Is the generational wealth gap narrower than we thought?

0:02Lee Boyce: Welcome to This Is Money podcast sponsored by Trading 212. Download the Trading 212 app and open a cash ISA with promo code TIM to get the 12-month bonus promo rate of 4.62 % term supply. I'm Georgie Frost and joining me and Lee Boyce today is Helen Crane. And coming up, fears of multiple interest rate rises this year recede due to the ceasefire in Iran. Will it bring welcome relief for borrowers? And could flaws in the data mean that generational wealth gap isn't as bad as we feared. Plus, Li runs through the best cash ISA rates for the new tax year, and one of them might surprise you. And move over Amazon is Joybuy, the next big thing in online shopping.

0:43Lee Boyce: Don't forget your step-by-step with all the latest breaking money news. Just go to thisismoney.co.uk or download the app. But first, albeit fragile, markets reacted immediately to the news this week of a ceasefire between Iran and the US. Stocks swung higher, oil prices fell sharply, and traders have since been re-evaluating just how many rate hikes we might get in the UK this year as a result. From two cuts pre-war to four rises, it now seems the consensus has landed on one increase from the Bank of England. Will that spell better news for mortgage holders and the battered UK housing market? Welcome, Lee.

1:18Lee Boyce: Welcome, Helen. So to you both i whisper all this rather softly because let's be honest anything could change but as it stands what impact has the ceasefire had financially or will it have hi georgie um it's become it's

1:34Georgie Frost: definitely been a calmer week this week it feels like uh in terms of sort of financial markets definitely we had a really mad midweek session for global markets and ftse 100 where we just everything was flashing green after quite a doom-laden month where things have swung around and been quite difficult. So it feels like it's been a little bit more positive this week. The ceasefire, of course, you know, without going too down the political route, could be, like, is probably quite paper thin. And we just don't know what could happen from here, of course. But looking at it from a UK economy and our finances perspective, we were looking at things, as i've just said swung around so much we were traders originally before the conflict started it looked like there was going to be at least one maybe two reductions in base rate this year that's obviously swung around the other way now and we started hearing predictions of four hikes this year as the conflict um was starting to unfold and you know oil prices were spiking energy prices you know likely to rise after the uh price cap comes to an end in july have food inflation likely to soar all of those things uh mean that the bank of england was going to sort of pull the switch and potentially start swinging the other way now we watch this quite closely because you can kind of get a mute music from what traders are kind of betting on on what they think are going to happen what's going to happen and they're now saying that there's probably going to be one base rate rise this year not the four that was forecast which would bring us probably to four percent a neat four percent i don't think anyone would be shocked now with that is the case that there is the next bank of england meeting there might be a rate hike or if not the next one the one after um one of the big losers and one of the big things that's happened uh in the aftermath of this conflict has been mortgage rates have have gone up a substantial amount uh in the short space of time a whole percentage point um pretty much money money fat saying that the typical two-year fix is up from 4.83 % before the conflict to 5.9 % and on a five-year deal it's gone from 4.95 to 5.58 % so we're back in that time where a five-year fix typically has become cheaper than a two-year fix again.

3:54Georgie Frost: What that's done is it's kind of knocked the property market and you have to think about this in a kind of sweeping different ways because there's lots of transactions that could potentially be at risk in terms of if your mortgage offer expires during the process of buying a house it's very likely that the next mortgage offer that you get is going to be far higher than the one that you secured before the conflict which makes it some of those transactions are already in progress a little bit time pressure put towards those people probably want to complete before any kind of expiry of a mortgage but it also has an effect on whether people actually want to move or actually want to buy a house.

4:35Georgie Frost: If it becomes more expensive because mortgage rates have gone up, it kind of rocks your confidence, not only to mention that bills are probably going to rise in other ways in terms of energy bills, petrol prices, if you're someone that heavily relies on a car, food inflation, as I mentioned, all of those things are going to add up and probably make it more expensive to own a house. And we're seeing that feed through already into house price data. So there was Halifax data this week suggesting that prices had gone down in the past month 0.5 percent I'm not a massive I'm not a massive fan of looking at what's happened over the course of a month when it comes to house prices I'm more of a kind of annual inflation kind of guy I like to see what's happening over the year because I think it smooths things out so prices have actually up 0.8 percent but that is that is pretty minuscule for the UK housing market and it means that this is according to Hanifax the average house price has gone back below 300 000 pounds 299 677 pounds you can see that that a lot that slowed down halifax is talking about is because of the uncertainty caused by the middle east um and people just are less confident to go out and buy homes so that's just one little thing you know that's changed during what the course of like a month and a bit um rocking people's confidence in their household finances.

