Bumper rate rise for Premium Bonds - are they now a no-brainer?

0:02Lee Boyce: Welcome to This Is Money podcast sponsored by Trading 212. Download the Trading 212 app today and open a cash ISA with promo code TIM to get the 12-month bonus promo rate of 4.56 % term supply. I'm Georgie Frost and join me and Lee Boyce today is Helen Crane. And coming up, premium bonds are back. The underlying rate on Britain's favourite savings product is at its highest for nearly two years. So are they a good bet again? Also today, the land registry delays, leaving homeowners unable to remortgage and thousands of pounds out of pocket. Could your home be caught in the backlog? Plus, energy bills forecast to rise 4 % in October should you fix.

0:41Lee Boyce: What rising inflation means for you and your money and where is it all headed next? And plug-in solar panels can be sold from next week. We tell you mistakes to avoid if you want to install them. Don't forget to stay with all the latest breaking money news. Just go to thisismoney.co.uk or download the app. But first, the boys, premium bonds, they're back, baby. I mean, they didn't really go anywhere, really. But the rate or the effective rate, whatever it's called, Lee, you'll explain it in a minute. NS &I has boosted it for the second time in, like, I don't know, what is it, four months? This time from 3.8 % to 4.35%, the highest in nearly two years.

1:22Lee Boyce: the odds of winning getting better too. After next month, there'll be more of the big prizes, the£150 ,000 and£25 ,000. Unfortunately, no more of the million pound jackpots, still just two of those. But more than 22 million of us hold premium bonds. After years of being beaten, though, by the best savings accounts, are they suddenly looking like a good bet again?

1:46Georgie Frost: Lee? Oh, we're so back, baby. So back, because we've been discussing it a lot on the pod, haven't we?

1:50Lee Boyce: and we've been sort of, you know, is it really worth it? Should you bother? Rates are better elsewhere. Lee, I'll never forget the fact you didn't win in like 50 ,000 years, anything. But let's just explain, if you would, very briefly, why NS &I would be increasing the rate, how it all works, and what does 4.35 % actually mean for holders? Because as I sort of mentioned at the start, it's not like a normal savings account, is it?

2:15Georgie Frost: No, it's not like a normal savings account. So let me give you a quick brief explainer on why NS &I have done this. So NS &I has a financing target, very dry, very boring. But every year, every financial year, it has to bring in a certain amount of money to keep the government happy. And the way it does that is it pulls levers back and forth with different products to make them more attractive or less attractive, depending on how much money has flowed in. One of the big products, the biggest product is premium bonds that NS &I offers. But it does offer other products as well. And it has boosted the rate and some others, which I'll explain in a minute.

