Beat the energy price hike, flight delay compo, and the £1 train!

26:01They're the key price cap periods. It's virtually unthinkable. Nothing's impossible. It could happen. I can't predict world events. You know, we might have peace in the Ukraine and everything go on in the Middle East that brings down prices. But generally, by far the safest thing for most people to do is to go onto a comparison site, find their cheapest fix, which depends on where you live and what you use, and lock into a cheap fix. And if you are doing that and you are worried what if prices were to move, well, just look at the exit penalties. In the worst case, if things got really, really cheap so you can get a much cheaper deal elsewhere, you pay the 50 quid odd exit penalties.

26:36you get out and you'd move to a cheaper tariff. But it's absolutely worth doing that in order to secure yourself a cheap deal. OK, Caroline, my fix with British Gas ends in October. What should I do? Key rule with fixes is you cannot be charged early exit penalties within the last 49 days of your tariff. So you say it ends in October. Unless it's ending in the... What is it? I'm just thinking where we are now. Unless it's ending in probably the last 10 days of October, you are free to ditch and switch or ditch and fix now. But this is what I would do. I would go and do a comparison. If the fix you are currently on is cheaper than the cheapest fix you can get, you may as well stick with it until the date that your fix ends.

27:22If you can fix now at a cheaper rate than you are currently fixed, then I would ditch it right now, assuming that you're within the last 49 days so that you do not need to pay, as you don't need to pay early exit penalties, and you may as well get on the cheaper rates straight away. Of course, you know, fixed rates moved all the time. I can't guarantee whether, I don't know whether prices, if you fix at the end of October, will be cheaper, the cheapest fixes available will be cheaper and more expensive than they are now. It's literally an unknowable. But if I was on a cheaper tariff than I could fix it right now, I would stay on that as long as possible, and I would look to fix again at that point.

28:00Abigail, I just switched gas electricity. The price per kilowatt hour is pretty much the same, but the standing charge was considerably lower, and I'll be saving£120 a year. Yes, used your price comparison tool. Thank you. Why is this so? Surely standing charges should be capped and or done away? Within summer, I'll spend more on the standing charge than I do on the energy. Well, regular listeners will know I've been campaigning about the moral hazard that is a standing charge for many years. There is a little chink in the armour that they are talking about mandating firms to have a low or no standing tariff, low or no standing charge tariff option.

28:37That will hopefully be coming in at the beginning of next year. It was originally meant to be a price cap option. They are now looking at having it as a non-price cap option, which I disagree with, but we'll get on with that. Every firm should be able to offer low or no standing charge tariff, but that will only actually benefit lower users. If you're a higher user, you'll be better off keeping on the existing tariffs. As for the fact that the standing charge varies, it's very important for people to remember this. We have a quasi-regulated pricing system. Two-thirds of homes in the UK are on a price-capped tariff.

29:10If you're on a price-capped tariff, there is a maximum standing charge and a maximum unit rate. Firms can go lower than the maximums, but they don't. If you are not on a price cap tariff, so you are not on the firm's standard, its default tariff, then there are no rules about what firms can charge. Firms are free now to offer no standing charge tariffs and put all the cost on the unit rate. In fact, there is one that does it, but it tends not to work out that well unless you have virtually no usage at all. So the idea that the standing charge should be the same. Whatever tariff you're on doesn't fit within the model.

29:52So you basically have regulated pricing if you're on a standard tariff. If you're not on a standard tariff, it's an open market pricing. And if firms want to get a competitive advantage by having a lower or higher standing charge, you know, so you could have, it doesn't exist. There was a tariff that did this a long time ago that just had fixed charges, that it charged you a fixed amount, no matter how much gas and electricity used, based on a pre-evaluation of your previous years. They are free to do all of that, but it's only on the price cap where there is regulation about what they can or can't charge.

30:22But two thirds of homes are on the price cap. And that's the real problem here. When the price cap was brought in, it was meant to be a backstop mechanism to protect those who do not switch. But through the energy crisis, it effectively became the default that virtually everyone is on. And still far too many people are on that. It's not the vulnerable person backstop it used to be. which is what it should be, which is why I say things like the price cap is on a pants cap. And if you can get off the price cap, do, which virtually anybody can get off the price cap unless you're on an old school, non-smart prepayment meter.

