But wait... there's less!

My wife and I have recently been travelling and my mini pack of cards come in quite handy. I can fit a whole game of solitaire on one of those tiny tray tables. One pile fits neatly inside the cup holder, while I can hold a hand of cards with just a thumb and a finger. The actual card size is 5.2 x 3.7 cm. I can fit two of these cards onto a 'standard' playing card. Here is one of my cards sitting in the middle of my palm. As an item by itself this is not a huge deal. Yes it means I can squeeze a game onto a travel tray table. But I'm showing it mainly as another example where thinking differently can make things better. Another example of where bigger is not better, but less is more. PS. This is the first of my travel series after a recent trip. Subscribe above or follow on facebook for the rest of the series.

Buying a house can cost a lot of money - and that has consequences. It's the reason that a lot of us are working so hard, working at jobs we hate or working into old age. (Remember Linda ?). It's because we need the cash. One way to pay less for a home is to look around for a better home loan. The ABC's finance expert Alan Kohler recently illustrated how similar the home loan rates are at Australia's "big four" banks. I added the green square after doing some research. My research The rates shown on the TV are called standard variable rates (more on that later). I checked up the rates of some alternatives to the "big four". The bracketed numbers are the comparison rate. More on that in a minute. Bank Australia 4.82 (4.86) Bank of Queensland 4.56 (4.69) CUA 4.51 (4.52) Bendigo Bank 4.43 (4.72) depending on the amount borrowed. None of these even get to 5%. Some are almost a full percent lower than the "big four". The average home