How much do you need to earn to be rich?

0:02Welcome to This Is Money Podcast, sponsored by Charles Stanley Direct. I'm Georgie Frost and joining me and Simon Lambert today is Lee Boyce. And coming up, do you feel rich? And what would it actually take to make you feel a bit richer? Move over Costa del Sol, it turns out Britain isn't such a bad pace to retire. Also today, can you move and take your great low-rate mortgage with you? What's the point of EPCs? And Lee has been chatting with actor Ross Kemp. Don't forget, you can stay up to date with all the latest breaking money news. just go to thisismoney.co.uk or download the app.

1:01your way. Take control today with Charles Stanley Direct. Sign up now. Investment involves risk. But first, what makes you rich? It might have less to do with the wealth you've accumulated than you think. After all, it is, as Simon Lambert points out in his piece this week, notoriously difficult to spend your house and you do need your pension to last through retirement. A common theme that runs through behavioural finance studies is our frequently mistaken belief that others get paid more than us. So how does your salary really stack up compared to your neighbours? Well, This Is Money has a new calculator.

1:41Simon Lee, welcome. Simon, why? Why have you got a new calculator? Tell me about it. What's the point, Simon? Why not? There you go. Throw it back at you. Why not? Why not? A bit of an answer as any. gallery calculator that shows you where you fit in because everybody wants to know that don't they people love this stuff they absolutely love this stuff and also because we've got clever data and graphics bots who can build this kind of thing and it's great you put in your salary your age and you can put in your postcode and you can choose your profession and then it will tell you where you stand compared to the rest of the uk how it compares to the average for your profession and also how it compares to the average fuel area.

2:25It will also tell you roughly what you're taking home each month and how much tax is eating up. And you can put in there if you've got a student loan, for example. People love to play around with calculators like this and they love to look at this kind of stuff. Whenever we write a story about where do you fit amongst the UK's income levels or wealth levels or whatever, people absolutely love it. but quite often we have to say get your salary look at the chart see which percentile you're in and that's where you are but if you can do it with a calculator you can put it in and it can give you a great result then that's brilliant also i think what it illustrates to lots of people is that they're possibly doing better than they think um now there will be people who will unfortunately discover that they're not doing better than they think uh with this but there there is this sort of behavioral economics thing that goes on where everybody thinks other people are all earning more than us and actually quite often there's a mistaken belief that that isn't the case so let's choose a number out of the air for example if you are on 50 000 pounds if you're knocking on the door of the higher rate tax threshold then you earn more than 76 percent of people in the uk now to be clear the figures that we are using in this calculator are not just full-time earnings it's all earnings so it's full-time and part-time earnings so what it does is it you can actually put in exactly what you get and you can see where you fit compared to exactly what other people are getting now i know that obviously most of us think in terms of salaries compared to full-time so even if you don't work full-time you compare it to your your full-time equivalent if you're self-employed you're waiting for me to get that won't you georgie so i see also tinkering away on the calculator as well here and i'm going where's journalist list uh so carry on simon i am paying attention if you're self-employed then you can put in what your annual profits are each year okay so if you're a sole trader that's a simple number if you have your own limited company that's a slightly more complicated number but you know most people if they're self-employed will know their number they'll know what they earned last year if you're retired as well you can put in your pension income now for a lot of people nowadays your pension income will vary um because it depends on how much you take withdrawal how much you don't withdraw or you might be on a final salary scheme and you might get a regular pension income but you can chuck in whatever number you want and also you can really chuck in whatever number you want so you could chuck in 30 50 100 200 1 million pounds yeah see where that would put you basically it's a good fun tool to play around with and it helps you understand a little bit more and maybe it might help do you a favor because you can go okay well i'm earning less than the average for my job i think i should be in the position where i do earn the average for my job i mean bear in mind the average for your job includes all the people doing your job so and this is official ons statistics so it's all the people doing your job that the ons has those statistics for but that ranges from the person who's just started out in that profession to the person who's right at the top so when i did my chuck a 50 grand number in here i chose marketing sales and advertising directors.