30:57So I think that's the philosophical thing people have to understand is all the press is about the move in the price cap. But there are this whole range of other tariffs, some quite innovative like Octopus's Tracker and Agile tariffs or some Tracker tariffs, which will give you a discount on the standing charge or a discount on the unit rates, because they're not price capped. They can charge whatever they like, and that's up to the provider to make its own competitive advantage to decide what it wants to charge you. David's fixed octopus deal ends in December. No option on the website to fix on a deal today.

31:30Will one of today's fixes be cheaper than one in December? I don't know. So this is where we have to start to understand and the timing that is at play within energy bills. The October price cap, the reason we know what it will be already is because the price cap is based on a time lag. The assessment for the October period was actually prices from, where was it, mid-May to mid-August. So that was primarily based on the wholesale rates averaged over that three-monthly period. And one of the reasons it's higher is because there was a spike on the back of when President Trump announced tariffs that put worldwide gas prices up.

32:15And that spike, if fed into the average over the three-month period, without that, would have probably seen a slight drop when the price cap was announced. So the price cap is time lagged. The rate at which fixes are set depends more on wholesale rates at the point at which you're getting the fix. Now, it tends to last for a couple of weeks or a week or to, but they move all the time. So if wholesale energy rates were to drop between now and December, you would be able to fix at a cheaper price than you can fix right now. If they were to rise between now and December, then the rate that you could fix that would be more expensive.

32:52But clearly, wholesale energy rates are an international market. And based on a whole, like any other market, like the stock market or currency rates, you know, nobody can predict what is going to happen on those fixed rates. So that's why fixes are based on current prices. Price caps are based on time lags. So there's almost an arbitrage between the two. The reason you can fix cheaper is partly competitive reasons. And also because wholesale rates now are lower than the average of wholesale rates that dictated that past three month price cap for October. If you see what I mean. Let's do some tellers for now because I love this week's tellers.

33:29It was really fascinating. The tellers was, what's the best quid you've spent in the last five years? What one pound or less gave you the most joy, happiness or financial return and why? And we've got a whole mix. Why don't you start? Colette got a sellotape dispenser from Poundland. Absolute game changer. I know what you mean with things like that. Oh, I love little things like that. Yes. All your life you've been scratching away trying to find the end of the sellotape. Lisa. Lisa said, I spent£24.50 on groceries in Tesco and the checker out operator told me if I spent over£25, I'd get£5 off.

34:04So I went and grabbed a glass tumbler for a quid and my bill was reduced to£20.50p. Every time I drink out of that glass, I smile because it cost me minus£4. Love it. Andrew, teabag squeezer from a pound shop. Game changer, game changer. No more burnt fingers trying to fish out the teabag and it can reduce brew time by one minute It's as the strong squeeze gets out the last bit of goodness from the bag. I estimate this gives me back one half day a year. Blimey, you're drinking a lot of tea. It's a lot of tea going there. Joe, a few years ago on holiday in Venice Beach, a guy was sitting beside the path with a sign that said, terrible advice for$1.

34:47Of course, I paid. I can't remember what the advice was, but the whole thing made me laugh so much I've never forgotten it. I'm not sure that counts, but we'll let that one in. Somebody's... Stockport, I think it is. I've just got a Twitter handle. But an espresso machine says that may or may not be working, it said on the description from an online auction house. And for all of£1, it worked fine. So that's good. Do you know what I'd pay£1 for? Go on. I would pay£1 for you to read these out in the order that they were set. Oh, sorry. Because I spent about 20 minutes ordering them to get a nice narrative of the tellers last night.

35:23Oh, sorry. For example, you've missed Saturn saying, £1 to open a junior ISA, which you were meant to read, so I could then talk about why£1 to open a junior ISA is a good idea. OK, I've got one here. Can we remember this for next week, please? I spent all that time, and you're just picking your favourites. There's a narrative here, Adrian. There's a narrative. It is like my favourite teacher at school suddenly getting exasperated with me. I can't bear it. I'm sorry. Saturn sent a contribution. It's£1 she spent opening a junior ISA. Well, I'm very pleased that we mentioned that one. because that is one of my tips.

