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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.
There's not long left until the end of the tax year - and that means it is time to sort your Isa if you haven't already. This year's Isa allowance runs out as the tax year ticks over on 6 April and it pays to get everything you can into the tax-free shelter for savings and investments. But what are the important things you need to know, the tips for making the most of your Isa - and why does it matter more this year than it has done before. On this Isa saving and investing special podcast, Georg...
Where there's a will, there's often a grumble... and potentially a full on dispute. The amount of money involved in inheritances derived from even modest homes these days can be life changing and when someone feels they have been unfairly cut out or not given their dues, arguments can ensue. There's been a sharp rise in inheritance disputes, but why are they occurring, what can you do to protect your legacy and would you argue if you thought you'd been treated unfairly? That's up for discussion ...
Inflation is theoretically running out of steam but there's one essential that's still going up in price rapidly: food. Even as energy prices and other recent highly inflationary items slow a bit, the cost of food seems to show no let up - with reports reporting inflation-busting rises. What is going on here? How much have food prices risen, why have they gone up so much, are supermarkets or brand-name makers profiteering, and will costs ever come back down? Georgie Frost, Angharad Carrick and S...
Are we nearly there yet? The Bank of England hiked interest rates again this week, adding 0.5 per cent to take base rate to 4 per cent. That’s a level that it was almost unthinkable we’d reach so quickly a year ago, but rates have gone up hard and fast. The questions now are will base rate stall and when will it come back down again? But while the Bank of England has sent rates up like a rocket, it’s forecast show that they will only fall like a feather. On this week’s podcast, Georgie Frost, Ta...
Those aged between 43 and 54 may have been concerned by rumours this week that the Government is planning to increase the state pension age to 68 much sooner than planned . Officially, the rise to 68 is set to happen between 2044 and 2046, but ministers allegedly want to bring forward the change to 2035 with the policy being floated for inclusion in the March Budget. It comes as warnings have been sounded that those retiring in future decades generations will face a gap between the income that p...
An astonishing idea for an Isa tax raid was outlined by the Resolution Foundation this week, with the proposal that tax-free savings and investments should be capped at £100,000. No more aspiring to be an Isa millionaire, it would be £100k and out under this plan. It said that the nominal money out toward not taxing Isa interest, gains and dividends should instead go in the direction of encouraging those without savings to build up a pot. Is that a good idea, would it be a fairer way of doing th...
What do you picture in retirement? Is it an early exit from the rat race to travel the world, a gradual step back and a bit of golf, or working until state pension age and then spending some time treating the grandchildren? We will all have a different image in our heads of what our retirement years might look like, but whatever that is it is important to think about another question: could you afford to do those things? While most of us will be saving into a pension, we often have little idea h...
The New Year has arrived and with it promises of inflation falling and a ray of hope on energy bills. But even if Rishi Sunak halves inflation, as he claims he will, it would still be running at 5 per cent and his promise to get Britain back to growth may prove harder than the simple maths that sees inflation slow. Meanwhile, a slowdown in the rise of the cost of living doesn't mean things will get cheaper and the better energy price forecasts will still see costs at more than double what they w...
Tumultous is a word that doesn't really do 2022 justice. Most people were looking forward to a year of calm as the Covid pandemic faded, but instead got turmoil and the cost of living crisis. In the UK, we mixed the global unrest dealt by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the inflation spike, with our own dose of political instability. A year in which you get through three Prime Ministers and four Chancellors is no ordinary one and the mini-Budget chaos led to the UK's own little self-inflicted f...
First we had the great resignation and now we may be seeing a new trend emerge 'unretirement'. Amid the turmoil of the pandemic, Britain's economy threw up the puzzle of a dramatic rise in economic inactivity - as about 565,000 people dropped out of the workforce to a position where they were neither working or looking for work. These missing workers aren't claiming unemployment benefits but are somehow getting by under their own steam. The phenonomen is great enough that the ONS and Bank of Eng...
The Bank of England has hiked base rate from 0.1 per cent to 3.5 per cent in the space of 12 months, a move that would have been considered unthinkable not so long ago. But with inflation looking as if it has peaked, the economy probably already in recession, households and businesses feeling the squeeze, have we nearly reached the end of the rate hikes? When the mini-Budget chaos struck there was a belief that the Bank may have to go as high as 5.5 to 6 per cent with interest rates, now expecta...
The mortgage crunch has stalled the pandemic property boom and sent house prices down, but could they fall 20 per cent? The risk of a severe house price downturn of that magnitude was flagged by Rightmove founder and property market veteran Harry Hill. Hill’s CV includes setting up property giant Rightmove and selling estate agency group Countrywide for £1billion a year before the 2008 banking crisis. Hill told the The Mail on Sunday and This is Money: 'My view on the housing market is that it's...
Many people have not had to worry about paying tax on their savings and investments for some time. The advent of the £1,000 personal savings allowance combined with savings rates near record lows meant basic rate taxpayers would need big cash pots to incur 20 per cent tax on their interest. Meanwhile, even higher rate taxpayers with their lower £500 personal savings allowance needed reasonably large cash pots to pay 40 per cent tax on their interest. Many investors also didn't need to worry too ...
Savings and mortgage rates rocketed after what must now always be known as the 'ill-fated mini-Budget', but even as the Bank of England continues to raise rates have they already peaked. The top fixed rate savings deals have edged down from their highest levels - a five-year fix can no longer be had above 5 per cent, for example, while the best two year fix is at 4.75 per cent. So, if you want to lock into a good savings deal, should you grab one now? Or did rates simply race ahead of the Bank o...
