How much money will you be spending on presents this Christmas? According to the various news releases that have landed on the Money desk over the past few weeks, if you are Mr or Mrs average it could be £142, or £311, or any one of a seemingly random series of numbers in between. It seems nearly every bank and financial services company has carried out some kind of survey, and none of them have come out with the same answer.

But I guess that's hardly surprising. If you asked people at the start of the month what they were planning to spend in total, they would probably have come up with a fairly rational figure. Allocating, say, £20 a head to each person and multiplying that by the number of people they were buying for.

But as the run up to the big day gets shorter, and the high street more frenzied, the actual spending starts to rise. Ask someone on Christmas Eve what they expect to spend - as they prepare to panic buy over-priced toiletries or spend top whack on an iPod nano because they've left it too late to shop around - and the average will probably be much higher.

Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and it's up to you to help them out. A selection of the best answers will appear in Saturday's paper.

Is there any way I can help apart from working in a charity shop? Photograph: Don McPhee

This week's question: I'm planning to do more for charity in 2008. I don't have a lot of spare cash to give away and am wondering what else I can do instead? I'm newly retired, fit, numerate, personable and eager to make a difference. Any ideas outside the rather obvious charity shop work?

Pensioners protest in 2005. Photograph: Martin Argles

Dear Gordon Brown,

Just a quick note to say thank you for the fabulous Christmas present you have provided to the 140,000 people who lost their pensions when their companies went bust and their pension schemes collapsed.

It will make a huge difference to the thousands of people who can now retire straight away because they are already 60 or over, take a lump sum of cash on retirement and feel confident their widows will get a decent pension and that their pensions will now keep up with inflation.

As you have frequently pointed out, these people have, in theory, had access to income from the Financial Assistance Scheme before - although the vast majority couldn't actually get any money out of it, either because they didn't qualify or because they weren't old enough. And even when they could, it didn't pay a very generous amount.

Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and it's up to you to help them out. A selection of the best answers will appear in Saturday's paper.

Is getting a lodger worth the inconvenience it can cause? Photograph: DonMcPhee/Guardian

This week's question: We're a family of four and our finances are tight at the moment. Filling our empty spare room with a lodger paying even £60 a week would help hugely. Will sharing a kitchen/bathroom work, or will it end in tears? Are some lodgers better than others. Help!

Some flood-hit residents in Hull are still waiting for work to be completed on their homes. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty

Nothing short of disgusting. That's how a man who is working with families who were flooded in Hull last summer describes the treatment they are receiving at the hands of some insurers.

In a piece that will appear in The Observer's Cash section this Sunday, Peter Hendy who works for Hull City Council on insurance issues says some of the country's biggest insurers have been the worst offenders when it comes to carrying out work on flood-hit houses. "There is no consistency between insurance companies; the best ones do a thorough job while the worst ones skimp on everything," he says.

Britain is lifting restrictions on TV advertising for casinos, bookmakers and betting websites. Photograph: Getty Images/Christopher Furlong

They're called "pokies" and they are the most depressing sight for any visitor to Australia. They are the rows and rows of high-stakes gaming machines found in virtually every pub in the country, made worse by noisy TV screens broadcasting 'Tab' betting on the horses.

Gambling addiction is at epidemic levels, and the worst addicts are the authorities themselves, now grubbily dependent on the tax revenues that gush in from the pokies. Yet we in Britain (despite abandoning the supercasino) are merrily relaxing our gambling laws, closing our eyes to the evidence from across the globe of the appalling impact it has on society and families.

Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and it's up to you to help them out. A selection of the best answers will appear in Saturday's paper.

This week's question: I've been offered a better job on a significantly higher salary, but it will mean spending three days a week away from my wife and young children. For the first time we'd have some spare cash and would be able to take decent holidays. Will I lose out in other ways?

Would you be willing to pay more council tax in order to improve recycling facilities? Photograph: Graeme Robertson

In Observer Cash this week, Jon Robins writes about how some councils are failing to make the most of recycling opportunities. Although many of us are willing to spend our evenings happily sorting plastic from glass and cardboard from paper, local authorities are not willing to do the same. Instead, they chuck it into one big container with everyone else's rubbish and sort the whole thing out later - a process called commingling.

This just isn't good enough. According to a newly created alliance - the Campaign for Real Recycling - up to 20% of commingled waste is so contaminated it can't be reused. This compares to 1% when the waste is kept separate.

Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and it's up to you to help them out. A selection of the best answers will appear in Saturday's paper.

Would you let your child take a paper round? Photograph: Shout/Rex Features

This week's question: My 15-year-old son is desperate to earn some money of his own and wants to do a paper round starting at 6am. While I want him to learn the value of money, I'm concerned that his schoolwork will suffer because he's so tired. Am I worrying unnecessarily?

You are more likely to find Lord Lucan working in the press office than you are to get another security breach - that's what an insider at HM Revenue & Customs told me on Friday following news that the department had lost the data of 25 million people. But the words look a little hollow after revelations at the weekend that at least six more discs have been lost by the department, and a story in today's Daily Mirror about a father receiving another person's details in a letter from HMRC.

It's hard to believe the revenue's promises that controls now being put in place are tight enough to protect us, but what can be done to improve the situation?

When a burglar stole a laptop containing details of up to 11m customer accounts from the house of a Nationwide building society employee, the society was fined just under £1m. But the revenue cannot be fined for breaching the data protection act - as a government body it is exempt from prosecution.