35:58So Saturn is obviously a money saver. Now, I have a confession to make. The person did write junior ISA, but in my head, I auto-corrected it without realising it to a lifetime ISA because the trick is putting£1 in a lifetime ISA, not putting£1 in a junior ISA. And I think they're probably talking about putting£1 in a lifetime ISA, but I didn't state that in the programme. I then went on to talk about the importance of putting one pound in a lifetime ISA. Now I do have the power of edit in the podcast. The person said junior ISA, but I think they meant lifetime ISA. What's really important for people aged 18 to 39, and you can get a 25 % boost on the money you save towards a deposit towards your first house.

36:40So you put four grand in a year per tax year, and you can get a thousand pounds free added on top. Remember though, the choir house has to be one under 450 ,000 pounds, which can price even some first time buyers out in the Southeast of England. But if you're not there, then this is an incredible saving opportunity. So why put a pound in? And why is that a good idea? Because to get the bonus, the extra 25 % bonus, it needs to have been open for a year. So my advice is for anyone aged 18 to 39 who's not bought a house and doesn't have a lifetime ISA, is putting one pound in a lifetime ISA. And then you start the clock ticking.

37:16Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock. And then if you want to use it later, suddenly you've had it open for a year. So then if you put your£4 ,000 in in a future tax year, you could instantly be eligible for the£1 ,000 bonus in order to buy your first house. So anybody aged 18 to 39 who's not bought a house, the best use of your quid you can do is get a quid in a lifetime, ISA, just in case. We've got Robert in Liverpool with a quick call. Robert, your£1, what do you spend it on? I bought a train, a full-size, three-car electric train. Did you buy the tracks as well? uh no unfortunately yeah we didn't get the tracks with it but where was this uh so this was this was up in liverpool so um basically a couple of years ago they were on a big project to take the old trains that have been working up there for decades take them out of service replace them with new trains and as a railway enthusiast i was i was really excited at first like oh shiny new trains and then i suddenly realized uh these old trains that i grew up with were uh coming out of service and I suddenly felt rather sad about it.

38:24So I approached the owners of the trains and it took a little bit of convincing that I was serious, but once they realised I was, they said, well, we can give one of these old Class 507 trains to you for a nominal sum of£1. Wow. And what happened to it then? Well, the catch was we sort of had to find somewhere to keep it and pay for the transport cost, which came to over£10 ,000. So it maybe wasn't as big of a bargain as it first seemed. Right, but you didn't, so you just left it there. Well, we actually managed to raise the funds. Oh, did you? So where does it sit now then? Where is it? So at the moment, it's living in Derby at the big railway works that belong to Alstom, the engineering company, the rolling stock manufacturers.

39:14It's a shame you haven't got a big garden and just put it in there. What's your dream with it? Well, I mean, we've just been at the Greatest Gathering, which was a massive exhibition that was held at Alstom to celebrate 200 years of railways. So we were able to have people on board and to show off to people, which was great. But at Alstom, they've been using it for demonstrating to apprentices and stuff, so it's been used as a learning tool. It's been really good. And the long-term goal, hopefully, it's an electric train, which is a bit of a problem because you need to have electric third rail to run it.

39:52But we're hoping eventually to put batteries on it and we'll be able to run it. So you might go to a steam railway in the future and it won't be a steam train that turns up. It'll be our Class 507 electric train from Liverpool. That is excellent. You so win the bragging rights on who's got the best train set, don't you? Who's got the best spend for a pound as well? Well, I mean, a sellotape dispenser is one thing, but a train is another. Is it time for You Know What, Martin? It is time. Play the theme tune.

40:31Yes, welcome back to Money Mastermind. The current score in this three-option multiple choice is Adrian has got 10 right and 21 wrong. worse than random chance, Adrian. But don't worry for Adrian, everybody, because Adrian is very excited. A few years ago, he bought shares in Black Country Bants, a firm with him as its poster boy that planned to use AI to overdub Hollywood voices in West Midlands accents to make them grittier and more realistic. I've come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass and I'm all out of bubblegum. And you should now have one appearing on your screen for you to do, Adrian.

41:11Here you go. I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I kind of lost track of myself. But being this is a 44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk? So, as you can see, unsurprisingly, he didn't do for Bantz what Ryan Reynolds did for Wrexham. But luckily, the firm ditched his advert, pivoted to the Peaky Blinders theme, and it exploded. Adrian's£10 ,000 of shares are now worth£15 ,000, a five grand gain, which means there would be capital gains tax if you sold them.

