How would you spend a lottery jackpot?

0:03Lee Boyce: Welcome 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, what would you do with 208 million quid? Ahead of another EuroMillions rollover, This Is Money spoke to an advisor for the nouveau riche to get some practical tips on what to do if you win big, just in case. Simon turns his focus on the big winter fuel U-turn and the spring statement. Pray for Rachel and all of us, he says. Plus, we borrowed too much to buy our home. What can we do about our huge mortgage now? Also today, we speak to an auction expert to find out the four types of property that savvy buyers are snapping up right now.

0:46Lee Boyce: And three English shops refuse to take my Scottish£20 note. Are they allowed to do that? 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.

1:25Simon Lambert: your way. Take control today with Charles Stanley Direct. Sign up now.

1:31Lee Boyce: Investment involves risk. But first, did you buy a ticket? Some lucky winner could bag the UK's biggest lottery prize ever after the EuroMillions jackpot became a triple rollover. The estimated jackpot is likely to be over£200 million, meaning that if the lucky winner is from our fair isles, it will make them the largest lottery winner we've ever had here. It's the dream, right? And yet how many stories have we read about a win turning into a nightmare? Winners can find themselves overwhelmed and unsure what to do next. So wealth planning director Matt Swatton of wealth management firm Canaccord Wealth is a lottery specialist and this is money caught up with him to find out his tips.

2:18Lee Boyce: But first, Lee, I'll be honest with you. I don't know that I've ever bought a lottery ticket, maybe a scratch card, but never bought a lottery ticket. Just put some context to this. What is the Euro Millions and why is everybody talking about it at the moment? That's a big figure, isn't it?

2:36Georgie Frost: Oh, the frenzied excitement, Georgie, of the lottery and the Euro Millions. And actually in the office this week, we were talking about, I remember when the National Lottery started in 1994. actually I was about seven years old and I can still remember the excitement of that first draw the Euro Millions is a cross-continent one so other countries are involved in it as well and quite often winners can be in Europe there's a lot of British winners but there's also a lot of across the channel as well the odds of the Euro Millions are absolutely stupendously long but basically it's£2.50 a line there's a draw on a Tuesday there's a draw on a Friday and the maximum it can ever be uh the jackpot will ever be is 250 million euros so that's where we're getting the 208 million pound figure from that was the sum that was on offer last friday that's the sum that was offered on offer on tuesday and then once again on friday it's rolled over no one's won it because of those stupendously long odds and the little difference is uh this time around there's going to be 13 1 million pound winners in the uk of the raffle there's like a little raffle element to it is usually a£1 million winner.

3:42Georgie Frost: It's because it's Friday the 13th. It's a little thing that they do sometimes where they kind of, especially when it's rolled over this much. So if you buy a ticket, you also entered into that raffle. So there's 13£1 million prizes. But last Friday, I decided in honour of our old colleague, Richard Browning, to do a This Is Money syndicate. He used to quite often send an email around and it'd be something that would read like this. Hey, lotto losers, send your money over you know for your stupid tax this week and we had 12 of us in it 30 quid and we won absolutely nothing I think we had about six numbers uh in 12 lines which wasn't great and then I did it myself on Tuesday and Georgie I do have some news I actually do have some I genuinely have some news I haven't even told Simon this so I got an email alert Wednesday morning saying you've won a prize because I did it on the app this time.

4:36And I logged in and I'd won£4.60.

4:40Georgie Frost: I couldn't believe it. Yeah, I did£4.60. I've got two numbers and a lucky star. And I thought, God, that would just about cover a Cafe Nero coffee, maybe, just about. Yeah, I was so, so excited. But, you know, listen, it's one of those things. We don't encourage gambling. You know, it's one of those things I think once, you know, here and there, it's kind of okay. But it is a stupid tax. you know your money would be much better served even in premium bonds because at least you can take your state back you know with the lottery that money's gone forever odds are so incredibly long but we get swept up in the excitement and this is what the stories are this week that we've got by Matt who you just mentioned there and we also got tips from Graham Dixon of Evelyn Partners as well about basically what people's priorities are if they won the lottery and I think I'm not alone in saying this and there's a hope I'm not alone in saying this that we do do that kind of mental spend so let's say you're in it for the lottery i know you say you haven't bought a ticket george but let's say you bought a ticket for the lottery tonight 208 million pounds i think for 208 million pounds i think the mental spend is what would you then do with the money and then my first thought and i've realized that this is what the first thought is for most people is how could you divvy up some to your friends and family i think you know that's really nice thing that was what came top of the poll that we had on what's gonna say you've you have a poll lee and i

6:00Lee Boyce: deliberately didn't do the poll. One, because I was actually really unsure what I would pick. And the other thing is I didn't want to know before the podcast what This Is Money readers had chosen. So it's friends and family, pay off the mortgage, buy a house, travel. Save and invest. Which I think I'm probably slightly erring towards purely for the fact, I think, is that I couldn't decide. So I'd be like, right, I'll just stick it somewhere useful while I decide what to do, because travel I do that a lot mortgage you might get a repayment penalty no I might buy a course or something like quite an expensive art course in Florence or something so maybe that is travel or something like that but anyway I couldn't decide so the people have spoken and they said divvied

6:45Georgie Frost: up to friends and family now that was the first one so this poll actually went quite big at the time of writing the story it had more than 23 ,000 votes the question was if you won the lottery what would you do first which is quite crucial because you would probably do all five of those things pretty rapidly because you've got the money to do it but 35 percent of people said um helping friends and family then 21 said pay off mortgage and the same said buy a house travel was 15 and save slash invest 9 i think i'd probably end up doing all five of those things within the first two weeks but first definitely friends and family because i think when when i do do that mental spend and like and how i divvy up you know 208 million you know what percent would you give away to friends and family and who would you give it to i think that probably plays on my mind more so than anything else like you know got a mortgage on the house but it's kind of like it's a manageable mortgage yes it'd be nice to have a bigger house but i'm not absolutely desperate to have a bigger house yes it's nice to travel but to be honest i can travel now travel so accessible to our generation and you know there's travel and then there's travel you know when you've got big big bucks and then save and invest of course you the first thing i think that would happen definitely is you'd get that money land probably in your current account and i'd just be panicking i'll be thinking fs i'll be thinking straight off the bat i'll be like okay you've got 85 000 pound limit that leaves me quite a lot of exposure in terms of my money being safe and actually that's what matt and both graham have mentioned in this like the actual practicalities of what you do if you win a jackpot you're 208 million pounds a lot and these these guys actually do advise lottery winners you know you're probably talking from a million pounds typically up to sort of 10 20 million pounds rather than triple figures i mean 208 million pounds is a kind of sum of money i can't even you can't even comprehend that is just like no there's life-changing amounts of money then there's like life-changing amounts of money that's going to change probably 50 people in your life's life you know what i mean like you're going to spread around but it's a beautiful headache georgie and the thing is if you're entering the lottery and you just accidentally then win it I mean wonderful but you know we're joking around here but it can have a seriously detrimental impact on people's lives you know as you say there's been lots of case studies on how not to be a lottery millionaire so you know the practicalities are in that first week there are things that you should be doing and straight off the bat before we get you know the thing about the