2:46Georgie Frost: it pulls these levers so what it often does is make sure that that rate talking about premium bonds isn't a best buy rate because what happens and what actually happened in the pandemic is that it was the best buy rate for a while and absolutely billions of pounds poured into it and it gets unbalanced and it's not what NSI is designed to do it's designed to kind of have a steady flow of money coming in and to keep everyone happy in the last few months people have been pulling money out there's not been much money going in and we have been saying in the last few months that actually rates probably will have to go higher to entice more people in and premium bonds for example have seen outflows because people have decided to go and get a guaranteed return elsewhere so a rate they're actually definitely going to get because that 4.35 % that 3.8 % that you mentioned earlier that's not a guaranteed rate it's just with average luck basically what you're going to get you might get a big fat zero over the course of the year the more you hold in premium bonds the more likely you are to win prizes because every bond number is entered into the draw each month so if you're holding 100 pounds for example very unlikely that you're going to win a prize over the course of the year four pound 35 pence of interest just isn't a prize that is on offer from an sni that starts at 25 quid then you have 50 quid and so on and so forth so the likelihood is if you have small amounts you're probably not going to win and I think that's a big gripe with premium bonds that people tend to have they talk about I've held premium bonds for years and years and years decades even and I've never won a prize but then you find out that it's a very small holding so of course with that average luck you probably aren't going to win a prize then you only have to glance through the winner's tables and see how many people have maxed out of 50 grand that 50 grand limit by the way has been around for 11 years you go through half of the big prizes tend to be taken by those that have maximum amounts almost a maximum amount of 50 000 pounds there's 1.4 million savers now with maxed out ns9 premium bond accounts that's a lot of people holding the maximum amount of premium bonds the average that people hold is five and a half grand and that's where i come in um i hold in and around that much roughly and you're right i had a couple of years of no returns and that came actually at a time when the rate was even better than it is now as you mentioned just then it's going to be the third highest rate in modern history um it was as low as one percent uh during the pandemic so you know it shows you even though their rate was so low at the time it was quite attractive at the time because of just how low base rate was and saving deals elsewhere just weren't worthwhile title um so i do have almost the average pot in there and i worked it out uh this week over the course of the last year i've had a return of 3.87 so i've actually beaten the the premium bonds rate which was 3.3 earlier in the year now 3.8 going up to 4.35 i've never really won a big prize and i don't actually know anyone other than you have friends of friends that you hear have won big prizes i remember a friend's mother-in-law allegedly won 50k but that's what keeps people interested georgia and keeps people in it 50 000 pounds 100 000 pounds a million pounds and there's going to be extra as you say 50 000 and 100 000 pound prizes that's a large chunk of tax-free money to be winning if you're lucky enough to do so um and also i should point out here as well and simon said it recently you know as an emergency savings pot you could do worse you know you're kind of in it to win it still potentially no small those um small sums as i already pointed out as long as you are not expecting a guaranteed return and are fully aware that you could have three thousand pounds for example in premium bonds and not win a jot over the course of a year or two years and you're comfortable with that that's fine your money's getting eroded by inflation and you are missing out on returns elsewhere but i think that lots of people don't see it like that they just see that they're kind of they're in it to win it and they're not going to lose their stake you can take the money back out when you want it and it come and it arrives pretty rapid so yeah it's an interesting move i think it will entice quite a few uh savers to return into premium bonds you have to hold them for a full month before you're in a draw so you won't be in the next draw which is in sept um on the first actually it's not on the first september i think it might be on the second of september uh let me get the candida up but it is on it is on the first september and then you'd be included from the october draw so it takes a little bit of time for your money to filter through and of course as i've written in my column this week there was a lot of conspiracy theories around premium bonds you know only new a bonds win for example you have to log into nsni every month so it knows you still exist uh in order for your bonds to you know go into the draw and there's i think a lot of people do have a stormy relationship with premium bonds where they feel kind of hard done by that they've never scooted that big prize but as i say the likelihood of winning one of those big ones is very very slim a very very very very slim if you're not holding probably 20 grand or more.

7:48Lee Boyce: You're a lover, Lee. You hold out hope for so long. One day, one day, it will give me back what I put in. But alas, it doesn't. It's very few things that we have when it comes to our money that sort of elicit that sort of emotional response. But I do think premium bonds, as we always call them, sort of granny's favourite, as it were. There's a history behind them and Ernie and all that sort of thing. But Lee, where do you think that they sit? And I know that this will really depend on who you are and what your sort of aims are. But I know you're a big fan of regular savers. We're talking about cash ices, obviously, they'll be changing soon.

8:24Lee Boyce: But you know, most of us probably won't fill the new is it 12 ,000 limit coming in April. You know, then you've got just your regular savings account, where would you put premium bonds in amongst that you mentioned there, the tax free element, obviously very attractive. who are they for still where do they sit in sort of your order of preference well actually again i

8:47Georgie Frost: put this line in my uh i put this line in my column this week i label them in the bucket of one of two buckets i've got it labeled this fun-ish parts of my money and finances the other one being my investments in retro gaming which i've spoken about on the podcast before and some Some of the returns I've had on some of the games and consoles and stuff over the five years, absolutely astronomical. And it's quite fun. I'm not looking to get rich with physical media that I own. But it's quite a cool little collection. It's grown in value. And it's nice to hold a physical object that's doing quite well.

9:24Georgie Frost: Premium bonds, I kind of see as that. I don't see it as a guaranteed return. I don't think that I'm going to win a massive prize. So it's always a nice surprise when you kind of find that you have one. But I always say this, Georgie, it's quite far down the list, I would say, in financial priorities. And you need to make sure that you are, like anything, you've got to have a diversified portfolio of everything. And I think when you say the word portfolio, you immediately think of investments. But I actually think of my portfolio as everything, you know, savings, investments, property, my retro gaming collection.