5:44So your pre-tax annual salary of£50 ,000 is around£39 ,520 after income tax, national insurance and student loan payments. I put that this person doesn't have the student loan. Now the good news is for someone on£50 ,000 is they've not quite reached the point yet where the government starts taking a lot more of their money as they get dragged into the 40 % tax threshold. This boils down to around£3 ,293 per month. Compared to all other employees in the UK you earn more than 76 your pre-tax salary of 50 000 pounds is less 40 less than the average of 82 962 for marketing sales and advertising directors bear in mind this isn't just people working in marketing sales and advertising it's directors so it's like people at the top it then compares it to you know what you get you can compare it to what you get if you're a nurse doctor and so on and your 50 000 salary means that you earn more than 57 percent of earners in the local authority district i live in which isst hallbans that there'd probably be loads of people who think well i'm 50 grand in that area i'm gonna yeah less than most people but actually it'll tell you that you're you're doing better you're doing 18 more and then you can drill down across the country so finally this is really interesting because it sort of goes to the heart as I sort of suggested at the start and Simon did in his article that what makes us feel rich isn't necessarily how much we've got in our bank accounts or how big our house is it's how big our neighbor's house is how much they've got in their bank account it's so human isn't it but actually it does make a difference where you are in the UK the type of job that you do obviously why are things like this useful do you think Lee what else are these calculators telling us what are the data have you got from for me and of course if your neighbor's got a flashy bmw on the drive they must be doing really really well obviously or they've put it on finance the jury's out um unfortunately you don't have a calculator for that it will i mean you could probably just go how much would it cost to pcp that car okay there's 600 pounds poorer than i am every month well there is that um these these calculate i think all financial calculators on the whole are helpful georgie i think every week that goes by uh i definitely will use a calculator whether it's a compound calculator whether it's a savings interest calculator whether it's looking at how my pension's performing and where we might be going i might be going in the future with it i think all of these kind of tools that we have at our disposal are really really helpful and our tool can be found at thisismoney.co.uk forward slash how rich so you can go and check this out for yourself um i i like this first of all because you can go i think that the the comparisons that it gives you here these four different ways it breaks it down number one is how much more or less than you earn compared to the whole of britain i'm not going to tell you what my figure is i've plugged in my details and it makes for interesting reading and it might give you a big ego boost it might make you go oh actually do you know what i kind of don't feel that rich but i'm owning x percent more than the rest of the country for one yeah then there's the job data and you can compare how that goes with other people within your sector and you can even click on other professions such as nurses doctors teachers police officers chief execs shop workers lawyers and bin men and women and you can see how you compare to all of those different professions which i think is really interesting then it goes to the kind of local and regional breakdown so i'm in the rochford district so it shows me how it puts me compared to other people in the rochford uh area but then also in the east of england uh which i think is really interesting and then it has this lovely map um at the end and it tells you how much more or less you're earning than your average neighbor in the area and what the median salary is in the area they're all very nifty tools um and actually if you feel like if you click if you plug this in and this is where i think the cat code is probably the most useful is if you plug this in and then actually realize that other people in your profession are potentially earning more than you or you know you might end up feeling a little bit hard done by and you might go off and start investigating potentially whether or not it's time for a pay increase when was the last time you had a pay increase yeah perhaps you get a annual increase that's linked to inflation but perhaps you don't you know perhaps your workplace has paused that have you been in a job for a long time and you're being a bit taken advantage of because you haven't moved around or you haven't requested pay increases.

10:18So I think it's interesting to compare to your neighbours, but I think it's more interesting to compare with your profession and whether or not you are doing well. And in this story, we have the 20 highest paid jobs and the 20 lowest paid jobs. We've carried this data on the website for a very long time. And actually Richard Browning, bless him, was one of the kind of key components of updating this every year and it was always a massive traffic driver a lot of people were interested in reading this and number one on the list what do you think is ceo company director barrister that's that's what exactly what i thought i thought lawyer barrister yeah actually number one uh aircraft pilots and air traffic controllers uh 96 415 pounds now i'm guessing the reason why this is kind of at the top is because it's quite a narrow pool of people it's a very skilled profession i'm not saying that being a chief exec and being a lawyer isn't but there's probably a more broader kind of data set to go on yeah a bit more of a spectrum isn't it because you can you can have junior doctors all the way up to consultants for example yeah so that's the salary band would be smaller is that is that what we're saying i think so yeah and then you look through you know some of these uh some of these public relations and communications directors uh get into uh number six on this list of uh paid jobs um and then there's things like senior police officers kind of halfway down this list 63 000 train and tram drivers just behind uh obviously very topical this week uh 63 853 pounds but it's i think it's just it's again to use that data wisely could be either a retraining and doing bit of different profession if you feel like you are being gravely underpaid and you potentially do have the academic skill to take something else on um you know i think that that's not a bad place the other way is to sort of say to your uh children or grandchildren look if you follow this career path you're going to be getting paid much more than following this career path um and i think you know having all of this data to hand is always a good thing i think knowledge is always power Georgian and having it in your hands and being able to look at all this is an interesting data set.

12:35Knowledge is power indeed. I wouldn't recommend though recommending certain jobs to your children. I'm not sure how many jobs on those that list will still be there but it is interesting. I saw you smirk there Lee about public relations because as journalists we do know that a lot of our compatriots, brethren, whatever, do end up in PR and you're looking at the statistics here. I cannot see journalism in the highest paid jobs. But anyway, Simon, if anybody does want to ask for a pay rise, give us a little tip, how to bag a wage increase. You've even got a section here on the website. Ask for it.