41:59Capital gains tax is a tax on the gains you make on such things. So, Adrian, the question is, as you are allowed to make three grand of tax-free gains, capital gains, each tax year, could you sell half of your shares now? How long have I had the investment? Five years. Could you sell half of – it's irrelevant. Could you sell half of them now, crystallise the gain – so selling half of them, the gain you crystallise would be£2 ,500 – and then buy them back, assuming they're roughly the same price in a week? Do you understand the question? Yes, I do. So, A, yes, no, B, no, you'd need to wait at least a month to buy them back, or C, no, you'd have to wait until the start of the new tax year, so April, to buy them back.

42:47So, the idea is you want to sell half the shares to crystallise the gain to use your tax-free capital gains tax allowance, but you still want to own the shares, so you're going to go buy them back in a week, and we're assuming it'll be roughly the same price.

43:02I mean, that's a hell of a loophole if you can do it. And I couldn't have thought you'd have to... It's still a loophole if you have to wait a month. So I would say the next tax year. You'd have to wait until the start of the new tax year to buy those shares back. Although the new tax year could be imminent, could it? No, six of April. Well, it could be. I mean, so under that one, if you were doing... You could wait until the 4th of April to sell them and then buy them on the 6th of April, couldn't you? Hmm. Hmm. So that doesn't matter. None of them makes it. I'll go for the middle. I'll go for B.

43:35You'd need to wait at least a month to buy them back. OK. So until 1998, this was known as bed and breakfasting. And what you could do then is you could sell your shares, you could buy them back, and that would count to crystallise your capital gains tax gain or loss. Some people might want to crystallise a loss to write off against other gains that they have made. But the bread and breakfast rule was changed in 1998. or sorry, there was a rule introduced in 1998, which said, you must now wait 30 days to buy an asset back and claim a capital gains tax exclusion. Play the hallelujah.

44:18So what that means in practice is if you were to sell your shares, you were to wait a month. After the month, it would count as a new transaction and you'd be able to rebuy those shares. Now, of course, you've got a month that you're waiting and anything could have happened to the share price in between. But this is particularly important because your tax-free capital gains tax allowance, the amount that you're allowed to learn in capital gains from selling a second house or from selling shares, has dropped quite substantially in recent years. In 2022-23 tax year, it was£12 ,300 a year. In the 2023-24 tax year, it was£6 ,000.

44:53Since 24, 25, it's only been£3 ,000. So many more people are paying capital gains tax. The main rate is 18 % if you're a basic rate income taxpayer. For hiring additional rate taxpayers, you pay 24 % tax on your gains above your tax-free allowance. Now, what's really interesting, and I have to thank my uncle Tony, who relatively recently retired accountant for going through this in detail with me so I understood it, is what happens if you were to sell within 30 days? Are you ready for this? Because this is a bit complicated. So let's say you sell£7 ,500 of shares. You make a gain that you think in your head of£2 ,500 on those£7 ,500 of shares because you bought them originally at£5 ,000.

45:41You then buy the shares back after a week and you buy them back at£8 ,000. So you sold them for£7 ,500, you buy them at£8 ,000 because the price has gone up in that week. What actually happens if you sell the shares within 30 days, then what counts is you are deemed to have bought the shares at the price you bought them within that 30 days and sold them at the price you sold them. So even though you bought the shares after you sold them, you are deemed to have bought the shares at£8 ,000 and sold them at£7 ,500. So you were trying to crystallise a gain of£2 ,500, you've actually crystallised a loss of£500 because those two pairs are matched if they're within 30 days.

46:25The buying and the selling are matched within 30 days and count as a single transaction. So even though the buy was after the sell, it counts as you made a gain. If the share price had dropped in the meantime, it would count, sorry, it counts as if you made a loss. If the share price had dropped in the meantime so that you would sold them at£7 ,500 and bought them back at£7 ,000, then you would have made a gain of 500, but you would not have been able to crystallise your initial gain, having bought them at 5 ,000 and sold them at 7 ,500. I hope you understood that. I've got it. And I thank you.

46:57I thank you very much indeed, Martin. What are you doing the rest of the day? Something nice? Well, I'm going to be recording some podcast extra stuff. And then I am, actually. I'm going to play Scrabble for Scrabble magazine and talk about my love of Scrabble. I've got all my two-letter words memorised. I'm all ready. I want to score over 400. That's me average. I wish you a very happy triple word scoring kind of afternoon.