5:52Lee Boyce: Helen, it's an unfortunate situation. I mean, on lots of levels. And I said it before in a previous podcast, I'll say again that, you know, when war is going on, it's difficult to talk about mortgage rates. But you are unlucky enough to have to remortgage in this month or in the wake of the LizTrust mini budget, or I believe it was of the spring after that, we also had incredibly high rates. It's all about timing. But we saw rates rise incredibly quickly on the news of the conflict. Will we see rates fall as quickly if this ceasefire continues? And will that be a shot in the arm for the somewhat beleaguered housing market?

6:35Helen Crane: Well, I think it's interesting that you mentioned that Liz Trust period, because it's interesting to put the current mortgage rate rises in a bit of context. So the average two-year fixed rate at the moment is 5.89%. And when you hear that, you think, gosh, we haven't seen mortgage rates that high for ages. But actually, they were that high as recently as July 2024. They are high, as Lee said, it is really punishing if you've got a rate that you fixed in a few weeks ago, and you're in the middle of buying a house or in the middle of remortgaging, that is going to feel like a big jump, obviously.

7:10Helen Crane: But actually, in terms of recent history, rates have been higher, they still haven't kind of hit the highs that they were in that mini budget period in 2022. I think I've said this on the podcast before. We are just in a higher mortgage rate kind of era now. And I think people were really spoiled by those years around COVID when rates were sub 1%. You know, this is obviously the conflict has caused a spike, but they still haven't veered too far from what I would say is the new normal. Are they going to go down? Well, maybe. So obviously, as we've said, the conflict is so volatile. It seems like every other day, there's some new news that the markets kind of react to.

7:54Helen Crane: But with this potential ceasefire news, We did see yesterday, this is according to Money Facts, was the first day since March the 4th that both the average two-year fix and the average five-year fix went down. So very slight falls, obviously. But the markets have sort of recognised that and shifted it down slightly. However, mortgage rates always go down much more slowly than they go up. you know lenders we add really really quickly to any uh sort of different expectations on interest rates and of course it takes a much longer time for those rates to kind of creep down again um you know if you are in a situation where you need need a mortgage obviously some people can hold off moving house some people can't you know there's if you have to move because having a baby you've got divorced you know there are people that just need to move um if you are in that situation I would say try not to panic make sure you speak to a broker because they'll have access to all the rates on the market and they'll be able to guide you as to what might be the best sort of deal for you and it's also worth noting that you can lock in a rate up to six months before your current one ends if you're remortgaging so you could lock in something today and then if rates go higher you're protected but if rates do fall in that time then you can normally up until even a couple of weeks before your remobilitis, you can still opt for a lower rate.

9:21Helen Crane: So worth just kind of keeping an eye on it if that's the situation you're in.

9:25Lee Boyce: Thank you, Helen. Right, the generational wealth gap has been getting a lot of attention over recent years. But is it as bad as we feared? A new report shows that younger adults are not nearly as bad off compared to older generations due to their private pension wealth being underestimated. Lee, what's this about?

9:46Georgie Frost: georgia this was a story i actually ended up writing uh our newsletter message on uh this week and for the first time ever i got home uh last night from work and my wife said oh i really enjoyed your newsletter message today that is the first time she's ever said that to me in my entire life i was like you actually read it she was like yeah it was really really interesting i was like okay all right job done someone that's not interested in financial news or pensions whatsoever found it interesting well okay so hopefully i can do it a bit of justice on the podcast it was a institute for fiscal studies piece of research and what they were looking at here is i should start this off as well by saying i really if you if you're a long-time listener of this podcast you probably know this already i'm really not a big fan of pitting younger people and older people against each other when it comes to finances i just don't think it's a very helpful thing whatsoever i just don't really enjoy it it's not something i like seeing the battle between or it's just something i just don't like about it anyway what this research was trying to sort of lay out is the ons have these calculations that show uh different wealth held by different age groups so namely uh 20 to 39 year olds we're talking about here now the ons is saying that the percentage of uh wealth of total household wealth held by people between those ages 11 and that was the data set for 2020 to 2022 the most recent data so i know that feels a little bit out of date but that is the most up-to-date data that they have because it's quite a complicated thing to work out what the ifs has done is it's calculated it um kind of also in its own way and found that the share of household wealth between that age group so 20 to 39 so people born between the mid-1980s uh and the mid early 2000s of which i am in just about sneaking into that age bracket, has increased from 10 % to 18 % according to the IFS measure.