13:13Well, I mean, that is a start, right? I mean, if you don't ask, you've been there. I mean, actually, you might do. The best pay raise I ever got very early on in my career, it was actually at BBC London Sport. And he said, I'm going to give you a £5 pay rise. And it was the best pay rise I've ever had because it was just so out of the blues. There's holes in this. Is this£5 a second, a minute, a day, a week? Oh, a day rate. Day rate. I was a few. Yeah, yeah. And I appreciate£5. British pounds is not a vast amount, but, you know, I was young and it was just, it was the gesture. I didn't ask for it.

13:45He just said, I've pushed it up to as high as it can go. And I thought, I'll take that£5. And I still talk about it now, 800 years later. Simon, how to bag that pay rise? well firstly ask for it lee's right secondly read the room what's going on in your business in your organization in your team pick your moment is it a good moment to be asking for more money is there an annual pay review around about which time it would be a good time to have the conversation or do you feel that you need to have the conversation halfway through the year but again as i said you know read the room so if things aren't going great then you know it's probably not going to be the best time to ask for a pay rise.

14:25And also, you might potentially be blowing your opportunity because it's difficult to be doing this constantly. Now, there are some industries where people are doing this constantly. There are people who do this constantly, and they do very, very well. And men tend to get better pay rises than women because traditionally men ask for it more so than women and are less apologetic about asking for pay rises. So don't be apologetic about asking for it but the key thing i think is to demonstrate your value to your employer um why are you worth that pay rise why do they want to pay you more in order to keep you there and reward you for what you're doing so you know we've got some tips here from an employment expert who said highlight how you've gone over above and beyond your role by contributing to you know driving revenue completing key projects delivering new things cost savings stepping up with new responsibilities any new skills or qualifications you've gained consistent positive feedback from clients or colleagues look at what other people in similar roles are earning you can find that you can find that stuff out it's not the greatest time at the moment to be asking for it the jobs market is super tight it's turned from being uh you know a very good jobs market to a very bad jobs market um but also i think one thing i would say is is don't just expect a big pay rise just for doing your job it never ceases to amaze me the number of people for whom they're like well i i want progression and it's like what does progression mean for you and like well more money obviously or a job title and you're like well no progression also means learning and developing and it quite often people will come in and they'll do a job and they're like right i've been doing it for a year now i want a big pay rise it's like well actually you kind of only just really learned to do your job at this organization you've you know from the other side quite often really six months a year people have just got themselves bedded in and you know you should expect an annual pay pay review an annual pay rise at least to try and keep up with inflation right but to go over and above to get what people are really talking about here it's about demonstrating that value and demonstrating why you're ready to step up to the next level rather than just being like well i'm doing my job and i'm doing it well because actually that's the baseline right doing your job and doing it well is just what your boss expects so you can i have a five pounds a day pay rise please i've just been listening and taking on board what you're saying and like you seem to be i do make a mean cup of tea i think i did make one a couple of years ago for you.

17:07And I had to think I'm an all-round good guy and I'd quite like a pay rise. Tea and good guy, I'd put that in the basic box, you know, to be honest. I usually do. What I would say, though, and just to pick one point, though, Simon, there is evidence to suggest that women do ask as much as men. We just don't get it as much. Now, someone asked me online, because people like to ask me stuff online, in perhaps a less polite way than I'm going to suggest is now, Is it down to sexism? That's a very simplistic way of looking at it. I don't think it's down to sexism necessarily. It could very well be the way that perhaps, like you said, more apologetically asking for it.

17:46So it might be the style in which you're asking. We might not expect to get it because we don't think other people ask for it. Perhaps we're a bit more like you say, I'm really sorry. Maybe I don't say it. So actually, things like this are really useful to read the kind of tips and advice that is certainly on your website to have a bit more ammunition to go in and a bit less apologetic, like Simon just said there. Lee, you were going to talk, sorry. I was just going to say, as someone that's been on both sides of the fence, as someone that's asked for a pay rise and someone that's been asked for pay rises.

18:18I mean, obviously it depends on what profession you're in and what industry you're in and how high pressured it is and all that kind of thing. But I think if you have a good boss and a boss that kind of understands that basically men and women are equal, and certainly that's the viewpoint I take. And I would say that I've had both female journalists and male journalists ask for pay rises and different types of things over the years. And it's completely on merit. you know it's just i don't even think about sex or you know anything like that it's just whether you've done a good job and as someone said gone above and beyond uh want to keep you and deserving of it i think that's the way and the attitude that bosses should have and if your boss doesn't have that attitude then you know it might be time to be looking elsewhere and getting your truth and your true worth i think that rightly or wrongly what goes on in a lot of a lot of the time and actually i'd probably argue this is wrongly just to be clear so rightly or wrongly was absolutely the wrong thing to start that sentence with um is that because we don't really have much salary transparency uh in this country of people don't know what their peers are earning okay like maybe it would just be better if everybody's salary was was public and then and then they would know There are some organizations where that is the case, you know, for example, organizations that have to declare salaries above a certain level.