9:11Lee Boyce: friends and family and I want to find out what Simon would do with it but all I'll say about the friends and family is you talk about those cautionary tales. And one of the biggest problems is the hangers-on. And I think what I would probably do is keep it quite quiet at the start. The first thing I would probably do is speak to really immediate family and my loved ones. I would probably want to pay off my brother's mortgage. And then I would want to really think about what I do with it. But I wouldn't be splashing it around to my friends and family, like let me pay off you that will come subtly but I don't think I'd want to be going around going look at me I'm a multi multi-millionaire which is why I'd never understand when people have these lottery wins Simon and they have all those photographs of them with champagne next to this big check I couldn't think of anything worse well there's the question isn't it would you go

10:03Simon Lambert: public no I think there's a merit to the argument that you definitely don't as you said just now because it's like if you don't tell anyone, nobody knows. People around you are definitely going to notice your lifestyle potentially changing unless you're one of those people who really does keep it under their hat. But I don't think I would go public. And I shouldn't say that as a man who works for a national newspaper. I should be encouraging all lottery winners to go public. But, yeah, I don't think I would do. I would like to, at this point, give an honorary mention to one of my best and oldest friends who on Saturday night when we were all together informed us of his new life plan.

10:44Simon Lambert: We were intrigued to know what this new life plan was. And he was, you know, it's like, seriously, this is it. I've worked out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. We were like, okay, what are you going to do? He's like, going to win the EuroMillions on Tuesday. I was like, oh, great. He's like, yeah, I'm going to win. And he's like, but it's good for you lot because you're all getting money. and we had that conversation around well who would you give money to and he was saying you know once you start adding it up there's quite a lot of people that you need to give money to and that's quite quite a lot of money that you go through if you want to give them a meaningful sum I mean he was being very generous he was talking about giving people two million so I think I was getting two million for example but then he was like oh and then there's other people you maybe you'd have to give them less and everything but he said it adds up I think he was potentially even going to allocate maybe 50 % of his 200 million to give to friends and family and then start questioning whether that was too much.

11:36Simon Lambert: But then who needs more than 100 million, to be honest? So I think the first thing I would be doing is probably going on holiday, going away, getting your head around it somewhere with your closest family and just all sitting down and going. And by that, I mean, probably like my closest, closest family, i.e. the wife and the children. I don't think we tell other children, but maybe some time where she's like, right, OK, how are we going to deal with this? What are we going to do? Paying off your mortgage obviously sounds like a wonderful thing to do straight off the bat. But you've got a point, Georgie.

12:11Simon Lambert: You might face an early repayment charge. Also, if you've got 208 million pounds, you have the luxury of not needing to rush to pay off your mortgage because chances are your mortgage is a tiny fraction of the amount of money that you have now. You wouldn't want to rush to give money to friends and family because, as I said, you've got to think through how much you're going to give them. And even if you have spent 30 minutes having an alcohol-fuelled hilarious discussion about this on a Saturday night, you might not have thought this one through properly. Funnily enough, actually, what came out of it was the first thing that we were doing is we were all going to Vegas, which is the most naff, predictable thing to do and we were all agreed on that, that there were places we would much rather go than Vegas.

12:59Simon Lambert: It just felt like the right thing to do. It was like maybe you just got to lean in and go, do you know what, let's do the stupid thing. But yeah, I think I would go away this time of year, somewhere hot and sunny where I could surf and I'd think about what I'm going to do with the money. And I'd want to give some to friends and family. You'd want to do it in a way that kind of sets them up to do something rather than ruins their lives by just having a large sum of money that they burn through um yeah obviously i pay off a mortgage um and friends and families mortgages and things like that but then you'd want to find some kind of purpose for yourself you know if you look to the rest of your life it would be very nice to spend the rest of your life doing whatever you want to do but is that going to be the best thing for you unless you've got stuff to occupy your time i mean I'm zigzagging the world snowboarding and surfing, so I'd be fine in my mind.

13:48Simon Lambert: But even at the back of my mind, there is a tiny little bit of me that thinks eventually I might get bored of that.

13:56Lee Boyce: Lee, what else did Matt say? Do you know what I was thinking there? I'd probably also get a bit of therapy, you know. That might be useful. Just generally, like nothing to do with a lottery win. You could do that anyway, George.