11:45Georgie Frost: Now, you might say, well, how is the IFS and the ONS so out of kilter? And the reason for it that the IFS is saying is that the ONS figures are kind of a little bit, they're not quite in kilter of what was going on at the time because of the low interest rate era we were in, in that pandemic kind of zone. you know we've got to remember that interest rates were absolutely rock bottom um and i said i just pointed to that we were at a point where mortgage rates were absolutely you know you can get a mortgage rate under a percent feels like a long time ago now but it's the truth that that's what actually happened but what the ifs are saying here just to dig into this that i thought was interesting i think again the other battle that i kind of always find a bit interesting in personal finance world is the property versus pensions you know which one's best but they're two wholly different things like you know you you can't live in your pension it's a totally different kind of conversation and we've got quite obsessed with talking about property versus pension which one's best well they're both best you know you've got to live in one and you've got to live and you've got to live off the other one so you know it's a kind of again one of those arguments i don't find very helpful but interesting again in this um ifs report is saying that 54 percent of this is this This is in total for all wage groups.

13:01Georgie Frost: 54 % of total household wealth was held in pensions in 2020, 2022, compared to 38%, which the O &S claims. That's a massive discrepancy in how much is held in pensions. And as a result, the IFS is saying that the amount held in pensions far outstrips property wealth. So we have more tied up in pensions than we have in property wealth, if the IFS figures and calculations take as verbatim. which again might come as a little bit of a surprise to people. Now what is pointing out in here is you've got this age group, so essentially under 40s, who have been massive beneficiaries of auto-enrollment and also massive beneficiaries of having a lot more knowledge around their personal finances and taking control of their retirement.

13:49Georgie Frost: It might be over fears of what the state pension will look like when we're older, but also having a number of tools at our disposal to make sure that we are saving for a good retirement. Then you have the age group of sort of 60 plus, a lot of which have been in gold-plated pensions. Yes, exactly. And are totally sorted. And that's where some of this kind of resentment comes from generation to generation. They hold lots of property wealth and they hold lots of pension wealth because they had better pension schemes. The middle bit is where the IFS was talking about. And I know we talked about this on the podcast recently.

14:22Georgie Frost: Me and Simon, basically. Well, essentially, yeah. There was that LNG research. which we talked about last month on the podcast, and actually this backs it up a little bit. Talking basically that between the ages of 40 and 55, unfortunately that cohort of people have kind of missed out from the real benefits of being auto enrolled. I've also missed out on those kind of gold-plated pension schemes. And as a result, we're in a kind of abyss of not kind of saving enough for retirement.

14:49Lee Boyce: We're in an abyss, thanks, Lee.

14:51Georgie Frost: Yeah, so well, you know, not necessarily, it's a broad brush. It's not like everyone in that age group hasn't saved for their retirement properly. You're stuffed. But you are stuffed. And we talked about it. It's never too late to get back in control and try and save as much of a pension pot as you can. But I thought it was interesting, you know, just how big a discrepancy there is between, you know, what the ONS are saying and what might actually be correct. and how much of it is held in pensions and how much a better job potentially the under-40s are doing compared to what's perceived sometimes as just being a little bit clueless with their finances.

15:29Georgie Frost: If you take this IFS data, it sounds like the age group of 20 to 40 people are actually saving pretty well into pensions and are wealth-building quite successfully.

15:40Lee Boyce: Quite. Firstly, I thought this was good news for pension saving when every report I seem to read, it's like we are all stuffed. But Helen, as the youngest person in the rooms, do you feel any better about this? I mean, as Lee pointed out, you can't live in a pension. It's not going to put food on the table when you're young. So do you feel richer?