19:47It'd be really interesting to read some research as to, you know, whether people get a better deal. But certainly I suspect that salaries not being transparent only helps, you know, the big employers. It doesn't help the workers, you know, of the world kind of thing. um but i think that one of the things that goes on is it's this how likely is this person to walk right and how much does it matter to me if they walk so so that those are two things that combine how much do i need to keep this person happy and how big an impact is it going to have if they go in some jobs that's easy to measure because people salespeople people who drive revenue and that kind of thing in other jobs it's much much harder to measure but people will have a vague idea of people's importance to to the team to the organization and so on and i think one of the things that goes on between the genders is that actually when you look at uh pay gaps and stuff like that uh the pay gap isn't really there until uh women reach uh the age of like having kids right basically and not all women have kids lots of women don't have kids right and it then becomes this scenario where i think that most of the responsibilities parental responsibilities of care responsibilities still do fall on women you know it's not equally spread out it's not you know as a man in the workplace you wouldn't feel as comfortable even asking for some of that stuff in in many cases okay men will feel that they will be they will have stuff loaded against them if they ask to take on those parental responsibilities whereas women feel that they're expected to do it so they don't have a load against them but the flip side of that is that i think you know there will be cases where people go well you know firstly the women don't want to rock the boat if they're in a good position good employer treats them well gives them the flexibility that they need and so on and always remember that about your job is it's not just the money it's the satisfaction it's the people you work with it's the why do i get up in the morning and go to work what feeling do i get from coming back from work there's we could all probably do jobs that pay us more money right but maybe you wouldn't enjoy them as much and maybe your life would be more miserable um and then so i think it comes down to like some of that stuff like how much how much is this worth to me do i want to rock the boat but on the flip side i think maybe from managers point of view and employers point of view wrongly as i said not rightly or wrongly wrongly it comes down to well you know they're probably not going to walk because this could cause them more of a headache they're not going to find as good a environment as this and so maybe like that's why once you start to get to the age when people are raising families and stuff you know men start to get the better pay rises and you start to get that pay gap developing because they feel, A, they feel that they are in a better position to rock the boat and that they can walk if they need to.

22:46And maybe the employer goes, well, actually, they might walk. They're more likely to walk. I don't know. But I think that's one, that's potentially one thing that goes on. All right, then, moving on. We Brits do love to retire to a place in the sun. But is the Costa del Sol or the Algarve really preferable to the UK to spend your latter years? Britain actually ranks pretty highly as a place to spend retirement, according to a new study. So, Lee, why would we go anywhere else? What is this study? What does it tell us? What would your preference be? Oh, Britain's beautiful, isn't it, Georgie? What a place to spend your latter years with your pension.

23:27you know we always see these uh stories illustrated in the newspapers and online with a retired couple on a yacht with a glass of champagne with a sunset when in reality you know you could be at home with a cup of tea watching mrs marple or whatever you want to do on tv and having a jolly good time in retirement so this this was a survey by asset manager and the tixis the global retirement index so he compiles it every year and there's kind of two elements to it so the first element is it looks at it it ranks countries across the world of all populations etc so and it analyzes 44 of the largest the most advanced countries and we britain comes 14th on this list but when you strip out the less populous but wealthy european countries so in in that top five is Norway Switzerland Ireland Iceland and Denmark once you strip out the kind of less populous areas and the economies that are kind of not as global and not as large Britain actually comes now second only to Germany it has overtaken Canada in this list now what it looks at and you might be thinking well how's it sort of figured this out So it looks at the financial indicators, so i.e.

24:47your state pension, your private pension, cost of living, all that kind of thing. It looks at health and especially life expectancy, which actually the UK jumped up from 18th to 10th on this list, which was the big thing that kind of done this. But the financial markers, which is equality and unemployment, slipped compared to the last year. why unemployment's in that though i'm not too sure because this is the retirement index i wasn't entirely sure what they meant by that but the health quality of life material well-being and finances and 11th for quality of life for the third year of the row the thing that we rank the most uh poorly on is happiness uh the uk fell from 18th to 21st place uh but that was in line with European peers, France and Germany.