14:05Georgie Frost: You don't have to have a lottery win to do that. Can I just say, I think that Simon's mate, sort of strikes with sort of person to go Vegas and go and stick 208 million pound on red or black um maybe that's where he wants to go look the way you do it is you put 104 on red and 104 on black then double down yeah yeah and what can go wrong which again i should point out here this is gambling and we are not encouraging gambling yeah this is just a little bit of lottery fun and kind of you know spitballing on what might happen if you had a big win now listen we had matt swatton of kind of called wealth and he actually does advise lottery winners he's a lottery specialist and he gave us six tips if you win a sizable amount of money not just 208 million pounds on this lotto draw on this euro millions draw um he said number one don't rush into anything and get expert guidance of course you know you want to take a pause and to sort of think about you know who you're going to get to help manage your money make sure that it's still growing making sure it's still safe all that kind of thing understand what your win means for your life now and the future lots of us mentally spend it but once it actually did land in your account it's a completely different ballgame and again he reiterates it that it pours to understand your new financial reality you know because that's where people do get tripped up you know they end up with a champagne lifestyle you know and just kind of going completely bonkers and off the rails it depends on your personality and what you're kind of like make sure your money is safe you know you going to want to get this spread around probably as quickly as possible to make sure that you know you're not having your money sitting all in one place decide who you want to share the money with which is what we were discussing earlier and i'll get onto that a bit in a second and then focus on the longer term you know he says here investing is a key consideration of course because inflation interest rate risk mean leaving all your money in cash could reduce its value over time and that's where people probably do get a little bit tripped up and a bit confused because you think well massive sum of money what does it matter but you do not want your money to be sitting still whether you've got 208 million pounds whether you've got 20 20.8 million pounds whether you've got 2.8 million pounds whether you've got 280 grand you do not want your money to be sitting still doing nothing so it is important that you get the right kind of advice the lottery works with trusted advisors that will help make these decisions you know with your input depending on how much input you want to have now when it comes to family and friends he said many winners want to share their good fortune with family and friends while gifting can be incredibly rewarding it also comes with emotional and financial implications a large gift can change the recipient's life and your relationship with them you also need to consider affordability make sure you can afford the gift without compromising your own future of course 208 million pounds that's a different ball game but when you're talking a million pound for example premium bond win that doesn't actually stretch that far if you're starting to think about gifting some of that money away if you've got a mortgage with your property you want to go traveling but it actually burn through that pretty quick you're going to burn through 208 million pounds pretty quick unless you do something daft like invest in a football club which is just a money pick don't do that definitely don't do that and then graham dixon of evelyn partners he says that for gifts that don't fall within the donor's nil rate band should the donor die the individual could be liable for taxes the lottery winner dies and the gift was made over 325 grand now that's quite morbid but it does depend on what age you potentially win the lottery but and also that doesn't necessarily mean anything either because obviously bad things can happen so i'm taking this down a notch here to get around this the winner could set aside money to make a provision for any tax bill the recipient may face if the donor dies within seven years that seems quite extreme doesn't it and then he adds when it comes to gifting many winners naturally wish to make provision for younger members of the family typically children or grandchildren it's important to consider the order that gifts are made especially if you're marking money for your children's future using a trust in order to avoid unnecessary tax charges boil all that together georgie 208 million pounds a huge amount of sum to get your head round would it be pleasant to win 208 million pounds well yeah of course it would be but it does come with headaches imagine with family members i've given my sister half a million pounds but I've only given my brother a quarter of a million pounds.

18:23Georgie Frost: You don't like me as much then. You know, I can see how all this stuff can unfold. And it takes so much careful consideration. But I'm going to be honest, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably aren't going to win the lottery. And you're probably not going to have to worry about this. But if you have won the lottery or won a big life-changing sum of money, do get in touch and just let us know what you've done. Because anonymously as well, we're always interested. it.

18:46Simon Lambert: Well, let this financial expert share a story with you. I'm going to read you my own words here. I've done many daft things in my life. Perhaps the most inconsequential but longest lasting was the fateful decision to start playing the lottery. On that day in November 1994, I bought a ticket for the first ever National Lottery draw. 7, 12, 16, 32, 36, 42. I don't need to read those numbers. Those were the numbers on the ticket. Unfortunately, in those days, before the lucky dips arrival, I had to pick them myself. I didn't win, but I did remember the numbers and played the lottery again. And so began my 21-year relationship with a six-number sequence that I'd gladly have erased from my memory.

19:42Simon Lambert: Now, those with a keen head for maths may have already worked out that 21-year relationship, 1994, yep, this was written in 2015. We are now well beyond that. We are in fact 1994 to today. That would be a 30 year relationship and accounting because after having those numbers and I've stopped reading now, but after having those numbers ingrained in my brain and all the years of rushing down to a shop to buy a one pound ticket and then they introduced a midweek draw. So I had to rush down to the shop to buy a one pound ticket in the middle of the week and then they upped the price to two pounds just to pull another one over on me.

20:24Simon Lambert: I finally buckled and I bought a direct debit. And every week I have the money, well, go out of my account. It actually goes out monthly. But every week I play the lottery twice a week because I know the numbers. And what if those numbers came up? It could be me. Obviously it hasn't been me and it probably never is going to be me. But this is basically a sort of mental health tax, I think, that if I ever saw that those numbers had come up and I hadn't played, I don't know how I'd feel, but I suspect it wouldn't be good. So basically, don't start playing the lottery. Don't start picking your own numbers.

21:13Simon Lambert: Don't remember the numbers. If you are going to start playing the lottery, use the lucky dip system. Do not start playing your own numbers. Do not remember the numbers because otherwise, like me, you will end up paying a weekly stupid tax. On the plus side, it does mean that I am giving some money to a good cause each week. Unfortunately, it's way less than the price of my ticket.

21:37Lee Boyce: Winter fuel. The Chancellor this week gave us a bit more clarity over the government's winter fuel climb down rather than restricting eligibility to the poorest pensioners, all but the richest will receive it. So Steve Webb, pensions agony uncle at This Is Money, has been answering a lot of readers' questions about this. And here is one in particular that stands out. It's coming up a fair bit. Now, is the new£30 ,000 threshold per pensioner or per household? Individually, both myself and my partner have less, but combined we're over it. so will we receive a winter fuel payment firstly lee what do we know what is the answer to this one

22:19Georgie Frost: that's right so yeah we had a big u-turn uh this week on the winter fuel payments uh after much wranglings and discussions and it being the political hot potato of basically since the labor have come into power um figuring out how they're going to try and keep everyone happy while also seeming to make nobody happy. And winter fuel payments are going to be coming back to those people who are at this£35 ,000 threshold. Now, it's going to be paid out and then clawed back via tax. It's, oh, I find it mind-bendingly complicated for what should just be quite simple. and it really has been just the most bonkers sort of start to a government all of this winter fuel payment uh stuff so anyway look we asked steve webb our pensions agony uncle and also lcp and former pensions minister so it is actually quite complicated so if you didn't get winter fuel payment in 2024 because you weren't on pension credit you would get a payment in winter 2025 you don't need to take any action and the reason why i'm saying that is because already scammers are out there texting people saying click this link if you want your winter fuel payment this year definitely do not do that and the catch is that for higher income pensioners there will be a clawback so the government has said the definition of higher income is any individual whose taxable income is above 35 000 pounds per year this includes things like state pension company pensions annuities taxable investment income and so on but not things like tax-free benefits like attendance allowance um he says note that as far as we know it's likely the 35 000 pound figure will be uh fixed at least for the next few years but the key point is all no winter fuel payments are assessed on a household basis the means test will depend on your individual income so he's put out a kind of example here if we consider your case as a couple and assume for now that you're both under 80 in future you will be entitled 200 200 pounds of winter fuelments as a household and this is split up as£100 each.