10:00Georgie Frost: you know you've got a net wealth and what you're worth and i think that basically premium bonds quite far down you've got to make sure that you're filling isa allowances not saying that you need to be maxing it out because that's quite a stretch current limit of 20 000 pounds but you should be utilizing it preferably i would say in a stocks and shares isa because investing over the long term has proven to be a good place for your money and is a good way to build wealth you want to make sure that you're making pension contributions you want to make sure you've got that emergency part of savings which could potentially be premium bonds if you're happy to know that you're not going to get a guaranteed return you know don't be putting money into premium bonds if you've got credit card debt if you've got other priorities other things that should be being sorted so you know i'd never put all my eggs in one basket or all my eggs in one early for premium bonds you want to make sure that you are everything else is going kind of swimmingly in your finances so i I would put them quite far down.

10:59Georgie Frost: I'd never make it more than a few percent of your kind of portfolio. I think this makes the 4.35 % rate is edging up towards some of the best easy access accounts. And I reinvest the prizes that I get. And as I've just pointed out, I've not had a huge amount of prizes, but a few hundred pounds that I have won in the past year have gone straight back into premium bonds instead of getting them paid out into my account. But this has tempted me to add a little bit more into premium bonds. Not a huge amount, but I might put a little bit more in there. And I think a lot of people might be potentially thinking the same.

11:34Lee Boyce: We all shall see how people respond to these new rates. But imagine you bought a house and not even that recently. You've been living there for two years, paying your mortgage every month, only to discover that the land registry still hasn't registered that house in your name, which means, well, you can't remortgage. You're stuck on potentially a much more expensive rate. and going to end up thousands of pounds out of pocket as a result. This is exactly what happened to one family in Reading and they only discovered the issue when they actually came to remortgage. They wouldn't have known otherwise.

12:07Lee Boyce: And this isn't just one unfortunate case. Hundreds of thousands of land registry applications remain outstanding. So how do you know if yours is one of them? Helen, firstly, land registry. What's that and why is this a big deal?

12:21Helen Crane: So the land registry, most people might know if they've bought a property. So once you've paid for it, you've got the deeds, your purchase is signed on with the land registry. So this is essentially the government organisation that keeps records of ownership of land and properties. And when the ownership of something changes, whether that's a house or an office building or any kind of property in the UK, that change of ownership has to be logged with the land registry. So you can check pretty easily whether your home is registered to you. If you bought property recently, just head to the land rescue website and you can kind of search for it.

13:05Helen Crane: It used to be the sort of thing that people didn't really need to worry about, something that just kind of happens when you buy a house. It's kind of handled by your conveyancer and then sort of forgotten about. But more recently, we have seen these delays creeping in. So I think where this really came to people's attention was during the pandemic when there was this big property boom. And like many public services, like many areas of life, I guess things started to get delayed. There were so many people obviously looking to move house at that time and other problems such as government staff working from home, you know, people being ill with COVID.

13:47Helen Crane: And a lot of these big sort of public sector processes got really slowed down. We've seen the same with things like probate and people trying to get in touch with HMRC about their pensions. They're just these really slow, clunky kind of processes. And it seems like the land registry has gone the same way. So people are buying homes and then seeing that months like this case, sometimes even years later, their house still isn't registered in their name. You know, you do still own the property. obviously there's someone can't come and sort of take it away from you but formally you aren't registered as the owner and that can become a real issue obviously if you need to remortgage or if you want to sell the home because the lender will want to check the title registration which is the name of these documents held on record with the land registry and obviously rightly check that you are you are the actual owner.

14:46Helen Crane: So this reader, unfortunately, fell foul of this. So owned the property for two years, got a two-year fixed rate mortgage, and then only realised when they tried to remortgage after that two-year period that their registration was still incomplete and they couldn't remortgage without it. So they were stuck paying a higher mortgage rate on their lender's standard variable rate because they couldn't get a remortgage. Lenders wouldn't wouldn't accept them had to turn down a quite tasty 3.49 % rate because they weren't able to do it. This was in December last year. So since then, mortgage rates have gone up, they've lost out on those deals.

15:28Helen Crane: They've been waiting since March 2024 for the Land Registry to complete their application. They're estimating that this is going to cost them£6 ,000 if it still isn't completed for the next three years. So it's a really frustrating situation. And I should say as well that there are various reasons that this can happen. So it can be, it's not always just the land registry's fault. It can be solicitors forgetting to put in a form. In his case, actually, it was an issue where the boundary lines for the property had been drawn wrongly. So he bought the property from a developer. And when the developer had registered it, They'd sort of created this issue with the boundary lines.

