Buying Guides
How to tell a genuine sale from a price that was raised first
A discount is a claim about a previous price, and previous prices are easy to arrange. Checking whether a reduction is real takes about a minute and changes what you buy.
Emily Watson
Emily reads the fine print. She covers health, beauty and the financial products where terms and conditions do the real work, translating them into plain sentences you can act on. Her pieces tend to start by narrowing the question — what you actually need the thing to do — before they get anywhere near a shortlist. She would rather recommend nothing than recommend loosely.
8 articles
Money & Finance
Savings accounts and the headline rate that quietly expires
A large share of savings accounts pay their advertised rate for a limited period and then drop to something far lower. The drop is disclosed, and almost nobody reads it.
Health & Beauty
Sunscreen for daily wear, judged on whether you will actually reapply it
The best sunscreen is the one still on your face at four in the afternoon. Texture, finish and how it behaves over makeup decide that, and none of them appear on the bottle.
Home & Kitchen
The best cookware for a small, badly ventilated kitchen
In a kitchen with a weak extractor and no window, the pan that sears beautifully is the pan that fills the flat with smoke. Here is what to buy instead.
Fashion & Style
How to work out your actual size when every brand disagrees
Clothing sizes are not a standard and never were. Measuring yourself once and learning to read a garment chart turns online shopping from a lottery into something predictable.
Electronics
Wired versus wireless: when the cable is still the right answer
Wireless won the argument for portability and lost it almost everywhere else. At a fixed desk, a cable costs less, sounds better and never needs charging before a call.
Health & Beauty
How to build a skincare routine that survives a busy week
A ten-step routine performed twice is worth less than a three-step routine performed daily. Building for your worst week rather than your best is the whole technique.
Money & Finance
Index funds versus savings: where the boring answer wins
These are not competing products so much as tools for different timeframes. The question is not which returns more, but when you will need the money and what you can tolerate.