Question Time: Overpay mortgage with savings? Can bank switching kill a credit score? How do I find my husband’s lost pensions?

22:15Thank you, Martin. I really appreciate that.

22:17Martin Lewis:Switching bank account once, no problem. Where this gets more difficult, if you want to become one of those serial switchers who make thousands of pounds by multiply switching bank accounts and doing it every three months, that, in the period that you're doing that, is going to bring your credit worthiness down and make applications more difficult. So that's best for people who are, you know, three or four years away from the next mortgage application or they're never going to need any borrowing so they may as well just go on and go and make some money out of it anyway. And that's sort of the balance.

22:44Martin Lewis:I love the question, Rav. Thank you. Thank you, Martin. Thank you for taking time to answer my question. A pleasure and a badge will be flinging its way on its way to you. I look forward to it. Thank you. I think we need an interlude here, Matt. Because, and we maybe probably should wait for the end of the podcast, but I can't. Okay. Because as already mentioned, Rosie is here with me. She came up to Manchester to see you. She then outrageously decided to take a week off work while she had hold of the badges. She kept them in her clutches, probably somewhere very valuable. She might have pinned them all over house so people walking past could see, knowing that she had badges and I don't have a badge.

23:24I'm going to take my first in-person look at the badge. Hand it over, Rosie. She's reaching into her bag now. She's got them out. It's a sort of leather satchel. it's in a brown envelope it's like a bribe I'm getting my brown envelope I'm opening it up on air oh there's lots in there they feel good quite tactile let's have a go there we are okay oh my gosh I've got a lot of wrinkles in that picture you've got your eyebrows raised don't you I've got my eyebrows raised I've got four wrinkles maybe I should invest in Botox I've got a pair of headphones on I'm cut out on this sort of so the badge because describe we agreed I could describe didn't we yes So here's what the badge is.

24:04It says in big black font on the top, I'm Anne dot, dot, dot. And I've got my reading glasses on. I'm going to see the third dot. There's a tiny, tiny little smiling face. There's a little Burnham, a mini Burnham, a mini Burnham, just sitting on the badge. And then below is a big picture of me looking somewhat like I'm astonished or surprised or somewhat worried. Yeah. With headphones on. And it says the Martin Lewis podcast on one side of my face. And that's sort of, the way that's framed, that sort of almost, it's like it's clipping the sides, it's like it's giving me a shave. Yeah. A little bit of a shave.

24:39And on the other side there's a five, which is for Radio 5. And then the bottom it says the crucial letters, ESQ. Extremely Savvy Questioners, Esquires, which anybody who's read out on the programme is an Esquire, but only if you call up and get in touch will you get one of these amazing Money Can't Buy, and perhaps Money Shouldn't Have Bought, Badges You and Rosie are laughing I love the badge Matt It looks good doesn't it It's very good in a kitsch way And I'm glad you like my little Easter egg of my face I do like the Easter egg I'm just noting who's bigger you or Five Live About the same I'd say Five Live No I think you put yourself If the editor of Five Live is listening Matt's put himself on parity With the entire radio channel Which I think is where I stand But I'm glad you like the badges I do like the badges

25:35Right, that was a good caller What have you got for me next? It's a read It's going to be a read Of course Why break from tradition? Question from Ben Well you can You're the curator of questions I don't want to I really don't think I should either I don't think you'd be very happy If I did break from tradition I wouldn't know where I was I'd feel lost Exactly I feel swept away By the churn and the change Do you know what my favourite cupboard In the office is Matt? Go on. It's a stationary cupboard because I don't like things that move. Carry on. I just got it. That took a second to click then.

26:08Question from Ben. It's thrown at me. He says, Dear Martin and Matt, Eminem, I started listening to the podcast on holiday in Thailand as a 22-year-old and I really enjoy the pod. Yay, thank you. We love younger listeners as well.

26:20Martin Lewis:I mean, I'm very passionate about financial education. It's great that you're coming on board. Wonderful to hear, Ben. I've just finished training to be a maths teacher. Even better. even better your kind of person yeah and spread it you know the more you learn about this from next year in england uh from 2027 we're hoping that financial education will be a core part of the national curriculum so all state schools will have to teach it and i'm sure if you're getting into this i hope you'll be involved in that as we need mass teachers to adopt it too he goes on say i have an undergraduate degree from university of bath in accounting and finance Oh, Ben, keep going.