47:22Now sadly the time on the 5 live clock ran off before I could explain what happened to me recently at Scrabble and I'm just going to tell you because I was quite pleased. I don't get these very often but I got a double treble word score. Now Scrabble payers will know that's where you get an 8 letter word so you're losing one word that's already on the board and that enables you to cross two different treble word scores. So if you do three times three, you do nine times the score. The word I had was favourite, the American spelling, no U, which is allowed. The O was a blank and it connected with another seven I'd already put down, soldier that was coming down.

48:02So the R was already on the board and I think it scored me from memory 167 points in one go. And yes, I am showing off. Hello, Matt. Producer Matt is with us. We're not really here to talk about Scrabble. Matt, you've got lots more energy questions for me, I believe. Yes, I do. I just want to say as well, you completely lost me there with the Scrabble thing. Do you play Scrabble? I haven't played it for years. You know there's a treble word score, the red ones, that everybody wants to get. Yes. They are eight letters apart. You only have seven letters in your rack. So to get an eight-letter word, you need to have one other letter down on the board.

48:35But if you have the letter down on the board in the right place, it happens rarely, you can do a word that goes across two treble word scores. So you get three times your word score and then three times that, which is nine times your score. So 167 points in one go, including the 50 bonus points for a bingo. Did that make it any more simple? I'm just going to say yes and let's do some energy questions. All right. Okay, shall we go with Noel's question? It's quite a long one, so bear with me. Noel is currently on So Energy Tomato. one year that ends on the 19th of January next year. There's a£50 per fuel early exit fee.

49:14They use, or he uses, 10 ,276.7 kilowatt hours a year for electricity and 14 ,316.2 kilowatt hours a year for gas. It's a four bed detached house, four kilowatt solar array, a Nissan Leaf electric car that does 18 ,000 miles a year. What's my best move? Would we benefit from a nighttime tariff for car charging? Do we stick with the so or pay the exit to fix earlier? He says his head hurts. I think mine does too. I can't answer whether you should pay the exit penalty for fixing earlier because I do not know which fix you are on. There are a number of different fixes that that could be. So that just simply depends on, is the fix that you are on cheaper than the fix that you are able to get at the moment.

50:03If it is, you probably want to stick on that and ride it out and not pay the exit penalties. If it isn't, then whether it's worth fixing or not depends how much cheaper the new fix is than the current one. But I think what's more interesting in your question, and you've actually missed out one of the options, is your solar panels. You have both solar panels and you have an EV car. So let me deal with both of those because I think this is really interesting for many people. Those who have solar panels already, depending when you get them, you may well be able to switch to a new energy tariff that gives you a better solar panel rate.

50:40So here's how it works with solar panels in general. If you got your solar panels before March 2019, you're on the feed-in tariff, the FIT system, which is where you get paid for generating energy even if you use it. You get paid for energy you export to the grid and the rate that you get is locked in for 20 to 25 years regardless of the provider and that can be very generous. If you've got your solar panels after around the middle of 2019 and there are some variances there then you could be on the smart export guarantee tariff. That's where you don't get paid for generating electricity that you use yourself.

51:20You only get paid for energy that you export to the grid and the rate is a market-based rate depending on which provider that you go for. Now even if you are on the feed-in tariff you are able to keep your locked-in rate for the feed-in tariff but the smart export guarantee element, the element that you get paid for shifting to the grid, you may be able to switch to a different provider and get a specific rate. So if you're on solar panels that then turn out to be four different types of solar panel tariff effectively. The first type, the one that pays the best, is where the energy firm fitted your solar panels.

51:57So that's not something that you can switch to if you don't have it. And you tend to get with some of those firms a really good rate for the energy that you generate. The second type, the next best rate, are complex tariffs where you must be with the same firm for solar export and your energy supply and have a solar battery. You don't, so it doesn't count to you, but they can be good. The third type, which is possible for you, is where you must be with the same firm for the solar export and your energy supplier. And the final type is where you just get a standalone tariff. Now, to put it in context, if you have a standalone tariff, they vary between you being paid between one and six pence per kilowatt hour for the energy that you're generating.

