As a regular flyer with Ryanair I thought nothing it did could possibly annoy me any more. That was until it announced this week that it was increasing its online baggage charge from €15 to €20 per checked in bag for July and August. If I want to fly somewhere with my wife and two kids that's an extra €40 on the cost of our return flights. Is there any way of avoiding this sneaky charge?

RAY

Ray is right. Even by Ryanair's own standards, its decision to increase baggage charges, but only for the months of July and August when most people go on holidays, is deeply cynical. This effectively represents a €10 per passenger price increase for a return flight for the peak months of July and August.

It kind of makes a nonsense of Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary's endless bitching about the alleged iniquities of the Government's €10 air travel tax.

While Ryanair's mouthpieces endlessly parrot assurances that over 70pc of its passengers fly without checked-in baggage, who is going to head off for a week or a fortnight in the sun without a bag or two, especially if you have children?

At this stage it's difficult to resist the conclusion that, with the no-frills airline now apparently seriously considering reconfiguring its planes so that it can charge its customers to use in the in-flight toilets, Ryanair's determination to squeeze every last penny from its customers borders on the pathological.

So how does Ray avoid this extra charge?

Well the good news is that Aer Lingus has, so far, resisted the temptation to follow the Ryanair example and its charge for baggage checked in online remains at €15 per item all year round.

With new Aer Lingus boss Christoph Mueller, having declared his intention of abandoning his predecessor's policy of becoming a Ryanair me-too, keeping its baggage charge at €15 all year round, it would represent a point of differentiation between Aer Lingus and Ryanair.

Of course, if Ray wants to avoid baggage charges altogether, he could go one step further. Those of us over a certain age still remember a time when most people could only afford to get off the island travelling by ferry.

Maybe it's time to head back to the future.

Not alone do you not have to pay anything extra for your baggage, ferries are also exempt from the travel tax.

Unfortunately not even the ferry companies are immune to the sneaky charges bug with Irish Ferries having a €6 fee for bookings made using a credit card.

I am thinking of investing in a pension policy. With pension funds now doing well again is this the time to sign up for a pension plan?

Gillian

The noughties were a decade Irish pension fund managers would rather forget. In the 10 years to the end of 2009, the average Irish pension averaged annual growth of just 0.3pc.

If it hadn't been for the tax relief on their contributions, most members of defined contribution pension funds would have been better off putting their pension contributions in the Post Office.

While there has been an improvement over the past year, with the average Irish pension fund growing by 36pc in the year to the end of March, this recent improved performance is doing no more than cancelling out the previous years of under-performance.

These "performance" figures illustrate the dilemma facing Gillian and everyone else considering a pension.

While the Government tells us that we must save more towards our retirement, the returns from doing so are utterly pathetic.

If they want to sell us more pensions, then the pension firms need to seriously raise their game.

- Dan White