24:28Georgie Frost: Provided that neither of you has individual income above£35 ,000, you will continue to get your winter fuel payments. This is despite the fact your combined income is above this level. If one of you had an income above£35 ,000, then your share of the winter fuel payment,£100 in your case, would be clawed back through the tax system. So that's the way it looks like it's going to work. There's still kind of cases and kind of scenarios in which we're still not completely sure what's going on. But I would say for the majority of pensioners that need this wind fuel payment or feel like they need this wind fuel payment in order to not do crazy things like not switch the heating on over winter or cut drastically back, that£300 now should be coming.

25:11And actually the pension credit element of this, the thing I should point out here is there's been a big uptick in people that are claiming pension credit, which is a good thing.

25:21Georgie Frost: It unlocks a lot of other benefits. so it has nudged people actually as i think there's a bit of a feeling in this country sometimes um that it's i don't need to be claiming pension credit because there's people worse off or whatever it's a bit of pride like i don't want to be doing that but actually you know you should get it if you're entitled to it so there's been a big nudge towards that that was actually the big surge in that was eating away at some of the savings uh that the government were getting from winter fuel payment anyway because so many people it unlocks so much more money for people i think typically unlocks like four thousand pounds of savings a year which is way better than 300 quid a year but crucially it looks like the people that need to be getting this payment will be getting it and there's a massive cohort of people that do not qualify for pension credit who are right on the finer lines of kind of being okay and struggling that would have had applications turned down for pension credit and it should help those people out massively.

26:18Lee Boyce: Quite. Simon, you've asked, should we just give it all back to pensioners and be done with this madness? The floor's yours.

26:25Simon Lambert: Well, I think this is an example of a really quite bad piece of policymaking from the start. It has always confused me as to why this was rushed out, along with the black hole stuff. It would have been better to lay the ground and to say, looking at this we're giving winter fuel payments to all pensioners that means that we are giving them to people who need them but it also means we're giving them to people who don't need them and this has come up in the past you know famously with people as rich as for example sir alan sugar saying why am i getting this money there's lots of people out there who have you know high incomes as pensioners who basically get this money and every year they just give it to charity Now, that's not the most efficient way of using your resources.

27:09Simon Lambert: And we need to change this system and we need to find a way to cut our costs so that we can allocate our money to places where we need it most rather than giving money to rich pensioners. And arguably, why should you be giving someone who is perhaps in their mid-60s and has a secure final salary pension income of£45 ,000,£200 a year, when somebody in their 20s who is struggling to get by on£20 ,000 gets no help at all? Now, there's definitely an argument to be made for that. What there probably wasn't an argument for was suddenly rushing it out, picking a fight with half the country because it's not just pensioners.

27:49Simon Lambert: It's all the people who then go, that's outrageous, taking money off pensioners and then ending up in this unholy mess. What you definitely don't want to do is then stand your ground on it and then make a U-turn. But they have made a U-turn and they have come up with something that appears to have been modelled or has actually in a way been modelled on one of the parts of the tax and benefit system that is widely agreed to not be very good, which is the child benefit removal. So it's slightly different to the child benefit removal, where if on child benefit removal, once anybody's earnings goes in your household, goes over the£60 ,000, you lose child benefit altogether.

28:28Simon Lambert: In this instance, if one person's earnings go above the£35 ,000, you only lose half the winter fuel payment. But it does create the scenario where you could have a couple who both have income of£34 ,000, so total household income of£68 ,000 and they still continue to get£200. But you could have a pensioner living by themselves who has an income of£36 ,000 and they get absolutely nothing. Now somebody must have sat down at some point in a meeting and said, do you know what we need in the system? Another cliff edge. That's a good idea. And let's make it really complicated and let's give people money and then take money back off people because that's a good idea.

29:08Simon Lambert: None of those things is a good idea. We're going to end up saving about£450 million a year off the back of this. Actually, the savings interestingly increase, which indicates that the government is going to indulge in a little bit more fiscal drag and not raise the£35 ,000 in line with inflation or wages or the triple lock even, which maybe it should be doing. And it also looks like it ain't going to raise the level of the wind fuel payment either. But fundamentally, I think we've now reached the point where we should just be asking the question of should we just give this back to everyone? Is this worth it?

29:44Simon Lambert: Is this actually worth the hassle? Because whilst the government has given the winter fuel payment back to pensioners, apart from the ones who it's going to take it back off, it is going to create more complexity in the system. It is going to create more confusion. In a way, it's created more questions than it has answers. is not generated really that great publicity. You would expect better publicity from giving people money than they've got this week. And I just think arguably, even as somebody of working age looking at this and going, this is crazy that we're giving these wealthy pensioners money, I think we should just return this to being a universal benefit.

30:23Simon Lambert: And I think it's a great example of why you should have universal benefits and some benefits benefit from being universal. It's because you then have widespread support for them. You don't overcomplicate it. You don't end up with these situations where it's like, but what about that person? What about that person? What about that person? And you just go, right, this is a thing that we're going to do and we've decided we're going to do it and it's a good thing. What I would do, however, is I would bring it back for everyone, but then I would make it much, much easier to turn it down, to opt out of it, And I would have a campaign encouraging people who are wealthy to say, no, actually, I don't need this money and I'm going to turn it down.

31:06Simon Lambert: And I actually think that you would probably manage to get quite good savings from that, especially if it was framed around we could be giving this money to people who need it more than you argument. argument, I think you would potentially end up with a scenario where quite a lot of pensioners, you know, those pensioners you are on more than the£35 ,000, for example, would actually turn this benefit down.

31:31Lee Boyce: Yes, Simon, this lesson, and I think that you pointed out beautifully at the start, the one big lesson is, while it is laudable that you want to make changes when you're a new government coming in, just take a moment, have a breath. You don't need to bring in changes immediately, which although I'm going to have to U-turn on, but you don't quite U-turn. Even Simon, I think if they had brought it back with extra bells on, people still would have criticised them for it. We did talk a lot about tax last week. And I know there's a lot of commentary about the spending review. It's not anything that directly changes tax or policy.