52:41but if you have one of the tariffs where your energy retail supply is linked with your solar export tariff then instead of 1p to 6p you're talking between five pence and 16 and a half pence and there are places online you can work out which will list all the different tariffs for you so you can find out who the best is now having done some number crunching it works out that if you export more than 18 % of the electricity you use, then you will generally be better off to choose your rate based on your solar export tariff rather than your energy supply. You still want the cheapest energy supply with the solar export tariff, but that the solar export tariff fees become more important than what you're paying for your energy usage.

53:24So let's call it around 20%. If more than a fifth of your electricity that you generate is being sent back into the grid, then you'll want to look at when you come to renewal your solar export tariff. If not, you probably just want to focus on what is the cheapest energy tariff for you. So let's move on to the next part. It's a big one, this, Matt, isn't it? So let's move on to the next part. You have an electric car, an electric vehicle, and that too has an impact in what you're choosing. There are two different types of electric vehicle tariffs. There are add-on tariffs, which is where you get a special cheap rate, but only for charging your car.

54:02Now, these are typically offered by Ovo and Scottish Power. You get a very cheap overnight rate for charging your car but only charging your car. All other electrical use in your home will be charged at your normal rate. The other type of tariffs are what are called two-tariff rates, which are most of these, where you get five to seven off-peak hours, typically midnight to 5am, around that type of point, where you're charged five to tenp a kilowatt hour for your electricity rather than the normal cost of around 25 to 30p for your electricity. So far cheaper. And you can charge all your electrical appliances on that.

54:37Now, the benefit for that is that if you can shift your electric vehicle and any other usage to those overnight hours, then that can be really cheap. But the rest of the time, you'll tend to be paying typical price cap rates. The benefit of the add-on tariffs, the Overland Scottish Power, where you only get the cheap rate for your car, is they can sometimes, they don't really have at the moment, have cheap fixes. So you might get a cheap fix with OVO and then get its EV tariff for charging your electric vehicle. So you've sort of got the best of both worlds. There aren't any at the moment, but when you come to your renewal in January, there may well be.

55:12And if none of those are particularly adding up for you, then you just want to focus on getting yourself the cheapest deal when the fix comes to an end. So this is all a bit complicated because what we don't have at the moment is a calculator that factors in the solar export charge and factors in the electric vehicle charge for you particularly. No one has built that yet. It is on my list of things to do. But hopefully that gives you a rough idea of the dilemma and the options that are available for you. That was a big one, Matt. Have you got an easy one for me now? I do. Ian is asking if Fuse Energy are any good.

55:44So Fuse Energy are one of the relatively new firms out there. There aren't many. Obviously, many firms went bust during the energy crisis and we've not seen as many new entrants in the market. We used to see a new one launching all the time. I believed they were set up. I'm doing this from memory. So apologies if I'm wrong by two of the guys who were in the early days of setting up Revolut. And I presume they've got some form of private equity backing behind them. They are very price competitive at the moment. They're up there without Fox and Marketers regularly trying to be top of the best buy tables to try and build their market share.

56:14Are they any good? A bit too early for me to have any feedback on them. But they are, you know, the tests that firms have to pass now to get an energy licence. I mean, I was involved in suggesting what they should be. If I remember what I suggested, it should be, you know, financial solvency, ability to deal with customer service issues and fit and proper person tests. The tests that the regulator puts in now are much, much tougher than it used to be when one man and his dog can open up an energy firm. So hopefully the tests are tough enough and they are a legitimate firm that are going to be able to help people.

56:44I can't vouch more than that, but they are certainly trying out. The reason you'll be asking is they're trying to push out some cheap tariffs at the moment. Francis, it's more of a statement than a question. Pay for what you use each month. It's much simpler and you don't have to worry about it. It is much simpler. It's also much more expensive. And that's very important for you to understand. It is not for me to tell you how you work it, but it is important that you understand that if you pay in receipt of bills, which is what that payment method is, then from memory I think it is on average around 7 % more expensive than paying by direct debit.

57:18For if you energy bills are£2 ,000 a year they're going to be£2 ,140 a year if you're in pay of receipt of bills and there are less competitive tariffs available. What I would strongly suggest you look at if you do want the system where you're, remember let's go back to basics. Most people pay energy by monthly direct debit. what that means is the energy firm estimates roughly what you will use a year and how much you would pay for that devise it by 12 and that's what you pay each month now if that didn't exist it's the type of thing i would be campaigning for because it helps people with cash flow so that you know in the cold winter months where you're using more you're not suddenly having to find a lot more money than you do in the summer and it helps people with budgeting but it isn't for everyone and there are problems if a firm misestimates what you use.