25:38So, you know, there's pressures on retirement across the world. And the rankings for the UK do remain consistent. But, you know, there are obviously vulnerabilities. And what kind of retirement you have, as we've discussed many, many times, is hugely variable, definitely from a kind of regional perspective. And from an age perspective as well. You know, we're coming out of an era now where lots of people had gold-plated pensions and we are heading into an era where most people have had to diy their pensions you know as in invest themselves put their own contributions in employers contributions um and and kind of make sure that the onus is on them to make sure that the sum of money you're going to have in retirement is going to be ample enough um and it is a real mixed picture when you really drill down across the country as the people you know we've talked about this before the comfortable retirement the kind of basic retirement lots of people don't will not meet that basic retirement level but what's quite interesting about this i think out of the the large developed countries if i give you the rundown of the list so germany's first britain's second canada's third in the us korea japan france poland italy spain i think that the uk being second in that list is kind of quite impressive uh if i'm being if i'm being honest with you um and as they say in this research it's been quite consistent um you know over the years it's been doing this for a long time it's got the 2015 sort of rankings here britain's up one place from 2015 before brexit before the pandemic the world has changed a lot and it's remained completely consistent according into this report.

27:23So while we like to moan, I think, about retirement, and we like to moan about how the state pension looks, let's not forget the state pensions had a couple of good bumps up in recent years. The retirement levels from this survey, quite in depth, look pretty good. Lee, I mean, that's the point, isn't it? If you move abroad, you won't have other Brits. No, actually, I was going to say you wouldn't have other Brits to moan about stuff with, but you wouldn't have the weather to moan about, you know. It's our national pastime. It brings as joy simon if you had an idea where would it be oh dubai no only joking not dubai really just don't see it for you simon i just i'm going to spend my winters in the alps and i'm going to spend my summers somewhere by the beach where i could surf and i'll take portugal actually at the moment so it's my my new favorite country so yeah i'll spend my winters in the French Alps and my summers in Portugal on the Atlantic coast.

28:21That's it for part one.

28:27I'm joined now by Rob Morgan of Charles Stanley Direct for our weekly Investing Explained feature. Rob, a question from a listener here. I'd like to invest for my son and daughter aged eight and six. What's an easy way to do this? Hi, Simon. Yes, there's one product that I would say particularly stands out for investing for children which is the junior isa which is a tax efficient savings or investment account for a child under 18 similar to an adult isa there's two types of junior isa cash and stocks and shares cash isas are like savings accounts for the bank or building society whereas the stocks and shares type are long-term investment accounts where you can buy funds and shares and so on.

29:12And where a child is young, taking on some investment risk for higher returns over the long term generally makes sense. But whichever you choose, and you can have one of each, any money you make, either is interest on cash or investment income or profits, is free from tax, which is important to your long term returns. There's an annual limit for the amount that you can put in each tax year per child, which is presently£9 ,000. And as the parent, you control the junior ISA account, but the money is in the child's name. Now, the important thing to understand about junior ISAs is withdrawals are only possible from the child's 18th birthday when it automatically converts to an adult ISA in their name.

29:55And at that point, a lump sum can be useful, of course, to help with higher education, deposit on a house, a first car and so on. But that does mean that if you're looking to use the money before age 18, a standard savings account in their name or just earmarking some of your own savings and investments, perhaps within an ISA, makes more sense. Rob, thank you very much. Thank you, Simon. Welcome back. Read a question time. My girlfriend and I are currently in a one bedroom flat that we bought in autumn 2022. It was our first property and we locked into a five year fix at 4.4%, which now looks high compared to what other people seem to be getting.

