This Is Money Show

As banks went kaput a decade ago, the safety of our savings was thrust into the limelight. Most had never considered that cash in the bank was at risk and knew little about the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. When Icesave blew up a year after the Northern Rock collapse things changed dramatically. We should all be up to speed now, but how safe are your savings? On this week’s podcast, Simon Lambert, Tanya Jefferies and Georgie Frost we look at savings protection but also how you could end up losing money by sticking with cash. Ironically, worries about banks a decade ago triggered a flight to safety and more people stashing money in savings accounts rather than investing. But had people invested as Lehman Brothers collapsed they would have more than doubled their money by now. Taking the risk as the world appeared to be falling apart would have been the right move. Yet, at that point the stock market was already down 20% and fell by that again before it hit the bottom, so how many would have bee

What do you do about the looming inheritance tax threat when you live with elderly parents along with your own child and the home is worth nearly £10million – and you want to continue living there? It sounds like a champagne problem, but IHT does hit ordinary people – including one reader who admits to being relatively cash poor. How can they make sure they aren't turfed out due to inheritance tax? This is Money editor Simon Lambert, assistant editor Lee Boyce and host Georgie Frost discuss the IHT issue. Elsewhere, we discuss the big responsibility of being a trustee with a pot of cash to invest for a younger sibling and why it is never too late to start sorting your pension. With a number of big firms suffering hacks, including British Airways, we discuss what people can do if they are a victim and how to prevent becoming one. And finally, we talk about electric cars as sales continue to rise with the UK pushing for an entirely zero-emissions road network by 2040.

What would you teach a student about money? It’s almost time for a fresh year of students to start university and as they find their feet with new friends and a new way of studying they will also face another challenge – being in charge of their financial life. But we don’t have to send them off ill-equipped to deal with that, a few helpful tips can stop students ending up down to their last few pounds before the clocks even change. And as well as offering guidance, it’s perhaps even more useful to tell students about where you went wrong with money at university, or in your younger life. On this week’s podcast Simon Lambert and Georgie Frost have some helpful advice for students and a few candid tales of the money mistakes they made. Also, on this week’s show, we discuss child trust funds and how the free money dished out to children has often been lost track of but could be a nice little windfall. And we put Help to Buy under the microscope. Asking whether it will be tweaked, ditched, or t

Established banks, challengers, fintech firms and payments providers – they all have one thing in common: none of them are immune to IT problems, glitches, hacks, meltdowns or customer service failures. Yet the momentum towards going cashless shows no signs of slowing down - but is Britain ready for it? In this week's podcast, assistant editor Lee Boyce along with host Georgie Frost talk about the future of payments. Elsewhere, we reveal what went 'wronga' at Wonga and why Lloyds Bank is now recording all product openings in branch. We also discuss the potential Aston Martin float, which could value the firm at £5billion. Lastly, motoring editor Rob Hull talks about two car brands from different ends of the spectrum – Ferrari versus Lada. A 250 GTO sold for a record auction price recently while a Lada could sell for £75,000 – yes, a Lada. Could it be a miracle?

Buying a home, whether it is your first-time or not, can be a daunting experience. From the initial hunt trawling through property websites, to finally getting the keys, it can be an arduous process with plenty of tricky hurdles to overcome. In this housing podcast special, This is Money editor Simon Lambert, assistant editor Lee Boyce and host Georgie Frost talk all things property. We have tips on taking the temperature of the local property market, working out what you can really afford, what to pay, how much to offer, how to do it and what happens next. We also reveal some of our personal experiences and tricks we learnt along the way to help you with the process.

The Government's £11billion scheme to install 53million smart meters in homes and small businesses by the end of 2020 has been plagued by problems. Now it appears there may be more hidden nasties. A wireless tech expert says they have the power to take over customer accounts.  In theory, this means suppliers could cut off a household's electricity or gas without visiting the property, add debt to a meter, remove credit on an account, change the charge levied or turn the meter into a pre-payment device. Authority to use these functions has yet to be granted – but it all sounds a little big brotherish. In this week's podcast Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce and Georgie Frost question, is it time to rethink the smart meter push?  Also on this week's show, we talk secondary tickets after Ticketmaster axed Get Me In and Seatwave, discuss what to do with £10,000 in order to get onto the property ladder and the motivation you need to prevent becoming a CV cliché.

