This week, as the country was feeling good about its record medal haul in the Rio Olympics, suddenly consumer confidence appeared to be looking healthy too. But behind the rose-tinted sunglasses, a bubble of household debt was competing in a new kind of race with rival, the house price bubble, to see which will burst first. It’s neck and neck. Household debt is at terrifying levels. If consumer spending is on the rise, it’s likely that credit cards are a driving force. More than one in 10 househ...
Aug 26, 2016•52 min
This week This is Money editor Simon Lambert and consumer affairs editor Lee Boyce explain the peculiarities of inheritance tax - and then ask why on earth it has to be so complicated. The team also discuss the watering down of the once quite fantastic 123 account from Santander - and whether it's still a good deal. Lee has a moan about train fares and they ask whether Essex really is the happiest place to live in the UK. Follow us on Instagram @dmgnewmedia. Follow us on TikTok @dmgnewmedia Foll...
Aug 19, 2016•55 min
Yes, it's just what we've all been waiting for - another report on the banks.This week, the CMA delivered its recommendations to shake up the current account market. Were they any good? And should we even bother trying?After all, the banks themselves already offer us free money, savings account-smashing interest rates and lots of other goodies.Simon Lambert and Rachel Rickard Straus, join Georgie Frost in the Share radio studio for the This is Money Show to talk banks and much more.Also on today...
Aug 12, 2016•51 min
The whole financial system has failed us. Bankers not content with stealing £500bn in the financial crisis have just been handed billions more by their boss at the Bank of England in a desperate attempt to prop up the economy. We have the lowest level of home ownership for 30 years – to the point of ‘national emergency’. The economy is regressing. House prices are falling. The pound is collapsing. Foreign companies are queuing up to grab our cut-price industrial crown jewels. As well as printing...
Aug 05, 2016•49 min
It’s a well-known fact that everyone who works for a bank is a sociopath and thief who doesn’t sleep at night, not because they have a conscience, but because they’re vampires (ugly ones) feeding off the goodwill of the living. Ok, it’s not a fact. But the way some of them behave it’s not difficult to think bad things. This week, we expose Lloyds Bank as liars, look at just how sneaky NatWest has become with its charges and how Santander lured in millions of savers with a deal that’s suddenly pr...
Jul 29, 2016•55 min
‘Exploited! Barmy Army!’ ‘Exploited! Barmy Army!’ Come on? Who still remembers the early 80s war cry from post-punk nihilists, The Exploited? And who else thinks it could equally now apply to first of the big post-Brexit foreign business invasions – the Japanese takeover of British chip-making legend, Arm? With the pound down 20% against the yen since the referendum, heavily indebted Japenese company Softbank has made a massively overvalued offer to buy the crown jewels of mobile phone component...
Jul 22, 2016•51 min
This week we meet Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones to talk about his guitar collection and... oh, sorry, that's not true. However we dress this up, the truth is that this week's show and probably next week and the week after features more Brexit. Not too much though. Saved by of all things, Milton Keynes and more specifically its car parks. To kick off, Simon Lambert, Rebecca Rutt and George Frost take a reflective look over the week's events and wonder in the wake of Brexit... What's the po...
Jul 15, 2016•51 min
It’s started. You can’t decide to leave the world’s biggest trading block and not expect some serious financial consequences. Especially when the boys responsible for it ran away. The economics of Brexit are suddenly looking dark. We could be living under the cloud for many years. Already, just two weeks on from the referendum, we are beginning to see the prospect of falling investment, falling house prices and job insecurity. Householders, especially those in debt, need to prepare. Investors in...
Jul 08, 2016•53 min
In the run up to the ‘greatest constitutional crisis of modern times’ it was said that no one knew what would happen if we voted ourselves out of the EU. But like so much of the twaddle peddled by both campaigns’ liars-in-chief, this was also not the case. We did kind of know if only we had listened. The cool head at the Bank of England, Mark Carney, laid out the prospects in pretty clear and certain terms. And it is coming to pass. The majority of people, it seems, only listened to the lies. Yo...
Jul 01, 2016•53 min
Britain has voted to leave the EU in a historic referendum but what will Brexit mean for your money? As the world digested the 52-48 Leave vote, Simon Lambert and Lee Boyce, of This is Money, join Georgie Frost of Share Radio to discuss what next. The UK woke up a to a new era in its politics and markets have been see-sawing but beyond the short-term volatility, how will Brexit affect our finances? Follow us on Instagram @dmgnewmedia. Follow us on TikTok @dmgnewmedia Follow us on X @dmgnewmedia ...
