Personal finance may not be a sexy subject but it’s an important one.

Money is what makes everything else in our lives possible.

If we can manage it wisely – choosing the right products for our needs, whether that’s mortgages, credit cards, bank accounts, insurance or whatever – we can make it go a lot further.

But in order to make the right decisions about our financial lives, we need to know the facts.

We need access to straightforward, accurate and unbiased information about the products, providers and issues that matter.

What we don’t need is jargon, hype or sales pitches.

There is a huge amount of money spent by the banks and other financial service providers on marketing their financial products.

Quite a lot of this goes on advertising in the media. But this can generate a conflict of interest.

The public trusts the media to keep them informed and warn them of potential problems.

However should any brave journalist dare to criticise one of the advertised products the response of the product provider will quite likely be to withhold their advertising spend from that newspaper. This is never made public. But it happens.

In this day and age the “bottom line” has too often become more important than editorial integrity. The increasingly large media corporations seem to give their administrators more power than the editors. This makes it more likely that a critical journalist is silenced rather than risk a few tawdry shillings of the mega corps profit.

So to counter the potentially dangerous imbalance, personal-finance-views.co.uk gives the journalists the opportunity to express their real views without fear of censorship.

In our postings, we won’t be giving financial advice.

We’ll simply be sharing opinions on subjects we think everyone should know about and understand.

If someone, or something, annoys us, We’ll be telling you about it. And if we think a particular firm or initiative deserves praise, I’ll be giving it.

We’ll also aim to point you in the direction of other sites and sources of clear, reliable personal finance information.

We hope you’ll get involved too.

If you agree with what we have to say, add a post of your own saying so. If you think we’re talking a load of hot air, add one saying that.

This is your forum as much as ours.

It’s a place for you to share your views and experiences – good and bad – of the UK personal finance marketplace, for the benefit of everyone else who’d like to make their financial life run a bit more smoothly.