16:13Helen Crane: But instead of this being sort of flagged and dealt with, it was kind of forgotten about in the process, got sort of put on a shelf somewhere and not dealt with. And then this is obviously flagged up when the remortgage process was started and it caused all these terrible delays.

16:30Lee Boyce: Really, I see you shaking your head there. As Helen was speaking, I'm actually on the land registry website here, thegov.uk, trying to find whether I own my house. And I'll be honest with you, I can't find my name next to it. So this could be something that affects me. Who knows? But yeah, shaking your head, you are not happy with this, Lee.

16:49Georgie Frost: Well, you've not got it in your finding cabinet, Georgie, marked house. You've got all of your files together, making sure that you've got all of your docs, though.

16:57Lee Boyce: Yeah, alongside my will, my last and proud attorney. Yeah, absolutely.

17:03Georgie Frost: so so you haven't put my put my name down in your will for your house then so i don't know georgie and i was i was shaking my head i was shaking my head there because actually this story came to light from yours truly because i bought a new i bought a new house i bought a house earlier in the year obviously went through all the processes that were required and then i remember the solicitor saying they'd be in touch uh with the land registry document once the names changed over to my wife and I everything hunky-dory a couple of months after that I suddenly thought I haven't had those land registry documents I should probably go and like check up see where they are because I don't want to have missed it and not have documents so I emailed my solicitor and they came back and said because of the pandemic there's backlogs at the land registry and it wouldn't be done until September so that is a good five six months and this is not a new build house that I'm living in it's just a regular property purchase nothing irregular about it whatsoever and i think that kind of delay is really not acceptable that's a long time there's nothing disputed in it it's just simply a change of names cannot understand it whatsoever so our property reports that ed magnus did a story on it kind of you know what's behind all these delays and then we have had an absolute flood of readers get in touch um about similar issues um including off the back of this story someone had said that they've paid a hundred pounds to have something changed on the deeds you know pretty simple job paid the money they cashed the money and then once they cashed it they said yes this can't be completed until april 2027 that's absolutely incredible what kind of service is that that you're paying your money and then waiting all of that time for quite what feels like quite a simple task so obviously something's gone awry there and i should point out here that i think the majority of registrations and things that happen at land registry are pretty swift i don't think that this is a you know it's an exception rather than the rule but we've had a lot of exceptions coming through our email similar cases and i think in this case uh to be out of pocket the the amount that this um couple are i think is extraordinary you know because of course the the circumcises are extraordinary because they fixed for two years in March 2024 had a new offer come in before the Iran conflict and all the mortgage rates went awry but they weren't able to fix into that rate because of these delays and the things that have gone on so that's how they've been left they're going to be left out of pocket because they're now having to pay a higher mortgage rate I find that incredible I find it incredible it's taken years for them to sort out boundary issues or whatever it is in this case which which does make it a kind of different case to most because most people it's quite straightforward you buy a house that's already had the boundary done because it's not a new build and it's just a case of changing the name uh changing a couple of names i think we had another email come in someone saying that um their wife's middle name was incorrect on the deeds and they just wanted to change it i think they paid and again just waiting months for it to go go ahead so clearly something's not quite right there i think we can't blame the pandemic some six years later for backlog I think the time for citing the pandemic for a backlog, really in the rear view mirror, in my opinion.

20:26Georgie Frost: You might disagree. But I think it's incredible. And as I say, this might be the last that we write about this and cover on this because the amount of different stories that are coming through are wild.

20:39Lee Boyce: It annoys me and I'm sure it annoys everybody else. It works just one way. If there's any sort of delay with the government, we've just got to suck it up. If we say to say HMRC, sorry, love, I'll sort this out next year. Is that right? April 2027? Yeah, I don't think they'd be quite so understanding. Anyway, inflation. Let's go there. It's heading the wrong way again. Up from 2.6 % to 2.9 % in July, largely due to higher energy costs. And there could be more pain to come with the energy price cap forecast to rise. Another 4 % in October, taking the typical annual bill to around£1 ,729. So is this just a temporary energy-driven blip?

21:20Lee Boyce: Or should we be worried about inflation taking off again? And with cheaper fixed energy deals available now, is it time to fix? Helen, just explain to us, why is inflation back up to 2.9 %? Is this just solely down to energy in Iran?