16:06Helen Crane: Well, I'd love to be the youngest person in a room. I will point out I'm not that much younger than Lee. But I think having spoken to people that are even younger than me, you know, people in their 20s, they are so alive to their pensions. And I think it comes from just they have so little hope for their financial future. I think in many cases they just think it's bleak. It is bleak. No, but it is bleak. I think, you know, they don't have any faith in the state pension still being there. you know and they they're sensibly making sure that they kind of save as much as they can for retirement as you said the the property and pension thing is a bit of a a misnomer isn't it like you do need somewhere to live and you do need to save for your retirement obviously but I've spoken on the podcast before when I was saving for a deposit for my flat I cut down my pension contributions I didn't stop them completely it's a bad idea to do that unless you really can't help it but just having that extra little bit to put towards my deposit every month actually made a huge difference and I know people will be listening to this saying god that's so silly but there are sort of practical realities you know people only have a finite amount of money in a lot of different places that that money needs to go to and especially now we're looking at things again like maybe higher fuel bills and higher energy bills higher supermarket shopping costs I can completely understand why some people just think, oh, gosh, I can't I can't do all of it.

17:35Helen Crane: So it is tricky. I think personally, it's about sort of looking at it over the course of your life. You know, there might be some periods where you need to put more money into sort of saving for property. But then once that's done, make sure you sort of shift back again, if you can, to saving for retirement. And it's just about thinking about what you can do at different times as you go through life and not leaving any one thing kind of abandoned. Again, yeah, obviously very difficult for many people.

18:06Lee Boyce: One thing about sort of data, being someone who's not wildly a big fan of many data sets, but the ONS is quite a big deal, right? And their data is used for some policy decision making. Like what else have they got wrong?

18:23Georgie Frost: well yeah and also we're saying they've got it wrong it's not necessarily that they're wrong and it's not necessarily that the ifs is correct you know it might be that the true the true measure is somewhere in the middle because it is a very difficult thing to completely pin down and we did actually ask the ons what it thought about this and it did say our latest pension figures use methods from an independent review we commissioned from the government's actuary department uh we've always been clear that the latest data use improved methods but comparisons over time can't currently be drawn we'll shortly publish the necessary data that allow us to produce a comparable back series so it sounds like they are going to go back and kind of look at some of these figures it's such a fast-moving beast as well because you know there's been market swings which affects you know the total amount in pensions and all sorts of factors at play that make it a very difficult thing to measure which is why i always think it's very difficult to kind of pit young versus old you know i get it a little bit from the from the property perspective you know trying to get onto the property ladder now is incredibly expensive when you uh look at wage wage to house price ratio for example um but also older generation you know they might have had what at the time you know you look back now go cool that's those house prices are really cheap but they did also you know live through an era in which mortgage rates were double digit uh at certain points you know it's not like it's not like they had everything handed to them on a plate and that's again why i kind of i don't enjoy the the battle between between the young and old um but i i i truly think that you know the the takeaway from this is that people are saving pretty hard into their private pensions um and are wrestling control of their financial future and i think that can only be an encouraging sign.

20:13Lee Boyce: Indeed, Lee, indeed. Just one area of sort of negativity, particularly, was there was the biggest gap, I think, between the educated, those who had gone to school and university. And that's obviously something of a concern.

20:27Georgie Frost: You're technically right. It says that people with degrees are more likely to have private pensions. The gap is quite high. So the median wealth of graduates is 50 % higher under IFS methodology than under the ONS methodology. So it shows you that people with degrees across all age brackets are potentially saving more into private pensions. The other little bit of data it had in here as well is that the share of total household wealth held by the top 10 % actually fell from 45 % in 2006, 2008 to 42 % by 2020, 2022. That's the IFS estimate. So there's been a little bit of movement in terms of inequality.

21:09Georgie Frost: But yeah, you're definitely right. Those two other little bits are also interesting takeaways from this IFS data. And as I say, I wouldn't take it as completely verbatim, but I think it gives a kind of good snapshot and a good kind of overview of what's happening when it comes to household wealth.

21:25Lee Boyce: All right, Lee, it is the start of the new tax year. Time to celebrate with a shiny new cash, ISA, if you want to. And remember, this is the last year that those of us under 65 can benefit from the 20 grand limit. So what is out there?