From pubs to hotels and shops to petrol stations, Britain has gone parking mad. Private land owners have been signed up across the country by operators, who stick in automatic numberplate recognition cameras and then dish out tickets to motorists who stop there. We’ve had countless stories of over-zealous fines and this week Lee Boyce revealed how he fought back after he was sent a ticket for stopping briefly at a BP petrol station. What allows all this to happen is the DVLA selling people’s details to car park operators who snap their numberplate. So is it time to fight back against this parking madness? Why has it got so bad? And how do you beat a ticket? In this week’s podcast, Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce, Rachel Rickard Straus and Georgie Frost talk parking tickets. Also, on this week’s show, the banks doing the dirty on savers after the rate rise, how to make your child a pension millionaire and the curious case of Aldi and the food producers accusing it of copying them.

Interest rates have finally risen above 0.5 per cent for the first time in almost a decade. The Bank of England has decided that the UK's economy is healthy enough to finally get above the financial crisis emergency level, but was the hike a wise move or a mistake. Of those in favour, some have been calling for a rate rise for a long time, others believe we must try to get back to normal before recession hits. But those opposed believe even this tiny shift up to a very low base rate level of 0.75 per cent, is a gamble too far from the Monetary Policy Committee's ratesetters. On this week's podcast, Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce and Georgie Frost dive into the rate rise.  Why did the bank hike rates, who will it affect, why do interest rates even move up and down and how did they end up at 0.5 per cent in the first place? Also on this week's show, Lee introduces us to the world of micro-saving, we discuss the case of the financial adviser who suddenly ask for £10,000 more and Simon tries to show h

We’re all going on a summer holiday! Don’t worry, podcast fans, we aren’t really, but we are dedicating this week’s show to the lucky among you who are. We cover all things money from planning your holiday to arriving back home again. We talk through what you need to know to make sure you have the best travel insurance while you’re away, to how to pay for things and withdraw cash while abroad to make your money go the furthest, to car hire tricks and getting compensation if something goes wrong. Seats and tray tables back to the upright position, seatbelts on and notepads at the ready… Enjoy!

Working out what to do with a life-changing sum of money is a nice problem to have but that doesn’t mean it’s not tricky.  We’ve all read the stories of inheritances, lottery wins and other windfalls squandered - and even if you have spent a lifetime building your wealth, whether through investing or business, it would still be all too easy to rattle through the cash. On this week’s podcast, we look at a question from This is Money’s new Wealth Check section on what to do with £1.2million from a business sale: how to spend some enjoying life and invest the rest so that it is not at too much risk but still grows. From there, Simon Lambert, Tanya Jefferies and Georgie Frost dive into what a life-changing sum of money might be, why more people are getting them, and what you might do with it. For those without that luxury, we look at why engaging with your pension investments is being tipped as a way to retire early - and whether a bit less time panic scrolling on social media might buy you the time to do t

In this five minute guide to what you need to think about when writing your will, This is Money editor Simon Lambert explains what he discovered when he wrote his - and the things you need to consider.

How soon will you be driving an electric car? The Government laid out its Road to Zero plan this week, adding some detail to previous announcements on how it wants to drum petrol and diesel cars off our streets. But is there enough in there to show how we will get from electric and hybrid cars currently making up a 2.2 per cent market share to 50 per cent by 2030? From 2040, new cars running only on petrol and diesel won’t be able to be sold and a decade after that we’re all meant to go electric. The crucial question though is what happens in the near future. How long before your next car is electric? Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce and Georgie Frost look at what it will take to tempt us into electric cars, where they will be charged and how long their range needs to be for drivers to take them seriously. They also look at how much a second-hand electric car might cost you. Also on this week’s podcast, Lee reveals a savings trick that could get you a 7 per cent return on £1,000 and we ask whether f

The world of savings could be set for a shake-up when a new player comes to town – Marcus. Marcus is an online challenger bank and an offshoot of investment banking giant Goldman Sachs, and may just put a bit of welcome pressure on rates in the savings market. But that’s not the only change afoot in savings. Virgin Money is launching an account where interest is earned in air miles, best-buy fixed rate deals are at a two-year high and Monzo has seen losses quadruple. There’s a lot going on. On this episode of the This is Money podcast, consumer affairs editor Lee Boyce and assistant editor Rachel Rickard Straus join presenter Georgie Frost to discuss all this and what it means for savers. They also talk through hotel booking websites, their tricks and whether they work for or against holidaymakers. The trio also discuss how much we need to save for retirement, why a raffle to win a Brixton flat has just been extended, and finally… could success in the World Cup really boost the economy?

If you are selling your home you need to make it look as good as possible. And that starts before you welcome any potential buyers through the door, as to even get them to consider visiting it needs to look great in estate agent's photos. In a world where people go online to hunt for properties, how can you do that? In this excerpt from the This is Money podcast we give sellers some tips to make their home shine.