21:36Helen Crane: It is partly due to energy prices. You asked whether it's a temporary energy-related blip. Sadly not, I think, because we've also had the latest forecast for the next energy price cap out this week, which has said that it's going to probably go up by 4 % as of October. So energy costs still creeping up and all these costs, as you said, related to Iran. So that's higher wholesale oil and gas costs, which not only drives up energy bills, but also drives up things like the cost of food, because obviously the businesses that produce food are dealing with these higher energy costs as well and then passing it on to customers.

22:17Helen Crane: One other thing that's sort of been noted when these figures came out earlier in the week was that the government did this temporary VAT cut over the summer, you might remember, on sort of hospitality pubs and bars, that kind of thing, hoping that that might sort of encourage a bit of spending and bring inflation down. But whoever said that that hasn't really worked. So catering and services and recreation price both rising month on month. It's not an absolutely massive spike in inflation, 2.9 % up from 2.6%. But in a month, that is a reasonable amount. So, you know, it's not back to the levels that it was a few years ago, but it's creeping up.

23:01Helen Crane: And that's a worry and might cause the Bank of England to think again when we get to the next time that they reassess the base rate.

23:10Lee Boyce: That's it, isn't it, Helen? What do you reckon the thoughts are around that? Because that will impact obviously our savings, our mortgage we've just been talking about.

23:18Helen Crane: Yeah, of course. And I think it's kind of tough to say at the minute. We're seeing for the last little while, we've been seeing kind of opinions going either way. Obviously, inflation is still above the 2 % target that the Bank of England has. So as some people are saying that inflation needs to go a bit higher before the bank considers putting the rate up, but whether they'll hold it again, it's been held for months at the minute, you know, there's this sort of wait and see attitude. It seems maybe a bit more likely that it could be held again next time around in September rather than cut. It seems like the the likelihood of any cuts is getting lower.

24:02Helen Crane: It feels like we're just in this sort of period of stasis, aren't we, really? The base rate hasn't really gone anywhere. Mortgage rates are sort of staying roughly the same, savings rates roughly the same. So there's kind of ups and downs everywhere, you know, mortgage rates up a little bit, mortgage rates down a little bit. And I think that's all down to the base rates sort of being held for so long. So anyone kind of hoping for big cuts in mortgage rates, I think will be disappointed. good news for savers obviously you know we've still got some some really decent rates on easy access accounts out there but yeah i i think for now kind of more of the same what's in your views

24:40Georgie Frost: there's a couple of economists uh cited in our story here suggesting that um they're not expecting headline inflation to peak much above three percent someone else someone else has a peak of around 3.2 percent obviously the bank of england's target is two percent so that's still some way off but it's not that ugly really really ugly inflation the double digit inflation readings that we got uh four years ago which really has a dent in household finances even now because you only have to look at the price of eating out supermarket shop food shop that kind of thing and then we've also had it's been a bit of a strange i would say a bit of a strange month month and a half because the around conflict obviously was a big driver uh for inflation and an inflation shock that we're being warned about but it feels like things have gone a little bit quiet um i'm actually not fully abreast of what's currently going on uh in where we're standing in this around conflicts and things have kind of it feels like it's eased off a bit and the panic mode doesn't feel quite there um the economists also saying really inflation would have to reach four percent before the bank of england seriously considers rate hikes we're quite far off of that yeah we've got an energy price cap forecast coming in as you say suggesting it's going to go up four percent that's not great uh given that it's just gone up quite a bit in the most recent cap and we're coming up to win coming up to autumn and winter um and that's not going to be great for households but four percent again you know i think most households can just about stomach that yeah of course there's going to be people that can't but again it could have been so much worse um given what was happening to wholesale gas prices, for example.

26:18Georgie Frost: And I think that we're kind of riding out a bit of the storm, but what happens with inflation that's obviously very difficult to predict. But when you've got economists saying it's going to need to reach 4 % before there's going to be any kind of direct hit. And also, one of the economists said that the temporary removal of VAT on energy bills in October will knock 0.1 percentage points off a CPI. So that takes a little bit of the sting out of that price cap that's coming. Has it peaked at 2.9 %? I have to say. But I do think we are feeling it in the pocket. It is from energy bills. It is from the supermarket shop.

26:56Georgie Frost: And it is also coming from the price of petrol as well, which has been creeping higher in recent weeks. So you add all those things together, you can understand why people are kind of still being hit in the pocket. 4 % before Bank of England considers it. I think we're on course for just a lot of decisions of hold throughout the rest of the year, but it looks for...