26:55And then decided I want to be a maths teacher. I started university in 2022, so I have a plan two student loan. Then I started my teacher training with the University of Reading in 2025, giving me a plan five student loan. My question is, will I start paying back just the plan five loan first? This would be perfect as I'd pay this off, then start paying back my plan two student loan. Or would I just start paying them both back at the same time? From what I read, there's no clear answer. and I was wondering if you could shed any light on the situation.

27:25Martin Lewis:That is a very interesting question. So let's start by, obviously you've got the different thresholds. So you repay the Plan 5 loan once you're earning above£25 ,000, 9 % of everything you earn above£25 ,000. You repay the Plan 2 loan once you're earning above£29 ,385. So obviously on earnings up to£29 ,385, over£25 ,000, you would only be playing off your plan five loan. Once you get above that, I'm mulling. If it were a normal postgraduate loan, which it isn't, then you would pay both and you'd have to pay 6 % towards your normal postgrad loan and 9 % towards your undergrad loan. But the plan two is an undergraduate loan.

28:11So that would equate, would you be paying 9 % to both? I think I might have to take a second and do magic of podcast, Matt.

28:20Martin Lewis:OK, I've come back because we may have a certain time in the studio. I don't have very long to research this. So I've only the time shift that you had was only three or four minutes in real time. I think I've found an answer, but it doesn't fit right to me. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to give you the answer as I have it right now. But then I'm going to go and do some proper research over the next week, speak to the student loans company as I am lucky enough to be able to do so in order to get myself a detailed technical answer that I'm happy with. So see this as a cursory answer with more to come.

28:52Is it all right that I do that, Matt? Yeah, I'll let you off this time. OK. I think we want to give the right answer. So this is just a cursory answer. This is a Martin version one answer. And I will go and dot all my I's and cross all my T's having done some proper checking. I love being stumped. OK.

29:06Martin Lewis:So this is what I think. what I'm reading at the moment would indicate that your plan you would pay nine percent of your earnings above the lowest threshold which is twenty five thousand pounds so let's say you earn thirty five thousand pounds you would pay nine hundred pounds on that the amount that is where you would only be paying plan five, so that's the£4 ,385, so from£25 ,000 to£29 ,385, all of that would go towards paying off your plan five loan. But anything above that where you're now in the plan two threshold, all of that would go towards paying off your plan two loan. That is my cursory reading.

29:55Martin Lewis:That doesn't feel right to me though. So that's why I just want to give it a bracket. I've only ever looked before in detail at the situation with an undergraduate loan and a postgrad loan, not what you effectively have because of this, which is an undergraduate loan and another undergraduate loan. So I'm going to hold that in abeyance for now and we're going to come back with a catch up next week. Because while everything I found said that's right, That seems quite bizarre to me because if you were earning, let's say, for sake of example,£125 ,000, so you would be paying off£9 ,000 per year, you would only be repaying£400 of that towards your Plan 5 loan, but you'd be repaying£8 ,600 of that towards your Plan 2 loan.

30:43Martin Lewis:that doesn't seem to be the right split for me particularly. So that's my initial answer, but we will do more investigations and I will come back to you next week. OK, Matt, question number four. It's a caller. What have you got? It's not a caller this week. Unfortunately. Yeah. Why have you gone quiet? I'm giving you a disappointed tone. Oh, OK, right, right. I can see your face and I can see you're actually smiling slightly. I was trying to see how you reacted to the pressure of silence in the podcast. I can feel any silence. Go on then. I could just talk and talk and talk. Okay, right. Question that I've got is from Teresa.

31:25She's emailed it in because I didn't manage to get a caller, but I thought I'd give you a nice question anyway. Okay. She asks, is there an easy way to track down pensions from previous jobs? My husband has had lots of short jobs and has moved multiple times. Now we don't really know exactly how much he's got. So now this is when you would come in and answer the question. Do you want me to just answer anyway? I think I know the answer. I can try. Okay. Curator of questions himself. Let's see if you're the curator of answers. I actually don't know the answer at all. This is where you come in. This is why we need Martin Lewis on the Martin Lewis podcast and not just me.

32:06Martin Lewis:I was watching, there was some speaker training thing the other day that I'd done only because someone had sent it to me because I'd used my evidence as an example of how to do some talking. And one of the things there is if you want to sound like you've got authority, do you know the big way to sound like you've got authority, Matt? Go on. Silence. Silences. It's what they, when I was training to be a journalist and stuff like that, when you're interviewing someone, they always say, just ask the question and let them talk. Keep talking and talking and talking. Anyway, let me answer the question about pensions.

