it will launch an AI “good and poor practice publication” in late 2026.
Finance
Fayette County Public Schools Board of Education approves audit contract, new finance director position
LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) – The Fayette County Public Schools Board of Education approved a one-year audit contract capped at $131,750 plus $225 per hour during a virtual meeting Monday, along with a new finance director job description.
The contract is with Mauldin & Jenkins Certified Public Accountants, an Atlanta-based firm, and covers the 2025-26 fiscal year and the restatement of the 2024-25 fiscal year and ancillary services through FY 2029-2030. The work is set to be completed by Nov. 15.
The board approved the contract in a 5-0 vote.
Audit contract details
Interim Chief Financial Officer Kyna Koch said the cost is already accounted for in the district’s budget.
“And is actually less than we expected given our current situation — we were thrilled with the bid,” Koch said.
Koch said she believes this is Mauldin & Jenkins’ first school district audit in Kentucky, but that the firm works with school districts of more than 100,000 students throughout the Southeast.
“Quite frankly when I spoke to the folks at KDE they were thrilled because we’re running kind of short of auditors who want to do school district audits — so all around I think this was a win-win for everyone,” Koch said.
New finance director position
The board also approved a new job description for the position of Director of Finance. Acting Superintendent Dr. Bill Bradford said the title will replace two associate director positions.
“Which will not only save the school district money but it’s also going to streamline our work and align internal controls to make room for a more efficient unit,” Bradford said.
Koch said the position will be posted as soon as possible following the board’s approval.
Closed session
The board went into closed session for more than an hour to discuss pending investigations that could lead to employee discipline. When the board returned, it took no action and adjourned the meeting.
Copyright 2026 WKYT. All rights reserved.
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