27:17Lee Boyce: Talking of holding, would you hold or fix your energy deal, Lee, given all of that? What do you reckon?

27:25Georgie Frost: I personally think that this is a good sign to fix. Coming up to autumn and winter, our energy use is going to go up. There are fixes out there that are currently up to 12 % below the prediction that's coming for October. And I should point out this is a prediction from Cornwall Insight. Things can change, could be much higher, could be much lower, but they do have a kind of reputation for being pretty accurate with these things. There's lots of people still on SVRs. When all those energy firms went bust, people ended up back with the big boys, went on SVRs. There wasn't really any fixes around, so they kind of did it and stayed on it.

28:01Georgie Frost: I would say first part of call is to go to your current energy supplier, find out what they're offering in terms of fix i've made a couple of calls to energy firms in recent months having moved home and i actually always find stuff really quite helpful talking through the different tariffs and and what's there just make sure you know what you're getting charged for unit rates and all that kind of thing but i think it is a good time potentially to fix because i cannot see that price cap prediction coming any lower and it only takes one event in Iran, for example, to spike gas prices. And then all of a sudden it's panic stations because you're going to have to be careful with how much, I mean, you should be careful how much heating you're going to put on over the colder months anyway, but you might find yourself still on an SVR and wishing that you'd switch.

28:51Georgie Frost: So have a check with your supplier, have a check with some of the comparison websites and see what you can find. It might be worth it for you.

28:59Lee Boyce: Lee, thank you very much. Right. Before we start letting our minds drift off too much into the winter months, those dark, cold, rainy, snowy months. Let's just stay where we are for a minute. Let's have a little bit of sun because finally, we spoke about them on the pod back at the start of April. And here we almost are. I'm talking about plug-in solar panels. They can be legally sold from next week. But before we all rush out to buy them, Helen, there are some things that we do need to know. So firstly, what are they and when, where can we get our hands on them? Because just because you can sell them legally from next week doesn't mean that they're going to be flooding the shops.

29:42Helen Crane: Well, I think this is such unfortunate timing for the government. So they made this big fanfare earlier in the year about we're going to make these new plug-in solar panels available. It's going to mean that people who live in flats and renters are going to be able to get all the benefits of solar panels. And they're coming up for sale just when it's starting to get really possibly cold and rainy again. So what they are is they're essentially a small version of sort of solar panels that you might get on your roof and they're plug-in. So they don't have to be fixed into your house's main electrics.

30:16Helen Crane: It's sort of plug and play version of the solar panels that you might have on your roof. And they essentially do the same job as solar panels. You know, they take in heat and they provide sort of renewable energy and hopefully cut your bills. It's important to say that the savings aren't necessarily huge and it might take you a while to get the money back. So they're going to cost about£400 to£600 per panel. And the government estimates they could save households between£70 and£110 per year, which you know isn't nothing but that's going to take you a little while to earn that money back in in terms of bill savings so where can we buy them well we're not quite sure so when the announcement first came out retailers such as b &q and lidl said that they would be up for selling them and the reason that this has all happened is that it previously wasn't legal to sell these plug-in solar panels in the UK.

31:17Helen Crane: They're really common in other countries around Europe. But because of British sort of electrical regulations, they couldn't be sold here. So the government sort of changed the electrical regulation rules. I don't know the exact details, but they've basically made it so that they can now be sold legally and safely in this country. I think, you know, it's good that more people can now potentially access this. But, you I'm the kind of person that these are probably aimed at. I live in a flat. I don't think I could get solar panels on my roof. I live in a terrace, so we have the ground floor and my neighbour has the upstairs floor.

31:57Helen Crane: And it's one of those things that if you live in a flat, getting solar panels just seems like a huge pain. I mean, it would be contractors going through my upstairs neighbour's house the whole time. She'd have to agree that we both wanted them, presumably. It just seems kind of fraught with annoyance and a lot of people would think can we really be bothered so I can kind of see how it might work in principle just plug them in it's easier you know you don't need to deal with maintaining them taking them down taking them with you if you move but you know where do you put them it seems like there's a lot of problems so they're saying you know you can put them on a wall or a balcony but you know flats by their nature are quite small I don't really know where I'd put them like I don't want to put them at the front of my house because I feel like people would steal them and then don't out the back of my house don't really have that much wall space like put them right next to a window is it that sunny in my garden apparently you can put them on your fence but then my neighbor's kids are always kicking a ball against my fence so probably fall down i don't know i feel like there's there's a lot of things that you'd need to probably sort out i can't see myself buying them anytime soon bloody anti-climax that was