Jun 24, 2016•37 min
Around the same time that once-loved High Street retailer BHS was tumbling into administration, the journalist Roberto Saviano, who spent more 10 years exposing the criminal workings of the Mafia, announced to the Hay Literary Festival that Britain was the most corrupt country on the planet. Our financial affairs, it seems are being eyed with interest and suspicion around the world. What better way to celebrate then, than to have another high-profile inquiry into the shenanigans behind the BHS c...
Jun 17, 2016•53 min
It's not been a great week for big business? Sir Philip Green and the bosses at BHS have seen even greater criticism and Sports Direct's Mike Ashley was hauled in front of MPs. So is our modern of big business capitalism going badly wrong? Have we built an economy where it's low pay and bad conditions for the workers but huge rewards for the bosses? Do we need to worry about inequality? Simon Lambert and Rachel Rickard Straus, of This is Money, join Georgie Frost, of Share Radio, in the studio t...
Jun 10, 2016•50 min
Walk around town centres in Britain and what do you see?A few chain stores, a Poundland or two, betting shops, charity shops, lots of empty shops, Amazon delivery vans, tumbleweed? We don't shop in the High Street like we used to. Even Poundland has a website with free delivery for orders over £50 (OK, that's a lot of sweets). The High Street has just got a little bit deader with BHS and Austin Reed the latest casualties. What went so wrong? Is it sad, simply inevitable or perhaps good news that...
Jun 03, 2016•55 min
This week on the show you’ve all been waiting for, broadcasting legend Georgie Frost, This is Money editor Simon Lambert and personal finance editor Rachel Rickard-Straus take a peak under the coffin lid of inheritance. It can get nasty when grief and greed meet in the financial graveyard. So what can you do if you feel you’re being ripped off by siblings and long-lost lovers? And what’s the best way to make a clear will of your own intentions when you step off planet Earth for the last time? Al...
May 27, 2016•51 min
Have banks been let off the hook again? That's been the reaction to the CMA report into retail banking. In this week's This is Money podcast with Share Radio, Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce and Georgie Frost look at whether we should be doing more to break-up the big banks and why many years on from the rip-off bank charges battle, they've just been told to clean up their act. Also on this week's show we discuss the dark art of mortgage affordability calculators - and why some lenders seem to offer th...
May 20, 2016•54 min
If Britain were to leave the EU, it MIGHT prove to be an economic disaster for us. The Bank of England governor Mark Carney, whose job it is to point things like this out, and other commentators, have said so. And the leavers don't like it. Interest rates, house prices and all the other things that make Britain's dinner parties great might be affected. Is this just politics dressed up as economics? Or should we be worried? Simon Lambert and Rachel Rickard-Straus of This is Money and newly crowne...
May 13, 2016•50 min
We’re not building enough homes – about 100,000 too few every year. It makes housing unaffordable. To ‘help’, Barclays bank has decided to step in and offer 100% mortgages to first-time buyers. How quaintly 2007 is that? The other catch is that parents have to stump up some of their nest egg as part of the deal. Is this a good thing? Simon Lambert and Lee Boyce of This is Money and Share Radio’s Georgie Frost investigate. Also on the show: Just how big is the business of being a parent with chil...
May 06, 2016•55 min
The This is Money team along with Share Radio talk about BHS , and its future, what's happening in Brazil and 12 financial lessons you should teach an 18 year-old. Follow us on Instagram @dmgnewmedia. Follow us on TikTok @dmgnewmedia Follow us on X @dmgnewmedia Email us hello@dmgmedia.co.uk Text us 020 7938 6000. Hosts: Georgie Frost, Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce, Helen Crane Producer: Georgie Frost Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Apr 29, 2016•53 min
A buy-to-let boom in the run-up to the stamp duty hike for landlords and second homeowners triggered the biggest distortion of the market recorded, says the Council of Mortgage Lenders. So, with one tax hike now in and another on the way in the form of cuts to mortgage interest relief against income tax on rent, has buy-to-let peaked? Follow us on Instagram @dmgnewmedia. Follow us on TikTok @dmgnewmedia Follow us on X @dmgnewmedia Email us hello@dmgmedia.co.uk Text us 020 7938 6000. Hosts: Georg...
Apr 28, 2016•10 min
This episode is dedicated to Prince. We were already planning a bit of a musical theme after a reader emailed This is Money to ask if she was entitled to a refund for an AC/DC concert. She no longer wanted to attend because the lead singer Brian Johnson has been replaced with the infamously unreliable Axl Rose. But Prince’s death was a shock. We’re all fans. Our website is purple! RIP. It’s also been, we think, a bad week for buy-to-let. Following a record splurge on buy-to-let mortgages we disc...