32:34Martin Lewis:Yeah, there's two relatively easy ways to do this. The official way is you go onto gov.uk, you go onto its pension tracing service, find pension contact details. and what you can do there is you can tell it all your past employers and it will tell you who to contact. So, for example, if your old employer has sold or moved on or its pension service has moved on, it will tell you who now has the liability, where that pension is kept and then you get in touch with them and you write to them and you say, I had a pension with you, how much is it worth, please? I sometimes get people getting over£100 ,000 back when they do this and they're shocked because if you start had a pension when you were 21 one and you put a little bit in and it sat there and it was in a good investment and you forgot about it and you check back when you're 50 and you think it's going to be nothing.

33:17Martin Lewis:And I have had people who go, I've got£110 ,000. You know, it can be like that. So it is very well worth doing. So that's a little bit hard to do, but it should include almost every firm, the pension tracing service. Another way to do it is there's a fintech firm called Gretel. Now, it's much easier to do. What you do with Gretel is you basically put your details in and it does a search for you on every company in its database to see if you have. So instead of you having to write and go through that whole process, it'll just tell you you've got a pension in this place. It will give you that information and it'll do it for all other lost assets, too.

33:54Martin Lewis:Gretel does it because effectively firms subcontract it. They have a legal responsibility to try and unite people with lost or forgotten assets and they subcontract it to do it for them. But with Gretel, it only works with the companies that work with it. Now, it does have a pretty decent range of big providers, but it is not fully comprehensive. So if I were doing this, I would use the official service, but I would probably, in all honesty, I'd use Gretel first, see what Gretel comes up with, and then for the ones that aren't on Gretel, I would then go to the pension tracing service and see what I find, because I think that would be the easiest way round to do it.

34:29And please, do let us know how your husband has got on. and I wonder, I just wonder, I'm reading subtext in this question I hope, Teresa, I'm not saying anything bad but you've now put the question in front of me, Matt Is there an easy way to track down pensions from previous jobs? Good standard question, but being asked by Teresa My husband has had lots of lots of short jobs and has moved multiple times Now we don't really know exactly how much he's got I do sort of think there's a subtext that's going on My husband hasn't kept track of his pensions I tend to be the one who sorts out the money in our relationship.

35:06And now he's making me have to do lots of work to make sure that we get the pensions back. I don't know if anybody else heard that. I heard that. Maybe it's just my way of thinking. Maybe. I've got a couple of questions for you on the back of that. OK. Do you have to pay for Gretel? No, totally free. OK. So Gretel, as I say, it's paid for by the firms who subcontract to it to so effectively

35:26Martin Lewis:to fulfil their responsibility for trying to track down people with lost assets. My second question is, you said that, say if the company's folded, that they have to pass on, the liability passes to someone else. May do. May do. So what would happen if the company's gone? Well, it depends. Companies and pension schemes aren't the same thing, depending on the type. So the pension scheme can be separate from the company. And there were lots of issues over that. And also companies could have been bought and bought and bought again. And it could have been, you might have had a private pension scheme that was set up through a company.

35:55Martin Lewis:There are so many different iterations and variations. you're just trying to find out on the pension tracing service you're just trying to find out where is my pension have I got a pension with you too and that's what the pension tracing service is doing Gretel is actually going a step further and saying you have a pension with but is less comprehensive which is why I would have a Venn diagram and do both and hopefully the intersection will be big so you don't have to do much with the pension tracing services that's a bit more work but if you do you do because it could be worth serious money now Now.

36:27I did a big plea. I did a peroration last week to say, ask some funny questions. We want them. Did we get any in on the back, Matt? We did. Yes. In fact, quite a few people did send in some funny questions. Okay. Have you picked one? I've picked one. Okay. Because you are the curator of questions. I am. And I found this one this morning before we started recording. It was sent in by Richard. He sent in quite a few, but I picked out my favourite because I think you might have a good story on the back of this one. He asks, what's the most unusual place you've been asked for financial advice?

37:04Martin Lewis:Right. Well, I was just thinking about this. I have to say, technically, I don't give financial advice. It's guidance that I'm giving, not advice because advice is regulated. But we're going to ignore that. so I've had it on more than one occasion I have been at a urinal and the person standing next to me has asked me a question please don't do that yeah yeah it's just yeah just wait ask me out at the sink the sink's better at least you're just washing your hands better and you're washing your hands and I've had it when I've had it when people when I've finished on the urinal before I've washed my hands and I'm like I'd like to wash my hands first please I've had it on quite a few occasions in rollercoaster queues.