30:33We are desperate to move somewhere bigger. Both our salaries have increased substantially, but we're worried about paying early repayment charges on a mortgage, which is currently around£300 ,000. The story goes on. Simon, take it up. Right. So this is an interesting one because usually people want to take their mortgage with them to a new property, which is known as porting, because then they've got a mortgage that's cheap. and they know that if they get a new one then they will end up with a more expensive rate and and so that will cause them a problem but the other reason for wanting to take it with you is that you don't want to pay the early repayment charges and these can be pretty hefty they tend to step down from somewhere around five percent potentially to one percent but you should watch out for this when you take out a mortgage and you might think it won't apply to you because you won't move in that period but you never know and if you've got two broadly comparable deals and often if you've got a mortgage you might feel that the difference between 0.01 % off a rate or 0.02 % off a rate might make a big difference but it's not it's a couple of quid and it might be worth you taking the one with the lower early repayment charges because some mortgages have quite high early repayment charges right through to the end so the answer to this is that you can take your mortgage with you these people could actually find a better rate at the moment but they could potentially take their mortgage with them in something that's known as porting if their mortgage is portable i.e their lender allows it so they need to check their mortgage documents and also if their lender agrees to the new property and lenders will sometimes not agree to lend on the new property and in some instances we have seen examples where they will come up with all kinds of reasons not to let you port a mortgage usually because you've got a really really low rate one and they'd really like to get you off it the difficulty is is that if you need to borrow more money to buy the property which you're trading up as in this case then you're going to then need to take out an additional loan with your same lender and you're going to need to get them to agree to that and you can end up with two bits of a mortgage running over two different times so for example i know some people who've been in this situation and they just ended up with this kind of like one bit of a mortgage here one bit of a mortgage there and then the first one ends and then the second one hasn't and then they're like oh what do we do and originally they thought well we could just go on to the early standard variable rate because they weren't that high at the time interest rates have gone up loads since the standard variable rate was going to be a fortune so they had to fix the older part again but then the newer part doesn't catch up with it and so on and you end up in this never-ending scenario and actually it's crazy because mortgage lenders lend over two years five years three years ten years etc there is no reason in this day and age why a mortgage lender couldn't lend to you over a bespoke period of time and just give you a rate for that you know if you've got if you're doing it with your own lender and you're trying to get your mortgages to run to the same length of time there's no reason why they couldn't do that it might require a bit of manual underwriting but it's not exactly complicated is it when you think about what we can do in the world nowadays if you've got someone whose fixed rate runs out in a year in like you know 18 months but they're moving home they're going to lend with you rather than forcing them to take a two-year fix you could just say to them fine we'll lend to you for 18 months and actually if you were rich enough you'd be able to do this but if you're just dealing with the bog standard mainstream mortgage market you'll find yourself you know stuck this is where it does pay off to speak to a broker though because the broker might be able to help you they might even be able to remorg you know they might be able to sort this out with your own lender for you it does become slightly tricky when you're dealing with your own lender through a broker and so on but you know explore your options is what i'd say the early repayment charge thing it is annoying i i tried this knowing that it probably wouldn't work our first mortgage was fixed rate mortgage at 4.99 for five years now when i took that out in 2006 that was a good deal that was cheap money we moved four and a half years into it which was really annoying we'd agreed to to sell our flat it was four and a half years in and we still had like a one percent uh early repayment charge on the mortgage so i contacted our lender at the time which was nat west and i said to them look we're four and a half years into this do us a favor wait for the early repayment charge come on like if we were a whole year or something but you know natwest said no it's like come on been a good borrower i'm a nice boy you know open doors for people say please and thank you they were like no it's in your terms and conditions no i was like okay now the difficulty was we weren't buying another flat we actually ended up selling our flat renting for a while and then buying somewhere else but we were definitely going to buy somewhere else so i said to them right obviously i can't port it because we're not buying somewhere else but could you just put the mortgage on hold for me until we get a new property and then i'll put it on a new property and then i'll pay you off the the final six months and i'll you know do the additional borrowing it'll be just like no that's not a thing no you can't do that you can't have a mortgage without a property that it's attached to so yeah i had to give natwest like it's really annoying it was like 1800 pounds oof i know oof exactly you know what i said i'm never i said fine you know appreciate it i know you can't help you could have just let me off this i'm never taking out a mortgage with natwest ever again anyway guess who my mortgage is with natwest i know i forgot that oops totally forgot i threatened to never take out a mortgage with them ever again.

36:42Right, from buying homes to selling them or renting your homes. Lee, energy performance certificates. They rate how energy efficient a property is. So having a lower EPC rating of A, B or C can give households access to cheaper mortgages, may even increase house prices for prospective buyers who think they might have lower energy bills if they get that very energy efficient house. So look, it's really important, but how reliable are they? and if they're not reliable well what's the point lee i'm a little bit skeptical of epcs georgie just just a touch skeptical so look they are calculated by an energy assessor using government approved software what the assessor does is goes around looks at the property's features so insulation heating windows lighting they put this data into a soft into software and score the house or home or whatever it is out of 100 as you say a most energy efficient g least energy efficient and having a an a house now can unlock for example slightly better mortgage rates as people were encouraged to have you know better energy efficient more energy efficient homes like totally get that like completely makes sense and now to sell a home or to let out a home you need an EPC um they're not they're not massively expensive but it's still an industry that you know makes money uh and it's been around for a fair amount of time and I remember a few years back I actually did a kind of EPC calculator a government calculator to try and work out what our home was and it spat out kind of the improvements that you could make and what that would likely do to your score and how much it would cost and some of the costs associated to basically scoring a couple of extra points for tens of thousands of pounds and you go nah now we've got this survey from atom bank now the best way for me to describe this survey this this data is it was over 1038 homes and it compares co2 emissions based on epc ratings with measurements derived from actual meter readings from these same homes.

38:55You look at the bar chart in this story and it is quite incredible reading actually. So for an A, B, C, D, E, F, G property with the meter, all of them had them within a reading of one to two carbon emissions of how much is being released. So a rating between one and two. When you look at the EPC model, A and B is between 1 and 2. Then C just ticks over 2. D almost hits 4. E almost hits 6. And then F and G almost hits 7. That's a massive discrepancy between what is being told in an EBC and what is here. So Attenbank assumed that this may be due to personal choices by households. So, you know, what they're doing.