21:38Georgie Frost: There's a bit of a surprise name in the mix, I thought, Lee. Surprise names now, Georgie, given some movement. Things change so quickly, Lee. Things change so quickly. So just to lift the lid of the excitement, it's fever picture. This is money when a new cash is the season. The traffic stats are through the roof as people look. Early bird savers and investors look to make the most of their new ISO allowance. and just again just to lift the lid i put my you're gonna think i'm so sad for this but i'm

22:09Lee Boyce: going to tell you anyway i put my hand over the fact you weigh your food like just just anything

22:14Georgie Frost: you say after that is par for the course i put my hand up to work easter monday because i knew as a starved and the tax year and i knew that okay yeah i'd be starved and and and needing their cash ice and news uh and i thought you're a man of the people lee i thought it'd be best if I was there for Easter Monday, just, you know, really getting those cash ice tables and best buys all up to date for people to swoop in. And that's, that's the level of detail we have here, Georgie, at This Is Money. That is why, you know, that, that, that is, that is why we try hard. We try hard. We do. Now, look, as you're right, this is the last year you can fully utilize the £20 ,000 cash ice limit if you're under 65 from next April.

22:58Georgie Frost: It's going to drop down to£12 ,000. you will still have the full 20 000 pound limit but you would have to use the rest in stocks and shares now you know data suggests not a huge amount of people max out their 20 000 pound limit every year anyway but of course there are people that do and it's especially vital tool for higher rate and additional rate taxpayers to make sure that they're building a nest egg you know that isn't their pension that isn't their property but away from the tax man it's a crucial tool And there has been some surprise names. And all of the surprise names are big banks that have gone into a kind of fight to offer best buys.

23:36Georgie Frost: Yeah, you're hearing that correctly. Big banks, best buys is a sentence that very rarely comes from me in the fixed rate cash asset area only. So they're not really interested in easy access. Why? I think there's a couple of reasons behind it. I think one of the big reasons is that they can manage the flow much better. They know how much is going to be poured into a fixed rate. They'll have a target of how much they want to pull in. They then, you know, turn the tap off. And it's a very unlikely people will withdraw any of that money over the course of the year. Whereas with easy access, especially if you offer flexible ice, it's a little bit more kind of all over the place.

24:13Georgie Frost: People might tinker around with the money and it can just be a little bit harder to run and maintain. um and also i think it's just a year's time people probably going to be looking again what they're going to be doing with their money and it's a way of kind of hooking you in uh and potentially this time next year rates might not be as good that's my cynical brain uh talking there but this week this week georgie santander has launched a one year a two year a three year and a five-year range of fixed isis all at four five four point five percent but not only that if you transfer in uh from not from from another provider um so not from a santander account unfortunately this is if you're transferring money in from other places they will give you an e-voucher um which boosts up the rate somewhat an e-voucher that you can spend uh in certain shops so this voucher you can spend in tesco costa amazon um if you switch over a certain amount of money so for example if you put in between if you transfer over between 10 000 and 25 grand you get 50 quid if you do 25 to 50 grand it's 100 quid 50 grand to 100 grand it's 200 pounds and if anything over 100 grand it's 400 now of course the first thing i did with that was crunch what that does to the rate and what the very best amount is to transfer over there to get the most of it and actually it's 10 000 pounds if you transfer in 10 000 pounds that santander account and get that 50 pound voucher it effectively boosts the rate to 4.98 percent so almost five percent i don't think that's a bad deal at all um and actually would make it a standout best buy over all different fixes and easy accesses um going out there so well worth looking at uh but it's not just santander that are in in on the action uh hsbc also uh the one-year fix 4.5 percent that one isn't quite as good as santander though because it is only open to its own current account uh holders but there's a lot of people that have hsbc current accounts and if you are already a customer well worth checking it out nationwide also uh just before the end of the tax year uh launched a 4.5 fix for three and five years and it offers a 4.35 over one year that's open to new and existing customers even that western And Barclays have scraped into our Best Buy tables.

26:35Georgie Frost: They've got one-year fixes. Miss Neely. I know. 4.05 % and 4 % respectively over the year. So usually I would say avoid the big banks, don't look at them. But if you're banking with any of these, it's well worth having a look. And if you're someone that's willing to tuck their money away for a year, it could be worthwhile. As I say, they've completely neglected the easy access. There's no Best Buy easy access banks in here. The biggest name in there is Virgin Money. with a 4.15 % easy access rate. But it's still being dominated by smaller players, you know, the challenges that are up there. So trading 2-1-2, you would have heard at the top of the show, 4.62%.