32:11Lee Boyce: It's all about departmental budgets for future years. It will, though, affect our money, of course. But Simon, I just love what you wrote to me when you said, pray for Rachel and all of us. You just have to explain that, you know, cover this one off. What was in there? Why are you asking us to pray for Rachel and all of us?

32:35Simon Lambert: Look, I'll start with the end of my column, which is where I said, despite the fact that I realised that it would mess with many of our readers' desire for schadenfreude over the Labour government and Rachel Reeves, actually, we should all want to get a lucky break and get some growth going, because otherwise our taxes are going up in autumn. And also, we want to be more prosperous. And people make missteps, people make mistakes. I don't think that they've done a particularly good job of their first year in power. But if you listen to last week's podcast, I also blame the Tories for that who were in power beforehand for quite a long time, and completely fouled up the economy and our tax system.

33:15Simon Lambert: But basically, Rachel Rees has also been unlucky. You've got the shift in government borrowing costs, which is due to interest rates on government debt rising. That's not entirely her fault. That's happened around the world. That's due to a change in interest rate expectations. You've got ongoing, you know, geopolitical stuff. You've got Donald Trump 2.0 turning out to be even more erratic than the first version of Donald Trump. And, you know, the economy has taken a bit of a downturn. Now, I think that potentially, actually, things could pick up from here. I unfortunately wrote those words the day before it was announced that GDP had fallen 0.3 % in April, but monthly GDP numbers are erratic.

33:56Simon Lambert: The spending review, as you said, is basically it's the government setting out its stall for what it plans to do over the rest of its term. The key things in there were that Rachel Rees faced a double challenge. She needed to convince the country that Labour can deliver growth and improve Britain whilst also balancing the books in a way that convinces markets that the UK's finances are under control. The first bit of that involves a commitment to spending money. The second bit of that requires spending less money or raising taxes. That's a difficult balancing act at the best of times. It's even harder if you promise not to raise the three main taxes in this country.

34:38Simon Lambert: And then when you did sort of raise one of them against your promise, you've then got widely lambasted for it and blamed for lots of people losing their job, which is an employer's national insurance. You've also got a party that is vehemently opposed to cuts and a public that actually looks at public spending and public services, not public spending, but looks at public services and says they're already threadbare. How much more can we cut this? And we have to be spending more on defense and everything like that. Rachel Reeves is trying to hit her own fiscal rule. She's got a wafer-thin£9.9 billion amount of headroom that she returned herself to in the budget, which was immediately wiped out a week later by Trump's tariffs.

35:17Simon Lambert: Who knows where we're at now? Now, this sort of, as we've discussed in depth last week, this policy by spreadsheet box ticking is just total madness in my view. What she did do, though, I think the big thing is, and she majored on, was she announced£113 billion of infrastructure investment. Now, arguably, this is something that we desperately need in this country. It was an example of how she was a little bit choosy with the figures and selective in what figures and from where she used them throughout her speech. It was very much a politician's speech. At one point, you're using this set of numbers.

35:56Simon Lambert: At another point, you're using that set of numbers. £113 billion is cumulative. Works out when you look into the details about£20 billion a year. The government, to put that in context, spends£1 ,300 billion a year. So that's a really small amount of it. but most of that goes on day-to-day spending. Actually, government investment is only about 5 % of spending, and that works out about$65 billion. So actually, this is a serious uplift, and it's going to go into some major long-term projects that we need, ranging from transport in the north to nuclear power, and many things in between. What we also need, though, is something that's going to deliver growth now, and I don't think that these things are going to deliver growth now.

36:44Simon Lambert: You know, the moment you get spades in the ground, you start delivering growth. We're also borrowing the money to do this. Borrowing the money to do this means that our debt is going to go up and we're going to have to start paying more in interest, which is already a problem for us. What I would say, though, is that actually I think that some of the stuff that they've done is maybe already starting to pay off a bit. And one of the key things I would say about those kind of spades in the ground thing is I'm reading a lot more reports of councils waving through housing developments that they would previously have said no to and these are largely on the green belt now rightly or wrongly and often in this instance I think wrongly in my view because I have concern over the quality of the houses that are going to be built and who's going to benefit from this which I think is largely developers and not people in the local area.

37:37Simon Lambert: This does mean that stuff is going to start getting built very soon or potentially even now. And that kind of thing does provide an uplift to the economy. My major concern, though, is again, is whether once again, we are rolling the dice on the property market to try to get things going.

37:56Lee Boyce: That's it for part one.

38:01Simon Lambert: I'm joined now by Lisa Kaplan of Charles Stanley Direct for our weekly Investing Explained feature Lisa a topical question considering Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen is in the news for doing something along these lines can I give part of my home to my children now to beat inheritance tax and still live in it um it's complicated I think this should come with a big risk warning. From what I read, Lawrence Llewellyn Bone was living with his children and he's now sorting out his affairs to match a real existing situation. He didn't invite his children to live with him to solve inheritance tax. He's giving part of the ownership of the house to his children to solve inheritance tax.

38:45There are a myriad of rules about it and I I would strongly recommend people get professional advice. The first thing is, if you're going to be living in the house, either you have to pay your children rent or they have to live in the house with you and you have to cover your share of expenses. Essentially, if it looks like a dodgy deal and it feels a little strange, The HMRC will investigate. And there's a whole raft of, they're called rules with reservation, that make giving your house away ineffective. I speak to a lot of people who say, oh, I want to give my house too much old. Are you going to live there?

39:29And they say, yes. I say, speak to a solicitor. Really is my advice.

39:34Simon Lambert: Thank you very much. It certainly sounds like one that you can't just do yourself and lightly. No, absolutely not. Get professional advice.

39:44Lee Boyce: Welcome back. During the pandemic boom, many people so desperate to move, borrowed as much as they possibly could to get their forever home out in the sticks. Prices were high, but mortgage rates were rock bottom. So it was fine, right? Well, not so much anymore. Mortgage rates have climbed, work has been called back to the office and costs generally are going up everywhere. So, Lee Boyce, tell us about your reader who got in contact about this very issue.