39:47Maybe they were just being incredibly energy efficient. But experts at University College London's Energy Institute observed a similar pattern across a larger national data set, finding a little variation in primary energy usage above EPC band C, even after it accounted for factors such as family size and thermostat temperature. And the UCL team is now working to identify causes of discrepancies as part of a government study into EPC accuracy. not yet published that's going to be interesting reading georgie i mean you might be interesting how can that be interesting i find stuff like this incredibly interesting because that has become a large part of the property market you know it's become a large part of landlords expecting to have uh minimum epc ratings of e very hard to achieve ratings like that in old victorian properties for example uh the government is considering up in this requirement to a c from 2030, which would be for private rentals and holiday lets.

40:49That's not long away. And some of the changes that are needed for homes could be substantial. Thousands. Thousands. And it kind of, it's good. I think it's good to have the question and having, you know, potentially experts looking at this, government-backed, to figure out if EPCs are worth, you know, the paper they're written on. Watch this space. So we'll keep an eye out for that and see what happens. All right, then, Lee. Finally, you've been hobnobbing with the celebs again. This time for a piece for me and my money before we get into that. Simon, what's your ideal celeb to interview for me and my money?

41:32Or for just generally, but, I mean, let's make it relevant, shall we? Yeah. It's me and my money, if anyone isn't aware. Me and my money is our celebrity money interview. Very long running. We've been doing this for many, many years. but um lee is in the process of really upping the stakes on the celebs that we're getting in no doubt just your best mates in your phone yeah we've obviously you know we tend to largely go for uk uh stars but also you know international stars can be done as well we had a conversation about this the other day in the office i said i fancy getting tony hawk the skateboarder oh yeah He's a big Bitcoin fan as well.

42:09And has had a very, very long career with ups and downs over the years as well. And obviously made a huge amount of money out of the video games and things like that. And is still making a living from it in his 50s. So I thought that'd be an interesting one. Going with the sporting theme, I would be probably quite interested in interviewing Robbie Fowler, one of the richest footballers. I mean, you've got to hand it to someone. When you have a list of people that you thank in your autobiography, when you thank your financial advisor at the end, that is, you know, he's done well. And when the fans sing, we all live in a Robbie Fowler house, he's the guy to let empire.

42:47That's so true. So Lee, sorry, let's not steal your thunder because you actually did speak to a big celebrity. Steal my thunder all you like, Georgie. Does Robbie still do his property seminars? I remember they were kind of plugged quite a lot and maybe go to one send it Magnus to one yeah we could do we could do um if you're asking me for my dream celebrities I think it would be uh either Nicolas Cage uh or Ian Holloway I think Ian Holloway would be interesting Ian and Yang there for you stand with the sporting theme but actually do you know um the whole idea I was kind of toying last year with starting up a new podcast uh for us and it It was titled, Does Becks Have a Pension?

43:33And basically the podcast would end as soon as I could get David Beckham on the podcast and ask him what his pension plans were. So it's kind of gone. It's gone from that. I said I'd been handed over the keys for the Me and My Money page, but as Simon said earlier, actually, I've stolen the keys and I'm taking the page for a joyride. So you might hear a few little celebrity interviews. does bex have a pension uh segment uh on this show now as i ask various celebrities about their ins and outs of their finances so the me and my money page it's a set load of questions things like do you have a pension do you have property uh biggest money mistake we all a lot quite often celebrities will say a car and what you know what your financial priorities and what would you do uh if you were chancellor which is the clip that you're going to hear uh shortly from from mr ross Kemp, who is fronting up a campaign at the moment to pay your pension some attention, which is the whole way I managed to get him to have an interview.