27:14Georgie Frost: Got Prosper in there at 4.6%. With the code T-I-M-L-E? Yeah, with the code. And you've got Plum, 4.35%. Tembo, 4.3%. All of these accounts come with bonuses that drop away after a year, though. So you have to be careful and be someone that's going to be on top of their money and make sure that you're moving about. But I think it's interesting that the big banks have returned. It feels like a long time since they've actually kind of gone for any kind of battle for cash. And it can only be a good sign for savings rates.

27:45Lee Boyce: Absolutely right, Lee. Absolutely right. Right. Finally, you can save your cash. Let's now spend it. The battle for the online retail giant that delivers in the snap of your fingers is hotting up, Helen. But who will win? first question i have is who the heck are joy buy exactly yeah i think quite a few people might be

28:09Helen Crane: asking that so joy buy essentially are the latest huge online retail behemoth is how you say that well behemoth yeah i think i've got it right um it's one of these words you only see written down you never really hear it said um yeah so they're they're a huge uh chinese company and they've just started up in the UK and they're trying to take on Amazon and AliExpress and get us all to essentially spend our money on their website and they say deliver things to us very quickly. Our reporter Toby Wild has compared them against Amazon and AliExpress which are their two big rivals and he wanted to see who delivers fastest, who's got the best value for money and who just has the best sort of retail experience really um and you know look i think the thing with these websites is it's very easy to just buy a load of rubbish on them right so i tend to avoid them because i'm that kind of person who i can't leave the supermarket without coming out with a potted plan and a pair of socks and just all kinds of jobs i feel like i just i just have to avoid websites like this because i it's a bad idea know thyself you know you exactly it's important to know yourself however a lot of more sensible people than me do use them to get those household essentials and you can actually get them quite a lot cheaper especially if you tend to buy stuff in bulk so the things that toby looked at he had a specific shopping list of things that he wanted to buy so that was peri-marigold rubber gloves four aa duracell batteries and nine three-ply andrex toilet rolls he also had fortune cookies on his list but he couldn't get them from one of the from one of the websites.

29:53Helen Crane: So he looked at them in terms of cost, how quick they got delivered. And he found out that Joybuy was a clear winner when it came to value for money. So he got the items for$12.48 for those three things. So cheaper than Amazon, cheaper than AliExpress. And they also delivered very quickly. So they have a promise, which is actually, I believe, better than Amazon. So it's called Double Eleven, which means if you order something by 11 in the morning, you can get it by 11pm that night however it's only in certain cities so London, Birmingham, Leicester Nottingham, Oxford and Cambridge their delivery centres must be in the Midlands so yeah if you're an online orderer seems like it could be a good bet to try so yeah worth a read if you like doing your kind of number crunching on where to buy your household essentials for the best price

30:44Lee Boyce: Lee, not to be a killjoy or anything but does the world need another online massive retail giant with cheap hat with loads more

30:57Georgie Frost: delivery drivers on the road you can kill joy away georgie you you know you you know i'm gonna kill joy this don't you i was just giggling speaking your language louis i was just laughing just thinking about toby just getting a pair of rubber gloves and batteries and some tissue you're just thinking okay well that's quite that's quite a shopping list isn't it um yeah i think the one chiccoes essentials bit of a bit of a random list if i'm a bit of frank and i've got the giggles now um but yeah i i i think you heard uh at the start of the year that one of my new year's resolutions was just shop a little bit local especially when it came to trying to avoid the supermarkets and going more to sort of butchers and farm shops and i've actually really stuck to that newest resolution uh so yeah another one of these websites i just think were you know i don't know i use amazon from time to time uh i've really got a little bit kind of i've started to go into the weeds a little bit to find out where things are made i've gone a little bit sort of middle class dad try not to rely on online shopping much i just don't really enjoy it i'd rather just go into a shop i'd rather go into a local diy shop or you know a local retailer and i've been doing that a lot more this year i think so you know does the world does britain need another place to buy stuff from i don't know the jury's out if you're someone that enjoys doing that and you find it helpful for you then it works for you then that's that's your prerogative isn't it and that's we're very lucky to have lots of options um i just sometimes don't like the thought of local high streets and you know business being taken away from them and it might be slightly more expensive but i'm kind of happy to pay the premium just to have the product in my hand and walk out the shop with it rather than waiting on deliveries and it feels like at the moment i drive around my local area and i'm just constantly weaving in and out of massive white vans that just kind of park up on double yellow lines delivering stuff so yeah yeah i think you can hear me killjoy this away so i'm gonna i'm gonna stop killjoying it i'm sure it's um a killjoy buy you're gonna get some killer buys at joy buy no i'm trying to come up with some sort of way to end it but um it's failing yeah all we can think lee when you were talking