40:15Georgie Frost: I think this is quite a common case at the moment. Lots of people are coming off of three-year fixes from just about before the whole mini-budget mayhem, which sent mortgage rates soaring. We were at a time where you could still get a mortgage for around about 1%. It feels like a different lifetime now, Georgie. but there were one year fixes still knocking around or one and a half, two even at this point. So the reader that's got in touch here says that they borrowed£700 ,000 to buy a£1.2 million home on a three year fix rate at 1.5 % which is about to end. They earned£200 ,000 between them but they are finding costs spiralling out of control.

40:56Georgie Frost: Two common factors that they are stating in here is that they've been asked back into the office more and the commute is expensive and it's costing about£1 ,000 a month between the pair of them and they also now have children and childcare before and after work three days per week ain't cheap although there are better childcare options happening now, government help but it depends whether they're earning over, you know, they're saying£200 ,000 so they might not qualify for that help, they're very much on the borderline of all of that Now mix all that together and what's happening is people falling out of having these quite big meaty mortgages at 1.5 % in this example and you're probably going to be looking at about 4 % now.

41:40Georgie Frost: Doesn't sound much on paper but on a big mortgage like that it is quite a lot on your monthly repayment. So just taking this example, Ed Magnus, our mortgage reporter, crunched the sums on this. Someone borrowing£700 ,000 at 1.5 % on a 25-year repayment term would be paying roughly£2 ,799 per month. Today, the lowest fixed rate deals are just below 4%. A£700 ,000 mortgage and a 4 % rate on a 25-year term would cost£3 ,693, so£900 more a month. That might push people over the edge of their disposal income and what they've got. might not be able to maintain the same lifestyle, and they may be panicking.

42:21Georgie Frost: They may be trying to now sell. Big problem is that from three years ago, you look at the house price indexes, depending on whereabouts you are in the country, house prices haven't quite tipped back over that peak from three years ago, but it's very, very regionally led. It just depends whereabouts in the country you are. London and the southeast has struggled massively versus the north, for example. what that means is that they might not have seen this house grow in value it might have even dipped a little bit lots of people are nervous at the moment we've got things like giant stamp duty bills that put people off buying homes of this kind of price point and you know it takes a certain kind of buyer so there's that kind of feeling I guess that you might be feeling a bit trapped and at the moment I am dealing with estate agents because we have our home on the market recently put on the market and i was speaking to one of the agents the other day he was actually um he doesn't know what i do for a job um and also but obviously hadn't read this story because i think it was actually before the story was published but actually gave me an example of someone that was kind of in a very similar boat uh that bought a house probably overstretched themselves a bit they had to sell it at a loss uh from where they were at three years ago because they couldn't afford monthly mortgage repayments anymore and it was giving them sleepless nights basically so they have to sell it at a slight loss but you know it doesn't need to be that extreme you don't need to panic there are things that you can do um so we spoke to ed spoke to a couple of brokers uh including rachel getters uh from mortgage advice bureau and ravesh patel uh from aside mortgages and actually ravesh said that this is a common concern right now many people made big decisions during the pandemic when borrowing was cheap and flexible working felt permanent the reality has shifted for a lot of households since then but the positives here is that you still have plenty of options it's around 42 equity in your home and a good joint income not a negative equity and you're likely to be eligible for a decent range of mortgage products even in today's market aka if you're sort of 40 um if you're 60 ltv you know you probably are going to be unlocking the best deals currently available unfortunately they're just nowhere near the sort of rates that we saw around the pandemic.

44:34Georgie Frost: He said the most important thing is to act now before your current fixed rate expires and there's some strategies worth exploring. One of them is to look at potentially extending the mortgage term. Lots of people would not really want to be ideally doing that because you're going to end up paying more interest if you stretch to 30 or 35 years. It gives you a short-term fix almost like a sticking plaster that you'll see your mortgage repayments drop slightly, but in the long term, you're going to be paying more interest. But if you want to keep hold of your home and you don't want to be getting yourself into a financial mess, that's the kind of thing that you might need to be thinking about.

45:12Georgie Frost: Second, some lenders will consider interest-only or part-and-part options, especially for borrowers with a strong income and equity. It's not a forever fix, but it can ease pressure over the next few years. and then he said third thing avoid the temptation to just stick with your current lender while a product transfer might be quick it's really the most competitive route fourth explore offset mortgages whilst these type of mortgages are not widely available if you have savings even modest amounts these products allow you to reduce interest charge and retain access to funds and finally says it's worth having a proper look at your overall budget even a small shift in working patterns or child care arrangements could free up extra cash per month but you'd think that someone in this scenario has probably thought that over and then rachel um said the thing you just really do need to do is don't bury your head in the sand speak to an experienced broker and see what they can do and see if they can get numbers to work um you know don't make rash rash decisions usually you have a bit of a lead-up time before you've got a remortgage and you don't want to be leaving it too late into thinking i'll deal with this next month because it's really given me kind of sleepless nights you know you're much better off speaking to a good mortgage broker and finding out all of your options and see if there's a way just to drop these payments and what your next steps are going to be you know and i guess that the other one to really consider is is it time to downsize or is it time to kind of go do you know what we're living a little bit above our means here list the property and try and find somewhere a bit cheaper you know but the thing is you don't want to be i feel like when you sell a home you don't want to be in that position where you have to sell the home because you kind of do make those panic decisions where it's like i've got to sell this home it's like a financial uh like you know my neck um and then you make panic decisions maybe not get the true value of the home so lots of things to consider definitely don't bury your head in the sand if you're in this kind of position or even if it's

47:04Lee Boyce: not as extreme position as this definitely don't hindsight simon is such a beautiful thing isn't it But I do remember both of you talking during the pandemic. We were seeing signs of people. It was very top of the market, really overstretching themselves. And I guess it's just think about the future. Just because we'd had low rates for such a long time doesn't mean it's going to continue. Just because that house is beautiful and amazing, you can imagine your lifestyle in it, doesn't mean you should get it.

47:37Simon Lambert: Well, nobody expected mortgage rates to go as high as they have gone. I certainly didn't expect mortgage rates to go from where they were to where they are now. We did at the time, I think, when discussing this and the whole race for space and everything, urge caution to people who were considering rapidly re-evaluating where they lived to just think about the fact that things might change back and they might be expected back in the office. There was a lot of people going around talking about how they were never going back. And some of those people have discovered that that is definitely not the case.