44:34Absolutely sound guy, really, really, really good to interview. He was really interesting and gave some really, really great answers. And you're about to hear some of that now. So if I was chancellor, I think I'd make it compulsory for kids to learn about money, to understand it and i'm not again talking about the value but also understand how to manage money what money is when i left drama school i'd you know i had a grant a little bit of a grant but mostly i relied on on handouts from my parents which were in baked beans more than in financial increments so i had to work i had to work in in pubs and cleaning toilets working for a cleaning company i had to work all the way through drama school there are other kids there are far wealthier than me that lift off mommy and daddy all got full grants because their parents didn't disclose because they were self-employed what they were really worth or what they were really earning and my dad worked for the government so there was no way of getting around that and he didn't want to pay for me to be at drama school so he didn't want me to be an actor god bless him right maybe i never made that either but i like to think i've done some good acting over the years um so to understand debt to plan for their futures and and that i think would help immensely in terms of building a secure future for people and and i know it's not a dry subject kids are all on the internet right now looking at you know they want to be influencers want to be this but how do you you know how do you pay tax what does tax go where does tax go what does it mean why do i have to pay it it's so true yeah i don't think that you can learn algorithms right are they going to be really helpful when you go to your first job are you going to understand what pay is what self-employed is what schedule d is you know i think it's really important that it's and it's done in a very practical way this is not so you know planning to get your own get your a level so you can go to university and study economics at the lse this is just telling you basic fundamental money understanding because i think that's where a lot of people go wrong i totally agree with you and actually just really really quickly i am i got badgered last year to go to my daughter's primary school and speak to a group of year six children before they went off to secondary school and i thought it was going to be really dry i thought they wouldn't care whatsoever the questions they asked me about money were some of the most profound things i've ever sort of really but isn't that great i did i did it for 90 minutes i felt like i'd done about 12 12 000 rounds with mike tyson i couldn't talk but but gilly money isn't dry money is wet and it's liquid and it's interesting And I've made documentaries about the laundering that goes on around the world.

47:10And it is fascinating. Maybe it's something for you to do a program for children. I reckon that would be really good. You doing the money explaining for children. Well, you know, I'd have to go back and go to school with them, actually, to understand it properly. I think you should do it. But the point is, I do think that there is a real need for an understanding. And, you know, breaking down how the system works, how some people make so much money, how others don't make virtually any money at all, but also just how the system works and also questioning why the system possibly doesn't work that well.

47:45So that was our Lee chatting to actor Ross Kemp. Just a little snippet there, Lee, a little teaser. Where can they get the full interview? So the full interview will be in the mail on Sunday, this Sunday, or you can read it on thisismoney.co.uk. Lovely. Sarnan, stat of the week? Two percent. That's my stat of the week. First time buyers are being offered a 2 % deposit mortgage. So Newcastle Building Society, the seventh largest building society in Britain, is now offering borrowers the chance to go on the property ladder with a 98 % mortgage. So that means you could buy with a deposit of as little as£5 ,000.

48:25But there's a catch and a caveat. Not if you've got your money from the bank of mum and dad. If you've got your money from the bank of mum and dad, you can't apply for this mortgage. which led my wife to ask the question of how are they going to police that you do actually have to fill in a form when you get a mortgage firehouse that says where you got the deposit from but if your mum and dad gave you three grand a year ago or six months ago or three months ago into a bank account with another bank and then you put it in your savings account and then you say it's coming from your savings how are they going to police that who's ever going to know Yeah, unless they go to another forensic level of checking.

49:08But I'm just curious about the sort of, I'm always curious about these things. Why 2 %? Why not 3? Why not 1? 99 sounds interesting. 97, less interesting. Well, you know, I think maybe 3 % is too close to 5%, which is a fairly standard kind of mortgage you can get. And perhaps 1 % is just that bit too risky. So 2 % is the number. A nice round too. All right, fair enough. Start of the week. Thank you, Simon. That's it. you can keep up to date with all the latest breaking money news just go to thisismoney.co.uk or download the app and if you have any comments or questions team anything you'd like them to look into simon uh you can email us at podcast at thisismoney.co.uk and david beckham if you do want to get in touch about your pension um i know bex does listen to the podcast stick my pension in the subject line um if you if presumably bex's email is is his own name if you've got one of those really weird emails or you're sharing victoria's or something then stick it's david beckham i'll tell you about my pension in the subject line that'd be great i bet so yeah uh email us podcast everybody welcome okay yeah everybody's welcome not just david everybody's welcome please don't everybody spam us with messages with i'm david beckham and this and i'll tell you about my pension in the subject line we will spot that we will be able to police that perhaps in a better away the Newcastle Building Society to complete their deposits and we will filter those out.

50:30Or come to thisismundi.co.uk forward slash podcast to find all podcasts passed and join in the debate and read the comments. Or feel free to message me on my multiple social media channels, which many people have been doing. Thank you very much. Read them all and pass them all over to the team. So thank you. Keep it coming. Not have David Beckham though. I wait. Anyway, if you like our podcast, which of course you do, why not rate us wherever you found us because you're still listening to this part. It helps other people find us too. Got to listen to this bit, otherwise you don't have to hear the mad stuff at the end.

51:01This is the best bit. Where we go, Dimo Pappy. David, let him listen to the end. Take control of your finances with Charles Stanley Direct. Invest, save, coach or plan. Using technology where it's helpful and people where it matters. Our website and app make trading cost effective and flexible. But we're more than just an online investment service. We're here for you regardless of your financial needs or if your life takes an unexpected turn. Your finances, your way. Take control today with Charles Stanley Direct. Sign up now. Investment involves risk.