‘Jeremy Hunt’s mini-Budget was like the tax part of the Corbyn manifesto with none of the benefits of the extra spending.’ That was This is Money editor Simon Lambert’s verdict on the Chancellor’s tax-hiking spree that painted a miserable picture of the years ahead, hit higher earners, and hammered small investors. In a blizzard of hikes – through threshold drops and stealth tax freezes – Hunt worked his way through a painful Autumn Statement, where good news was thin on the ground. The silver l...
‘If they could tax the air you breathe they’d do it.’ That age-old moan about taxes going up has sprung to mind over the past week, as rumours about pretty much any tax you can think of being hiked were spread about. So many kites were flown about potential tax rises that even taxing selling your own home and bringing back the 50p rate were floated as potential Autumn Statement ideas troubling Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak’s minds. If all this came to pass it would surely become known as ‘the ever...
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.
The tense situation between tenants and landlords is escalating: the former have seen rents spiral but the latter have faced a big jump in costs jump too. Meanwhile regulation has become a bugbear between the two sides, is there not enough of it or too much? What can be done to improve things in the rental market and have we come down too hard on buy-to-let? That’s the question asked on this week’s podcast, as Georgie Frost, Helen Crane and Simon Lambert debate the problems in the rental market....
There's a new Chancellor in town and he means business. Serious business. After Kwasi Kwarteng tried to spread some joy to get growth going with tax cuts for all, Jeremy Hunt and the fun police have stepped in to stop the markets freaking out. The fallout from Kwarteng's ill-fated mini-budget has now claimed his Chancellorship and Liz Truss's Premiership - with Britain achieving the rare feat of losing two Prime Ministers in less than four months. But with Hunt's stern reversal of the tax cuts i...
If you were asked to name a world-class place to surf, a field near Bristol isn’t the first location that would spring to mind. But this slice of the English countryside is home to The Wave, an artificial surfing lake that is one of just a handful in the world to use cutting edge technology and was the first of its kind. The Wave is the fruit of the ambitions of Nick Hounsfield, a pioneering British entrepreneur who wanted to build a unique business that had a positive social impact, with improv...
When gilts hit the headlines it’s a clear sign that trouble has not only been brewing but has been unleashed. Government bond yields only tend to break through into the mainstream when things aren’t going well and they have been firmly in the spotlight since Kwasi Kwarteng’s ill-fated mini-budget. But what is a gilt, why does its yield matter, what’s that got to do with prices and why do we worry about such things? On this podcast, Georgie Frost, Lee Boyce and Simon Lambert, take a step back fro...
Rocketing rates have sent the average two and five-year fixed rate mortgage through the 6 per cent barrier. This is a level that would have been considered unthinkable a year ago, when there were 50 mortgage deals on the market at below 1 per cent. The Bank of England belatedly playing catching up with inflation has sent base rate from 0.1 per cent last December to 2.25 per cent now - and with inflation far from tamed and the US Federal Reserve going in all guns blazing on monetary policy, rates...
As markets went haywire and the Bank of England staged a bond market intervention earlier this week, it felt like a mini-financial crisis had been triggered. It has been an incredibly turbulent week for the UK economy as the Bank of England stepped in to protect pension funds, the pound hit a record low against the dollar before rebounding and lenders pulled mortgage deals to re-price them at far higher rates. So, is the UK economy in crisis… again? How much is the Chancellor's 'mini' Budget to ...
In this excerpt from the This is Money podcast, Simon Lambert and Georgie Frost discuss why the mini-Budget has combined with last week's interest rates decision to send the pound tumbling and UK government borrowing costs spiking. Find the This is Money podcast's full look at the mini-Budget and what it means for you here 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, Si...
Britain's new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng delivered a blistering mini-Budget this week that was anything that small. A wave of tax cuts were unleashed. Some had been heavily trailed, such as spiking the National Insurance hike and a stamp duty reduction, but there were also two rabbits out of the hat: a cut in basic rate income tax to 19p from April and abolishing the 45p income tax rate too. Those tax cuts joined a wave of spending commitments, most notably the huge energy price guarantee bailout...
The Bank of England is tipped to raise interest rates by at least 0.5 per cent this week, but the pound fell to a 37-year low last week - reaching $1.351, a level not seen since 1985. That comes against a backdrop of inflation edging down slightly to 9.9 per cent - taking Britain out of the double-digit inflation club - with a colossal rescue plan to save households and businesses from spiralling energy prices about to kick in. The details on that energy price guarantee rushed out by new Prime M...
This is Money's pensions guru Steve Webb racked up his 300th column answering readers' questions this week. Over the past six years, Steve, with the help of pension and investing editor Tanya Jefferies, has been guiding readers through the retirement maze - with his column regularly among the most popular stories of the week. To celebrate his 300th column, Steve joins Tanya, Georgie Frost and Simon Lambert for a special podcast episode to answer your questions. It's a dive into much of what you ...
Belts are already being tightened but as bills head even higher more people will look to save where they can. But are there some things that you should avoid doing or cutting back on at all costs? Campaigns to get people not to pay their bills have obvious flaws, but what about only paying for the energy you use, diverting your pension saving elsewhere or cutting back on ditching saving or investing. Some are at breaking point and will have little choice but to do some of these things, but what ...
Inflation is soaring and if predictions are correct, it would result in the Consumer Prices Index measure hitting 13 per cent this autumn. That could result in a state pension rise of around £1,000 a year to £10,900 while even at the current level of 10.1 per cent it would be upped to £10,600. However, last year, the triple lock was scrapped. Would a new Prime Minister dare do the same this time around? Lee Boyce, Tanya Jefferies and Georgie Frost discuss. Inflation is hitting those with pension...