48:14Simon Lambert: And the people who that was often the situation for were some of the people who are the highest earners and who would have been moving to this kind of house. And to be honest, I live in exactly this kind of area. And I've seen this play out is that there are sort of out those out of town locations into the countryside, the villages and things like that where prices were always lower than they were in the towns close to the station because people valued being able to get to the station prices shot up there when the pandemic boom started all the way through to when that pandemic boom ended and it was fuelled as well by the stamp duty holiday and then that that running out and and prices shot up there way more than they did in the towns but then there are now houses that i'm seeing there that people bought not that long ago and they are now looking to sell and move and some of them are now on the market they started off usually on the market for a bit more than was paid for them and some of them now had their prices reduced and they're now on the market for less than they paid for them and that's an unfortunate position that people find themselves in because you don't ever want to sell for less than you paid you can look at it in fine i'll do that but then because the house I'm going to buy is also going to be cheaper the problem is is if you're now trying to go back closer to the town centre those houses have probably retained their value that bit more or in a bit more demand because people are realising that you know they do need to be nearer to the station they do need to get into work this reversal of the race of space but sometimes I think you just have to go if you really can't afford it you know rather than trying to financially engineer everything into it if you've cut back as much as you can then you just need to go well maybe we do need to take the hit and chalk it up to experience but that's a very very hard thing to do as an individual and a hard thing to take you know personally it's an easy thing for me to say it's a hard thing for the person who finds themselves in that position to do so anybody who is in that position I do feel very sorry for.

50:17Lee Boyce: Meanwhile we're sticking with property. Savvy home buyers and investors have long headed to auction as a way to pick up keenly priced properties. But as with the mainstream property market, new trends are always emerging. So This Is Money spoke to Andrew Binstock, co-founder and auctioneer at Auction House London, to find out what's popular right now and some tips to bag a bargain at auction. I instantly look at you when I think of bagging a bargain and auction, Lee. For many people, this will still be quite an odd concept buying a property at auctions so who does it how does it work and what's hot

50:51Georgie Frost: right now what's hot right now baby i tell you what in the property market what's hot um and you watch something like homes under the hammer and you see these things go up auction and people kind of buy these wrecks and do them up it takes a certain kind of person to buy a property at an auction and get involved in it and basically try and unearth all of the problems with it before

51:11Lee Boyce: But why is a property at auction?

51:13Georgie Frost: Well, typically, there's a range of factors. It might be something that's been repossessed. It might be something that just completely cannot be sold by an estate agent because it's fallen into rack and ruin. It might be something where the property needs to be pulled down and rebuilt and started again. There's a whole host of reasons why these things come up at auction. They've gained a bit of popularity, probably from things like TV shows, but definitely from social media. Again, another thing on social media where you see, especially young couples uh buying a wreck and then doing it up and follow my instagram journey of how i do this place up on a budget all of that kind of thing as i said it takes a certain kind of people it takes a certain kind of buyer um what i thought was interesting about this is that um andrew who's of auction house london uh was saying that these are growing in popularity and he gave four examples of um what is hot right now and what people are kind of looking at and i'm going to come back to number one at the end of this i'm going to whip through this quite quickly number one flats with a short lease which you'd immediately go what no no don't touch that number two uh beauty homes sorry bargain homes in beauty spots and it's kind of a bit of a given that one uh number three shops with flats um you know you could end up getting a yield from both renting out the shop and renting out the flat uh and plots of land to build on again probably grand designs effect people thinking actually i want to build my own home the new bills maybe aren't as good quality as what you expect now the one that i kind of i thought was interesting was the flats with short leases he's andrew says that basically some auction buyers are making a bet on the government's lease leasehold reforms which would make it much cheaper and easier to extend a lease as it stands extending lease will set something back an average of about 10 grand including legal costs but a big bigger problem comes if the lease is less than 80 years left when it's renewed in these cases the leaseholder may have to pay some of the marriage value to the freeholder the marriage value is the uplift in the properties value as a result of the lease being extended and leaseholders usually pay 50 of that to the freeholder which is pretty big but marriage value is set to be abolished under the leasehold and freehold reform at 2024 so you can see where people are getting tempted by this i've heard some nightmare stories about short-term leases you know it's very very very difficult um to basically get a mortgage on it very difficult to sell it um that's actually probably quite a big chunk of what is going to auction uh you know these leases can become a complete nightmare but if those reforms happen and and you know those changes there's going to be people out there that can make some big sums of money uh off this and basically he said a short leasehold flats are attracting strong demand um we've offered over 150 so far this year and they have sold on average they have average sold for 25 above guide price as buyers grow more confident around upcoming reforms and he gave an example here one bed flat on offer auction house london's next south 20 on the 2nd and 3rd july has a remaining lease of just eight years wow eight years that's that's danger that's danger danger danger signs um located on Beaufort Street in London's Chelsea, its guide price is£120 ,000.

54:23Georgie Frost: What about if you just bought that for£120 ,000? It would probably be cheaper than eight years of rent. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Listen, it's a gamble. It's a trend that people are kind of jumping on, thinking these reforms will happen. And I thought that was an interesting thought to the book.

54:38Lee Boyce: Lovely. We're going to stick with the property theme because we actually have a reader question of the week. we've been sort of quite lax in doing this. But actually, we have Sam, the winner of the coveted This Is Money mug this week, who left us a voice note.

54:55Georgie Frost: Hi, guys. I'm looking at getting a mortgage on a house. Why can't I get a mortgage until the house is fully paid off? Why would it be for five years and have to be renegotiated? And I don't understand why the mortgage would go up

55:07Simon Lambert: because the house isn't getting any more expensive.

55:10Lee Boyce: Right, Simon. This one's for you.

55:12Simon Lambert: OK. Thanks for the question, Sam. So the mortgage system in this country is basically built around fixed rates and fixed rates that last for a certain amount of time. Now, we consider a five-year fix to be quite a long fix. The other most common fixed rate term is two years, and that's actually the most popular at the moment. People could fix for two, three, five. You get 10-year fixed rate mortgages, and they're quite rare. You do get some mortgages that are fixed for the entire mortgage term. So for the lifetime of the mortgage. So if you borrowed over 35 years, you have it fixed for that whole time.