37:42Martin Lewis:Oh. But I've also had it on a rollercoaster. Okay. When I sat next to someone, if I'd been taking, say, my daughter and a friend or something of that occasion, or my wife on the very, very, it'd have to be a very slow rollercoaster if she had done it. I can't remember what the exact rollercoaster was, but I do remember distinctly sitting next to somebody on a rollercoaster who realised it was me and started talking and asked me a question. Before we, just as it's going on the chooka-chooka-chooka-chooka-chooka bit, luckily I'm really good at rollercoasters so I wasn't bothered by that. I once had to film on a roller coaster a piece to camera and for various reasons not to do with me, I had a camera in front of me, I had to do 14 takes and it was a corkscrew roller coaster.

38:20Martin Lewis:Oh, wow. But I'm pretty good with roller coasters and I have to tell you, the odd thing is after four, I became totally not bothered. All the thrill went out of it and I had to almost feign the roller coaster-ness in the piece to camera because I was just so blasé about what was going on when they were doing it but I wanted to keep it like the original. And the final one, pure name drop. I've got loads of name drops, actually. I could do one that. I bet you could. I was going to do one about the question Prince Charles asked me when I got my CBE, but I won't. I'll do, it's not quite this, but my favourite one ever.

38:56So I was walking through a, not allowed to say the brand name,

39:00Martin Lewis:big department store that tends to be quite near my office, which I sometimes do if it's very hot or cold because it's quite near the office and it's easy to go inside and you get the warmth when you go in there. I wasn't actually banging there. And someone said behind, someone called, said, Martin, Martin Lewis. And I sort of recognised the voice and I turned around, and this is a long time ago, and it was the wonderful Michael McIntyre. And this is in early days. And Michael said, just want to say, I've had some terrible financial problems in my time and your website has been absolutely fantastic.

39:34So thank you. I was so chuffed. Yeah, I bet. So chuffed. Very exciting. It was a long time ago. So, yeah, so there we go. I'm not sure that's unusual, but maybe the Michael McIntyre element in Selfridges Food Hall does that. But I think the urinal is more common than you would think. I can't imagine it. So are you a rollercoaster person then? Do you like a rollercoaster? I love a rollercoaster. I am actually going to go in the next week and take my daughter to an unnamed theme park and we're going to go. Just the two of us. It's a dad and daughter date. and we're going to go rollercoaster riding and go and do all of that.

40:08That sounds lovely. Yeah, it's very exciting. I think that seems a rather nice way to end it, doesn't it, Matt? I agree. Thank you all for listening and do please keep your questions coming in to martinlewispodcast.bbc.co.uk. We want money questions, financial questions, questions that you don't understand something to do with the world of consumer issues or just a funny or askance question to come at the end. We love all of your questions and if your question is read out, then perfectly legally within the canon of the podcast. You can call yourself an Esquire, an ESQ, and you know what you get.

40:40Let me pick it up.

40:43There you go.

40:44Martin Lewis:That's the rattle of the badges if you ask a question and your voice is on air. That's it for this week's Question Time. Don't forget to subscribe so you know when we release a new episode. We put out a new Question Time each Monday alongside the Big Topic podcast with Adrian on Thursdays. Aren't you lucky? Two doses of money-saving tips and tricks a week. And why not subscribe so you can listen to them both and leave us a review? And if you've got a question, just send it in. You can email martinlewispodcast at bbc.co.uk and just address it to dear Martin. Dear Matt. Dear Martin. And don't forget, I've cut you off.

41:23And don't forget, if you come on the show, we'll send you an exclusive Martin Lewis podcast question time ESQ badge. Who wouldn't want that? That's a rhetorical question you don't need to answer. Dear Matt.

41:52Martin 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 martinthemispodcast 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.

42:25I need to take them, don't I? I do. Who designed this? Did you say it was an extremely talented producer? No, she said it was you.

42:41How did a boycott Jimmy become a billionaire from posting videos? On Good Bad Billionaire, we're going to find out how the world's most popular YouTuber, Mr Beast, made his fortune. He's buried himself in a coffin for days. Counted to 100 ,000 on camera. And even recreated Squid Games, all in an attempt to go viral on the internet. But it all started when he gave a homeless man$10 ,000. So is he a philanthropist reshaping capitalism? Or is he just the king of the attention economy? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.