33:14Lee Boyce: you can't buy them anywhere and helen's like nah nah not interested um it'd be quite a middle isle

33:22Georgie Frost: of lidl uh kind of purchase getting coming home what did you get from the middle of lidl today dear i'll just come home a couple of casual solar panels um you know in the boot we've kind of not had them on sale i think because of worries over um potential fires and hazards and the way that these are installed so you can kind of understand these should you should only buy them from a reputable retailer for one once they are on offer and making sure that you do install them correctly and all those kind of things and i think that will put quite a lot of people off so our kind of checklist here is making sure that they're going somewhere where you're going to benefit from them so you know ideally on a south facing setup if you're not putting in a south facing setup you're not going to be getting as much energy generation from it i said and said be careful before you start drilling through your neighbor's fences and all that kind of thing we know all about neighbor disputes on this is money i mean wow the amount we get through each week in the mailbox is huge um you might avoid your home insurance uh so you'll need to make sure that you're informing your insurer which sounds so boring but it's so necessary because if anything goes wrong you might not be covered and if you don't own your home you could get in trouble with your landlord if you just suddenly whack up a couple of plug-in solar panels so you want to make sure and not getting your wiring checked that's what puts me off i think that if i was ever going to be tempted into solar panels i'd want them installed by someone that really knows what they're doing and i'm not saying that homeowners and people that are diy experts don't know what they're doing but you really really have to be careful also i always think with soda

35:01Lee Boyce: panels kind of it is ideal to have a battery and a battery that can store the energy that you are

35:07Georgie Frost: generating because you might need it for when it's not sunny so i think that you want to kind of make sure that you're getting the right setup choosing solar ahead of a cheaper energy tariff as henna pointed out there they're not going to be cheap cheap getting these so you want to make sure that you are on the best tariff possible that we just talked about and not informing your network operator so you need to let the distribution network operated dno know within 28 days of connecting panels this is the company that owns local energy infrastructure such as cables transformers and substations and you can find out who your dno is via the energy networks association website all of that you mix it into the big pot and it makes me go that sounds like hard work um i and also they're going to come on sale at the end of august just when we've had the couple of sunniest months known to man and it's going to get all gray and rubbish probably for the next eight months so if you're someone that's been complaining about the sun for the the last couple of months um we're going to now have six to eight months of gray doom and bloom so enjoy um if that's what you can say that was you like that was brilliant i did say at the start

36:24Lee Boyce: let's try and avoid going to the winter all i will just say just to add to that story is if you do want to drill into your neighbor's fence or they drill into yours and it causes an issue it's podcast at thisismoney.co.uk we'd be very happy to talk about it because we do love a neighborly dispute.

36:42Georgie Frost: Lee's tip of the week, please. My tip of the week, Georgie, is that I'm going to blow our own trumpet here. I'm going to blow the This Is Money trumpet here. If you are going on holiday or you're looking for some fun things to read, come to This Is Money forward slash money forward slash me and my money and come and have a look at some of the fantastic celebrity interviews that we have every week. It's like Desert Island Discs, but with money questions. Do you want to find out if your favorite celebrity has a pension? Do you want to know about how many properties they own? Do you want to find out if a celebrity dislikes another celebrity, which you can do if you buy a copy of The Man on Sunday this Sunday, because we have someone in it that has been very, very colorful.

37:24Georgie Frost: And it will be up on the website from Sunday. So if you go to that link that I just said, you can read it there. You don't want to miss out. It's absolutely brilliant. It's really good, interesting series, I think. and it is so surprising how open celebrities are on their money and finances and also let us know at podcasts at thisismoney.co.uk if you have someone who you would love to see on that series and also let me know on there some of your premium bonds excitement as well because I love people getting in touch and telling me about how they haven't won or how they've won big, it's great

38:01Lee Boyce: Alright then Lee, alright Helen thank you very much and thank you for listening you can keep up to date with all the latest breaking money news just go to thisismoney.co.uk or download the app if you have any comments or questions for the team anything you'd like I'm looking to Lee.

38:14Georgie Frost: Podcast at thisismoney.co.uk you can leave comments on Spotify and various other platforms and you can also leave comments in on our website where this podcast lives get in touch we'd love to hear from you do indeed and if you like our podcast why not rate us wherever you found us it helps other people find us too