33:08Lee Boyce: there was are you a man who dons his own socks i don't know why that came into my head i can't

33:13Georgie Frost: think of anything else i've got absolutely no idea what that means um i don't if you have a hole in your sock you you sew the hole up no no i don't do that no sorry no i'll come in i'll come in easter monday for a new tax year but i'm not doing anything to repair socks i'll weigh my food

33:29Lee Boyce: I draw the line of darning my socks.

33:32Georgie Frost: Yeah. All right. I mean, that word doesn't even exist in my vocabulary, which probably shows you just how far away you are from the truth, Georgie. I very much like my cotton-rich socks from very specific shops that will last.

33:45Lee Boyce: All right. All right, Lee. All right. Lee's tip of the week.

33:49Georgie Frost: My tip of the week, actually, Georgie, and again, I'm going to hark back onto one of my New Year's resolutions, which we talked about off air before we started recording, reading more books. so I have just finished book number 15 uh of the year and I thought actually my tip of the week would be two two books to read uh one which I've just finished is called The Power of Geography by Tim Marshall who's oh that's very good The Prisoners of Geography the reason why I've picked that up uh I wanted to I I've had it in my uh sort of bookcase for a while and just for some reason hadn't read it and I picked up and started reading it and actually there's a really good chapter in know about iran and it's explained a lot of what's going on there to me but also some other i've just i've just learned a lot from the book i'd very much recommend having a read of that and then something a little bit more fun which um i posted up posted up on linkedin actually and it weirdly just sort of got a lot of people commenting and messaging me about it is a book called super nintendo by keza mcdonald right which you know i've got a little bit of a kind of retro gaming of things but this super nintendo book is it's more like a business book and it's a really interesting look at the history not just of nintendo but how it's evolved how it's managed to sort of reinvent itself time and time again but also how successful it's been at hiring young graduates straight out of college and university and how basically most of those people stay for life and it's really really really fascinating it's very well written and I highly recommend it.

35:19Georgie Frost: And I'm going to throw the ball back in. What's George's book tip of the week? Because I know you read a lot of business books. I think it's good to give a little springtime read suggestion.

35:27Lee Boyce: I do. I do read a lot of books. I'm reading the one about Credit Suisse at the moment, actually. But I tend to read quite a few books at once. So another book I'm reading is The Happiness of Dogs, which sounds slightly nebulous, but actually it's quite deeply philosophical and I'm someone that didn't study philosophy. So it's all about Sartre and Socrates' unexamined life. Basically just saying dogs seem to be quite happy and we just seem to be full of doubt. It had a bit more gravitas than I thought it might do. I have read Money on Your Mind by Vicky Raindale. I've read this year as well. That was very good.

36:05Lee Boyce: Rob Dick's Property Investing. I've just discovered I don't ever want to be a property investor. So I'm not far off you, Lee. I don't think I've read 15 books this year, but I've probably read about 10.

36:16Georgie Frost: I'm going to talk it over to Helen as well. I'm going to put her on the spot and she can pick her favourite book so far.

36:21Helen Crane: Any books, I'm just re-watching Mad Men.

36:25Lee Boyce: Thank you very much, Helen. Bringing this book club to a swift close there with Mad Men. 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 for the team or anything you'd like them to look into, Lee?

36:41Georgie Frost: Yeah, you can email us at podcast.thisismoney.co.uk. You can also leave comments on where this podcast lives on the This Is Money website. You can leave comments on Spotify, YouTube, and all the various places that you can find this podcast.

36:55Lee Boyce: I would also just say one of the best ever books I've read, and this was quite recently, it was last year, I don't know if it sneaks in, it's called Evicted, Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond, Evicted. It's mind-blowing. If you like our podcast, why not rate us wherever you found us? It helps other people find us too.