58:09So giving regular meter reading if you're not on a working smart meter is always very important and keeping your eye and not keeping too much of your credit. You will generally want to build up credit and be in credit when you go into the winter. So right now you want to have, but this time of year, you will be building up credit and many people should be in credit, maybe even a month, a month and a half's worth of direct debit in credit at this time of the year and then you'll use that up over the winter and in March is when you should be at the bottom period. you may be in energy debt. If you don't want to be on that system, and many people don't, then I would suggest you look for a variable direct debit.

58:42A variable direct debit system is where you, each month, a direct debit is automatically taken from your account to pay for the energy you have used in that month. It is at the same price as monthly direct debit, though it is not offered in every case. If you use that system, you get the benefits of the cheaper price and more competitive tariffs available. But if you go to payment in receipt of bills, which is literally where you get a bill and you pay it, which is what most people are on when they tell me, I just pay for what I use, then you're going to pay more. So I'm not the biggest fan of it, but it's your choice.

59:18Question from Mabel. I'm due to fix my electricity this month. I'm a low energy user and tariff gives a£25 discount on standing charge and variable for usage. Was going to fix but wondered about changes are either standing charge that are due. Will I get any standing charge discounts applied if I've already fixed? No, there is no standing charge discount that is due to come out. What is due to come out if firms are to be mandated that they must offer a low or no standing charge tariff, probably from some time in January. Now, if you are a very low user, so I'm talking somebody whose total energy bills are under around£80 a month, that may well benefit you.

59:56Having said that, what I can't do until we know the rates of those tariffs is work out whether that will be cheaper than fixing. My intuition would be that if you're going to be able to get a fix now at 13 % cheaper than the price cap, which is what you will move on to when I'm guessing you're on the EDF tracker tariff or maybe the EON tracker tariff. That's one of those where you pay the price cap rates and unit rates, but you get£25 a year per electricity, £25 a year on electricity and£25 a year on gas, standing charges reduced. My intuition would be I would go for the bird in the hand, lock in your cheap fix now with energy prices going up and then you could wait for the end of that year's fix, see where we are with the low or no standing charists in a year's time because we just don't know when they're going to be coming in.

1:00:43So I'd probably play safe and fixed now. OK, one more from Peter. Yeah. Just been able to take advantage of a lower fixed deal with my existing energy supplier, having only renewed a couple of weeks ago. I didn't realise that you could do this and I wonder if this is not common knowledge. Yeah, it's always worth noting many firms, not all firms, and there's no rule on it, will allow you to switch to one of their fixes with no early exit penalties, not to another firm. So if you've got a fix and you're leaving it, you'll normally have an exit penalty of£25 or£50 per fuel. So if you're on dual fuel,£50 or£100 in total, if you leave it early.

1:01:23And early is any time earlier than 49 days before the fix ends. But they will wipe that early exit penalty fee if you're switching to one of their own fixes. So it is always worth looking at if there is a particularly cheap fix being offered by your existing company and that's cheaper than the fix that you're on now, you may as well go for it. Simple as that. And yeah, very good tip. Like that one. Thank you very much. Oh, Martin, just before we go, we've had a message from Vicky. She says, thanks to you. She was listening about the energy rates just now. She took her lunch, sat in front of the computer, compared, switched and saved£57 a month.

1:01:59Thank you very much. Wow. They're getting on for£700 a year. She must have had big bills to start with. It shows you it is worth getting on and sorting this. Get off the pants cap, folks. It's pants.

1:02:15That's it for this week. Sorry if I was a little bit ring rusty. If you've enjoyed it, please tell your friends you've been listening to the Martin Lewis podcast. We tend to put a new episode out every Thursday. Do subscribe to keep up to date and your pockets will be pleased with you. If you've not enjoyed it, it's your own fault for listening this long.

1:02:48Martin Lewis is the founder of MoneySavingExpert.com. But of course, other consumer and price comparison websites are available. You can get in touch with Martin's podcast production team by emailing martinlewispodcast at bbc.co.uk. The offers and rates mentioned in the podcast are correct at the time of recording. However, if you are listening on demand, it's worth double-checking as details can date. Remember to subscribe on BBC Sounds and leave us a review however you listen. I gotta pay