The National Health Service is 70 years old this year and most of us are proud of the British institution, leaning on it in our times of need. However, we’re living longer with more complex problems and the service keeps crying out that it needs more money. Where does it come from? Do we make cost-cuttings or plough lots of money in, do we increase income tax, make the rich pay, or introduce a new special ring-fenced tax? Theresa May announced plans for £20.5billion-a-year cash boost – but was a little short on the detail. She hinted at tax rises and mentioned a ‘Brexit dividend’. This is Money editor Simon Lambert, along with consumer affairs editor Lee Boyce and presenter Georgie Frost look at ways to fix the NHS in the latest podcast.

What's the most important thing when you want to move home? Should you worry more about getting the best price or simply about getting your home sold? On this week's podcast we delve into the art of home selling, looking at how to make sure the price is right, whether to do work before you sell, or just a quick spruce up and why what's happening in the property market near you should be a deciding factor. Another month and another set of mixed messages about the state of the housing market is revealed. First-time buyers who have a deposit and home movers in the North are doing fine. But London is on the ropes and second and third movers are staying put, bringing the market to a standstill. According the Halifax, prices nevertheless managed to rise £3,000 last month in this ‘subdued’ market. Editor Simon Lambert, assistant editor Rachel Rickard Straus and money broadcaster Georgie Frost get into the aural attic to unbox the facts. The villain of the piece, they agree, is stamp duty. It use

Whatever happened to bitcoin? After the mania at the end of last year when the price spiked to almost $20,000, the cryptocurrency took a tumble but more noticeably attention has drained away. You need no greater sign of that than figures showing bitcoin Google searches are down 90 per cent. That adds weight to the argument that much of the late 2017 big leg-up was driven by mainstream punters jumping on the cryptocurrency bandwagon. So with bitcoin largely out of the headlines, is that it for the cryptocurrency or is it time to buy for the long-term when things are quiet. On this week’s podcast we take a look at who’s buying, who’s holding and who might be waiting for the price to rise again and greater fool theory to deliver someone who will take their bitcoin off their hands. Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce and Georgie Frost also take a look at gold – and why people aren’t buying this traditional form of investment portfolio insurance – and the most consistent investment trusts of the past decade. And finall

Global financial markets have been flying up and down and all over the place this week and it’s all got to do with one boot-shaped country in the Mediterranean. Italy has found itself embroiled in a power struggle between Eurosceptic populists – winners of the March general election – and the pro-EU establishment. The ramifications have spread across the globe and will affect Britons from big-time investors to anyone building up a pension pot. As we write this a coalition deal has been reached in Italy, likely to avert a proposed snap election. But this story is moving so quickly that just hours ago when we recorded the podcast there was no deal on the table. Even more reason as things helter-skelter forward to step back and work out what is going on and how on earth we got here – as This is Money editor Simon Lambert offers in his back-to-basics explainer. Also in this episode, Simon, presenter Georgie Frost and personal finance editor Rachel Rickard Straus talk about what you can do to stop your

Ever heard of money flipping? It’s a new scheme doing the rounds on Facebook and social media that promises to turn your £50 into potentially thousands. So how do you do that? Simple really, you pay others to get onto the bottom rung of a pyramid and then recruit more people to move you up a level and get paid yourself. What makes it so dumb is that it doesn’t even try to have the legitimate veneer of famous pyramid schemes of the past. It’s a Ponzi scheme, plain and simple, but what is one of those and who was Charles Ponzi, the man the scams are named after. On this week’s podcast, Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce and Georgie Frost step back to America in 1920 to find out how Ponzi soared and then crashed – and look at the new money flipping scheme that has brought a trick as old as time to today’s digital age. Also on this week’s podcast, we look at TSB customers who are unfortunate enough to get scammed themselves after the bank’s meltdown and how it is failing them. And we take a look at whether the FTSE 10

High house prices mean that the biggest barrier to buying a home in Britain is raising a deposit. With mortgage interest rates at near record low levels, many would-be homeowners could afford monthly payments - but saving the average £30,000 deposit would take years.  For a lot of first-time buyers that means a trip to the Bank of Mum and Dad, but what if that's not an option? It is possible to buy a home without raising tens of thousands of pounds, if you take a 95% mortgage. With one of these deals, a first-time buyer able to pass mortgage affordability tests could put down a 5% deposit of £10,000 and buy a £200,000 home. But is that a good idea? Didn't small deposit mortgages crash the economy a decade ago? Are they not leaving themselves heavily overexposed to falling house prices? In this week's podcast, Simon Lambert and Georgie Frost dig into the world of buying a home with a small deposit mortgage, busting the myths and considering the benefits and the risks.  They also look at whether giving