55:49Simon Lambert: But those are very, very rare indeed. That's actually a different system to quite a lot of other countries, including, for example, France and the US, where mortgage rates are fixed for much, much longer. The reason is just a quirk of the way the British mortgage system works. Actually, until the 1990s, people just tended to borrow on a floating rate and it just changed with interest rates. people have tried to introduce longer term fixes over the years but they've proved unpopular because people worry about what will happen if I need to move or if I have to repay the mortgage because I need to move and then I need to borrow more money and they've often come with quite heavy fees for repaying the mortgage so what you really need to do is bring down those fees maybe after a certain period of time or offer people windows in which they can try to move but attempts to try to get people to fix for the life of the mortgage.

56:41Simon Lambert: And there have been a number of government initiatives over the years saying that's what we should be doing in this country and make our mortgage system work much better haven't actually paid off. The other part of your question is why would payments go up if the house price hasn't, you know, if the cost of the house hasn't gone up because you've already bought it. So when you take out a mortgage, so say, for example, me, I moved home in July 2020. I took out a five-year fixed rate mortgage. The five-year fixed rate mortgage doesn't last for exactly five years. It actually lasts until September this year.

57:14Simon Lambert: When I took out my mortgage, you could get five-year fixed rate mortgages at 1.4%. When it comes to remortgaging in September, I've paid off some of that mortgage over the time. So actually the amount I'm borrowing is lower, but interest rates have gone up in the meantime. And now the best mortgage rate I could probably get is about 4%. And that means that even though I'm borrowing less money, and I'm not having to rebuy my house, so I'm not spending more money, I still own the house, still mine, the cost of my monthly payments is going to go up, because the interest rate that I'm paying is going to go up.

57:49Simon Lambert: So my monthly payments are going to go up by a few hundred pounds a month. Can you also explain negative equity, Simon? negative equity is when you end up owing more money than your property is worth and that happens when people tend to buy with very small deposits or no deposit at all as happened in the financial crisis when you had a lot of 100 mortgages and house prices fall so generally speaking house prices go up not as much as people think but generally speaking house prices do go up and so actually you gain equity because say you've bought a£100 ,000 property with a£90 ,000 mortgage. If house prices go up£10 ,000, so 10 % over the five years, then you've now gained an extra£10 ,000 worth of equity because your property is now worth£110 ,000 and actually you'll have gained a bit more because you will have paid down some of the mortgage.

58:43Simon Lambert: What happens if house prices fall, however, is that say house prices fall by 10%, then your£100 ,000 property has now gone down to only being worth£90 ,000 and that's the same level as your mortgage. So if they go down by more than that, you end up owing more than your mortgage and you're in what's called negative equity. And the difficulty there is it then makes it very difficult to get a new mortgage and to move home because unfortunately you owe more than your property is worth.

59:12Lee Boyce: Lovely. Thank you, Simon. While you're on a roll, I have another reader a question as well that I kind of want to get you to answer. It's about using Scottish£20 notes. Now, a reader has written in, I tried to use a Scottish£20 note in a shop when I returned to England, but the shopkeeper said they couldn't take it. The same thing happened when I tried at two other shops until eventually one did accept it for payment. Are Scottish banknotes legal tender in the UK outside of Scotland and do businesses outside of Scotland not have to accept them.

59:44Simon Lambert: Legal tender is an often misunderstood term. People think it means I can spend my money in a shop. It doesn't mean that. And I'm going to quote a Bank of England spokesman who replied to this for us. Legal tender has a very narrow and technical meaning which relates to settling debts. It means that if you are in debt to someone, you can't be sued for non-payment if you offer full payment of your debts in legal tender. What is classed as legal tender varies throughout the UK. In England and Wales, Royal Mint coins and Bank of England notes are legal tender. In Scotland and Northern Ireland, only Royal Mint coins are legal tender.

1:00:22Simon Lambert: Scottish and Northern Ireland banknotes are not formally defined as legal tender. Do shops outside Scotland have to accept Scottish banknotes? Bank of England spokesman replies, in the UK it is up to individual businesses what they individually do or do not accept as payment so if the shop says no they are within their rights to do that in the same way that you will actually go into many shops nowadays and they will tell you that you're not allowed to pay in cash or you might go in some shops and they say you're not allowed to pay with a card so can i swap a scottish bank note at the bank or the post office bank of england spokesman again we would refer the note holder to the issuing bank to discuss exchange arrangements as there is no legal provision in the Banking Act 2009 that requires the issuing bank or the Bank of England to exchange Scottish and Northern Irish notes for other notes.

1:01:13Simon Lambert: Post office spokesman, we do not allow customers to swap a Scottish banknote in our branch for an English banknote. However, a customer can deposit a Scottish banknote in their account and then withdraw the equivalent cash over the counter or at an ATM if there's one at the branch now what was i saying about that thing about giving people money and then taking it back from them in this instance you're giving someone else money and then taking it back from them yourself because they won't just swap it for you instead pay it over the counter go to the machine

1:01:44Lee Boyce: take it back out that was a way more complicated answer than i was expecting there simon but thank

1:01:48Simon Lambert: you very much right simon your stat of the week stat of the week five minutes car giant italian car giant in fact fiat reckons it has basically come up with a technology that enables people to recharge an electric car in five minutes if this is correct it will be great for fiat which you know i love fears right but they are not generally considered to be at the forefront of technology and never have been yep um so it'd be very good for fiat because this is the kind of tech that we normally see coming out of somewhere like China or the US, you know, but also it could be revolutionally for electric cars.

1:02:36Simon Lambert: If you could recharge an electric car in five minutes, many, many, many more people would go, do you know what, actually, yeah, I might as well have one. So we'll see if it turns out to be the case.

1:02:46Lee Boyce: We wait and see. Right. That is it. Thank you very much, Simon. Thank you very much, Lee. 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 them to look into if you'd like to

1:03:04Simon Lambert: leave us a voice note simon you can email us at podcast at thisismoney.co.uk i do not have a number for you to leave us a voice note but you're welcome to email us a voice note if you want to yeah or come to thisismoney.co.uk forward slash podcast to find all podcasts past because if you

1:03:20Lee Boyce: Believe it or not, you can actually be on the pod, you see, like Sam. Anyway, if you like our podcast, why not rate us wherever you found us? It helps other people find us too.

1:03:28Simon Lambert: 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.