Apr 22, 2016•52 min
…everything to do with finance is beset with problems. From insurance companies that spew policy small print at terminally patients to avoid paying out, through mobile phone companies with the customer services skills of a three-minute-old turtle scuttling away from the first sign of a phone call, to the tax that few understand, even fewer pay but everyone seems to hate - inheritance tax. This week we’re looking at the problem of inheritance tax. We’re looking at some others as well but because ...
Apr 15, 2016•55 min
Tax is suddenly exciting news. For normal people, it’s the start of a new tax year with another dump of - some ill-conceived - changes from Chancellor George Osborne to deal with. For the disgustingly rich and famous, thanks to a leaky law firm, details have been emerging of their attempts at avoiding paying into state coffers around the world. Even David Cameron is implicated. And after some blithering attempts to divert attention from his involvement there are calls for him to resign. Theoreti...
Apr 08, 2016•53 min
In the way that worried nuclear bunker owners are probably stock-piling food as the reality of a President Trump dawns on them, so the Bank of England is preparing for the financial equivalent. The bank that has its finger on the financial pulse of the nation is worried. Worried enough to create a ‘what if…’ model that incorporates total financial meltdown, a collapse in the value of housing and the end of banking as we know it. It maybe the stuff of nightmares but it’s also what This is Money e...
Apr 01, 2016•1 hr
This week might go down as the one Chancellor George Osborne got found out. It’s not the first time one of his Budgets turned into a fiasco, but this time his U-turn – on slashing payments to disabled people - is going to cost £4bn. When Parliament convened to discuss how on earth this was going to be paid for, he didn’t show up. And we’re still without an explanation. We pay our taxes to enjoy a better life in a civilised society – not to allow politicians to play games of political manoeuvring...
Mar 24, 2016•53 min
Tax cuts and the Lifetime Isa were the giveways in George Osborne's Budget, but will they help you? Simon Lambert and Lee Boyce, of This is Money, join Georgie Frost, of Share Radio, to take the Chancellor's plans apart in this week’s This is Money Show and try to work out whether it was a good, bad or indifferent Budget. The outlook for the economy, the Budget winners and losers and the thorny question of whether a Lifetime Isa beats a pension are all up for debate. (Along with a look at some o...
Mar 18, 2016•55 min
The Chancellor, George Osborne, has earned a reputation for leaks, U-Turns and unworkable tweaks to our taxes. A captain of chaos, some might say. His recent achievement, killing the cash Isa and replacing it with a tax-free limit on ALL savings accounts, will be a particularly memorable mess if anyone ever works out how it’s going to work. He’s got another Budget speech planned for Wednesday 16 March. For once, we don’t know much about what’s going to be in it. This is a bad sign. There’s no ge...
Mar 11, 2016•53 min
Everything you thought you knew about life, the Isa and everything is wrong. Modern life is amazing; we’ve never had it so good. We have technology and prosperity above anything anyone a few decades ago could have possibly imagined. And we have a welfare state to look after those who inevitably fall off the merry-go-round of progress. These are the conclusions of the arguably the world’s greatest businessman, Warren Buffett. So why are our politicians, bankers and bonkers billionaires so hell-be...
Mar 04, 2016•54 min
Britain still holds a stake in two of its biggest banks, Lloyds and RBS, but how bad are they?We take a look at whether the banks' results, whether they are cleaning up their act and whether they are worth investing in. Meanwhile,...It was the best of times… it is now the most uncertain of times. With four months to go to before the people of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the 2 million expats living in continental Europe vote whether to stay in or out of the European single mark...
Feb 26, 2016•51 min
What would Brexit mean for the UK economy? It is said Great Britain used to rule the world. Today we’re just a small part - albeit an important one - of Europe, with a few remaining outposts - most notably a couple of bailiwicks in France, an island in Argentina and a rock in Spain. And now our role in Europe is under threat. Or is it? Do we accept what some vocal business leaders have said this week and remain a loyal insider of this massive single-market economy? Or do we vote with our old-fas...
Feb 19, 2016•53 min
Share prices around the world this week have been falling like dominoes in a record-breaking dominoes falling over attempt. London loses 2% in a day, New York opens and falls 2% then in Asia the sell-off continues, slashing 2% off its market value. London opens again and mirrors the previous losing sessions in Asia and the USA and so it goes on. And on. The FTSE 100 index of leading UK shares found itself at a three and a half year low. But why? Central bankers whose job is supposed to be to pre...
Feb 12, 2016•52 min
